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Losing the Contested Election Narrative
Townhall.com ^ | October 19, 2020 | Jason Killmeyer

Posted on 10/19/2020 6:42:15 AM PDT by Kaslin

It’s mid-October and the leaders of the American Left – Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, media luminaries such as Mike Allen of Axios, and political operatives such as George Stephanopolous – are making their final pre-election maneuvers to help ensure the correct outcome in November. Many on the Right are strangely describing the story suppression and opinion-pushing by Twitter leadership as censorship, versus what is really is: overt activism as practiced in the new age. As we watched the narrative battle over contested election scenarios evolve, the Left has largely prevailed. Polls show that Americans incorrectly believe that the expansion of vote-by-mail and third-party ballot collection was driven primarily by COVID, despite the already historic number of lawsuits to expand these practices filed in the courts well before the pandemic had begun.

As Democrats successfully tested the California model in 2018, using expanded third party ballot collection efforts to flip long-time Republican-held House seats in the weeks after Election Day, it was then time for a national rollout. That’s why well before COVID we saw articles appearing in national outlets instructing Americans that they no longer should hold an expectation that their elections can be decided on, well, Election Day. And, to be clear, that expectation has stuck. Support for the historic expansion of vote-by-mail or third-party ballot collection efforts, long a concern of street-level partisans, has been successfully mainstreamed and sold to the American people.

Attempts to clean up our notoriously inaccurate voter rolls are now labeled "voter suppression," and with presumed racist intent. Despite the opportunity for rampant, Tammany Hall-style corruption through third-party ballot collection, we are assured that those concerns are only held by bad faith actors. So, the institutions of the Left have closed ranks, and expert opinion now suggests that the only shenanigans we can expect as it relates to our election are from any Republicans who raise concerns about these processes or attempt to contest the results they produce. And Jack and the other industry titans already have a plan for that scenario too, which received a practice run this week with the suppressed NY Post story.

Beyond that, we’re watching those same institutions again fail to prepare the American people for the fact that the result may not go the way they want. But this year they’ve done so in a more dangerous fashion, by deliberately conflating an authoritarian effort to ignore the election results that they fear from President Trump and the legitimate, and entirely typical, actions by the Right to contest ballots or otherwise participate in the legal battles in contested states both sides are armed to the teeth for. They’ve done so while also hinting that these battles may be decided by a Supreme Court that is “packed” by Mitch McConnell, according to a brand new definition of that term invented and faithfully mainstreamed about 10 days ago. Worse, they’ve hinted that Judge Amy Coney Barrett, despite a stellar legal record, will feel indebted to the president who nominated her, and may be unable to render judgment fairly. These dual attempts to cast into doubt the legitimacy of a determinative Supreme Court decision call the entire transfer of power into question. And depending on how the Court rules, that’s their very purpose. Donald Trump was criticized for saying that the only way he could lose the election is if it is rigged, and they have setup a very similar scenario in which a major portion of the country will believe that his victory can only be ill gotten.

What we witnessed Twitter and Facebook do this week are not the end, but the beginning of how these massively powerful actors will wield their power to shape public opinion. Wait and see what happens if the voters don’t deliver the outcome they’ve been maneuvering to make more likely: we may see a collapse of the Fourth Estate’s credibility that truly impedes our functioning as a democracy. We spend a lot of time focused on outrage at the nakedly partisan motives of the press, forgetting that they are the Left’s most powerful institutional actors. A healthier country with a healthier press would have a more balanced understanding about the risks to our election processes and the likely scenarios in which the election will be contested. But that is not their interest. When we look back on the lessons learned from the 2020 election, we’ll marvel at just how heavy the lifting was done by the consensus makers as they shape the brave new world of a somehow even more drastically bifurcated media environment.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2020election; joebiden

1 posted on 10/19/2020 6:42:15 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

I should have my new rifle by the election. All my neighbors are armed too, and not even slightly lib. It would be a bad idea to start something near by.


2 posted on 10/19/2020 6:52:05 AM PDT by Agatsu77
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To: Kaslin

I’m sick of Allen and his Happy Friday crap. What’s happy about it? And that time estimate for reading One Big Thing, what a stupid idea!


3 posted on 10/19/2020 7:01:21 AM PDT by Lisbon1940 (No full-term Governors (at the time of election))
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To: Kaslin

The President is going to win re-election, and I don’t think it’ll be that close. When the dust settles, I believe there will be two events that turned the vote in his favor:

1) The sanctimonious Left told us for months that if you didn’t wear a mask and social distance, you were a bad person. Then the riots started, and thousands of people were out - in close proximity - and screaming in people’s faces. This hypocrisy was quickly condoned and accepted by the Left, and I believe it enraged decent Americans who saw the double standard.

2) Hunter and Slow Joe may or may not be criminals, but the immediate banning of the story by Facebook and Twitter created a white-hot anger among conservatives, who’ve long accused the tech giants of bias.


4 posted on 10/19/2020 7:03:35 AM PDT by Kharis13
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To: Kaslin

I’m wondering about the scenario if Trump wins and the left pushes for secession like they say that they will do. Maybe we should give the left some of what it wants. Czechoslovakia broke up peacefully, Yugoslavia broke up violently.

What if San Francisco through Seattle broke off (not the inland parts of OR and WA). It would not be geographically feasible for every leftist area to break off, but one large enough area might attract most of the BLM and Antifa crowd. They could have their colectivist utopia and leave the rest of the America alone. Of course, this new country would be hostile and a satellite of China, but is that worse than now where agents of China and Iran are openly elected to national office and we could elect a president who is a puppet for Red China?


5 posted on 10/19/2020 7:15:58 AM PDT by Wilhelm Tell (True or False? This is not a tag line.)
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To: Kaslin

Whatever the outcome, the news reporting will be destroyed. No longer will people watch without scoffing.


6 posted on 10/19/2020 7:16:16 AM PDT by Glad2bnuts (“If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is absolute.” Francis Schaeffer)
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To: Agatsu77
I should have my new rifle by the election. All my neighbors are armed too, and not even slightly lib. It would be a bad idea to start something near by.

You'll be amazed at how quiet and peaceful it will be when Biden wins.
7 posted on 10/19/2020 7:17:25 AM PDT by TexasGunLover
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To: Kaslin

Bookmarked! Thank you.


8 posted on 10/19/2020 7:34:32 AM PDT by Robert A Cook PE ( I can only donate monthly, but the radical ABCNNBCBS does it every hour on their news.)
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To: Kharis13

“we are assured that those concerns are only held by bad faith actors”

Facebook and Twitter ARE the bad faith actors. Their entire organization is left.
We who are the real ‘woke’ understand media is controlled by a scant few, who hate the right.


9 posted on 10/19/2020 7:50:07 AM PDT by No_More_Harkin
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To: Kharis13

When the Democrat Governors locked families out of nursing care facilities and put sick people inside was the last straw around here.


10 posted on 10/19/2020 7:52:36 AM PDT by cnsmom
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