In my opinion, there is a troll on the Elizabeth Warren Facebook page. It is possible that the Elizabeth Warren campaign is not getting the full benefit from Facebook that it could because of the behavior of the troll.

Of course, as one would expect, there is much praise for Elizabeth Warren from the postings on her page.  Occasionally a Warren supporter, such as myself, tries to convey some constructive criticisms of the way we feel that the campaign is missing opportunities to further promote Warren’s candidacy.

The troll seems to take it upon himself to disparage all criticism in what seems to be an attempt to intimidate people who make such criticisms.  It is unfortunate that the campaign seems more intent in quieting criticism than it is in learning from it.  This troll just reinforces this image which some supporters find so extremely frustrating.

It is not even clear if the troll has any official responsibility for the Facebook page.  One suspects that he does not.  If a person with administrative privileges on the Facebook page thought that a post was detrimental, then it would be better to just delete the post rather than try to intimidate the poster from further posts.

I start to wonder why a purported volunteer in the campaign and presumably a supporter would spend so much effort to patrol the Facebook page and turn off people who want to post there.

I would think a truly committed supporter would thoughtfully read the criticism and help to pass on the good ideas to the campaign.  If the troll is not the one charged with this responsibility, then who is?  Surely the campaign would not consider Facebook to be a one way medium of communication.  Surely they would have someone officially responsible for reading the feedback and not just responsible for writing posts.  If there is nobody charged with this duty, then this is just another example of missed opportunities to further the cause of getting Elizabeth Warren elected.

Is this a case of Greenberg’s Law of Counterproductive Behavior? “If you see a behavior that seems to you to be counterproductive, perhaps you have misunderstood what the actor was trying to produce.”

Speaking of that law, why would I want to post this on the Warren Facebook page?  Am I being the troll that I have just talked about?  That is not my intention.  I would like to communicate with the other posters and readers of the Facebook page and urge them to use whatever connections they have to the campaign to get the message through.  One or two (or is that a hundred) voices of  concern do not seem to be enough.

The question is, can we get our concerns addressed in time to rescue this campaign? Can we stop the people who are doing so much damage to the campaign?  Can we break through the wall surrounding Elizabeth Warren and get her to realize who her real friends are?

Truth Out has Eugene Robinson’s article A Field of Hawks.

The article starts with:

Unless Ron Paul somehow wins the nomination, it looks as if a vote for the Republican presidential candidate this fall will be a vote for war with Iran.

and ends with:

The United States and its allies should seek to eliminate the Iranian government’s will to make a bomb, not its capacity. I hope Romney realizes that while sanctions and diplomacy may not be working as well as we’d like, they’re the best tools we have — and that an attack at this point gets us nowhere. But if he believes his own rhetoric, this election may be about more than the economy. It may be about war and peace.

I can think of few things that would strengthen Iran’s will to make a bomb than the constant threats and sanctions.  Iran may observe that we are a little more careful how we deal with countries that have a nuclear capability.  If they are trying to build a bomb, which I might remind you our intelligence agencies say they have no proof of, it could just be so that they can get more fear if not respect from the international community.

So if threatening and sanctioning Iran seems to be counterproductive to the aims of the United States, then it would put our actions in the category of Greenberg’s Law of Counterproductive Behavior, “If you see a behavior that seems to you to be counterproductive, perhaps you have misunderstood what the actor was trying to produce.”

I don’t know if this is the reason, but the most obvious one would be that our real motives are to gain control of Iranian oil or to at least take it off the market so that oil prices will rise.  That may not be the public’s motive, but you can bet the big oil company backers of the politicians would appreciate that.

Well, this seems to be the week for the press to catch up to my blog.  The Boston Globe came out with the story Democratic darling has also been critic, subtitled “In book, Warren targeted key figures”.

In her best-selling book, she charged that Senator Hillary Clinton abandoned her principles and supported a bankruptcy bill in exchange for campaign contributions. Warren accused Joe Biden, also a senator at the time, of selling out women. And she chided Patty Murray – the Washington senator who later helped recruit her into the race and is now leading the national effort to elect her – for wanting to shame bankrupt families.

This mirrors my post back in December, Elizabeth Warren And Hillary Clinton Trade Lessons.  The headline on the continuation of The Boston Globe story on an inside page says, “Warren book may help or hurt her run.”

This furthers the point that I have been making to the Warren campaign with zero success.  You cannot change the fact that Elizabeth Warren has written several books.  I think the books are a tremendous asset to her campaign and should be advertised by her campaign rather than hidden by them.  If she doesn’t make a big deal of her books in a positive way, someone else will turn them into a negative.  Why wait around for the inevitable?  Why not get out in front of the curve?

I don’t know how many times the campaign will have to be hit over the head with these ideas before they finally wake up.  One almosts suspects that this behavior of the campaign falls under the category Greenberg’s Law of Counterproductive Behavior, “If you see a behavior that seems to you to be counterproductive, perhaps you have misunderstood what the actor was trying to produce.”