Now let me preface this by saying that I can only react to the parts of this story of which I am presently aware, so my observations are in no way definitive. But from what I've seen of this story over the last day, it seems to me that the point of value to us is that POC were one of the groups targeted by a very sophisticated disinformation campaign.

There is obviously profound truth to the idea that voter suppression is arguably the single most prevalent culprit in the way the 2016 election turned out, and I share the concern about any minimization of this fact. Yet at the same time, such a sophisticated targeted disinformation campaign is not entirely unrelated to voter suppression. It is, arguably, just yet another means to the same end.

But it is also more than just that, because it further obscures accurate observation of the depth of the impacts of voter suppression. The fewer people that show up at an under-resourced and over-restricted polling place, the less obvious the suppressive effects of that under-resourcing and over-restricting will be. Whether the apathy/disgust responsible for keeping people from even trying to vote was the result of (for example) the focus on the "super-predators" remarks aimed at undermining the Party's candidate or of the focus on the primary process aimed at undermining the Party itself is somewhat irrelevant. The result was the same, and it hurt all of us. Not all of us on either side of the Bernie/Hillary divide were sucked in, but all of us were targeted, in different ways designed to influence us on our own inflection points.

I don't want to see anything supplant our opposition to the rampant evil of voter suppression, but I am concerned that we not allow misguided application of "blame" by some to prevent us from also adequately studying and countering this new (*edit* or rather, newly expanded and much more sophisticated) front in that fight.