Tainting The Basket

By now, anyone who isn't engaging in willful ignorance or outright deceit knows that multiple parties worked, in parallel and in conjunction, to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story that the New York Post broke shortly before the 2020 election. While many of us knew the laptop was legitimate and that the damaging information on it was not "Russian fabrications" or whatever misdirection a bunch of experts and talking heads purported, it is likely that enough voters in swing states were taken in by the deceitful to tip the election to Biden.

That stacked on top of years of relentless propagandizing against Trump, the impeachment that was based on the Russia collusion hoax (yes, hoax. See: Steele Dossier), and all the rest you are aware of.

The propagandizing isn't new. Biased press coverage has long been estimated to be worth 3% in the electoral returns, if memory serves, and that predates social media's emergence as a powerful scale-tipper. Politics has always been a dirty business, and most newspapers across the centuries "chose sides," often overtly and scurrilously. We might fairly argue that the influence of all those influencers well exceeded that 3% tally the last time around, given how relentless and widespread it was.

So, yes, the 2020 election was almost certainly distorted in Biden's favor to the point of his eking out a victory.

Yes, eking.

The 306-232 Electoral College result, and the 7M Biden advantage in national popular vote don't tell the full story. But for small differences, Trump could have won a second term in 2020.

The differences?

• Pennsylvania: If 41K voters out of 6.94M voted Trump instead of Biden, Trump would have taken PA's 20 Electoral votes.

• Georgia: If 6K voters out of 5.00M voted Trump instead of Biden, Trump would have taken GA's 16 Electoral votes.

• Arizona: If 6K voters out of 3.40M voted Trump instead of Biden, Trump would have taken AZ's 11 Electoral votes.

• Wisconsin: If 11K voters out of 3.30M voted Trump instead of Biden, Trump would have taken AZ's 10 Electoral votes.

Pennsylvania and two of the other three, had Trump won them, would have put him back in the White House. Thus "eking,” the Left’s assertions of a mandate notwithstanding.

There is a mountain of material to support the assertion that legacy media, social media, Big Tech, academia, and the entrenched bureaucracies behaved in an underhanded fashion that tipped the election in Biden’s favor. Swaying just a couple tens of thousands of voters in the right states was enough, and we know how diligently they worked to sway.

Which is why it's so frustrating to hear people continue arguing about voter fraud, about cooked books and fudged numbers and other illegal activities that were never proven in forums where proof actually mattered (see: courts of law, where perjury is punishable). Real evidence (not personal incredulity) was and remains lacking, and sober analyses refute the “stolen” claim.

Thing is, at this juncture, there's no need to continue with that narrative.

When someone alleges voter fraud, i.e. illegal activity, people not already of a mind in that regard may step back and say "show me proof." On the other hand, when someone points out the countless ways the Blue Blob acted to counterfactually sway public opinion, the proof is there, in irrefutable basketfuls. Tossing voter fraud into those baskets gives the motivated dissenters an out, a way to dismiss you as "just a MAGA conspiracist" and ignore all the provable things you correctly point at.

But what about voter integrity, you might ask? You don't need to prove, or even allege, voter fraud to demand greater integrity. Even this libertarian supports a voter ID requirement. Furthermore, voter rolls should be purged of the dead and those who have moved, well ahead of elections. Every vote should have a physical representation, whether it be a paper ballot or a receipt that the voter witnessed. None of these should be controversial, and when some assert that some voters don't have proper or sufficient identification paperwork, just throw some money at the problem. Congress is really good at that.

Other than a "I wanna be right!" petulance, there's no reason to replay the "stolen election" narrative, no matter how convinced you are. Barring some seismic new revelation, you’re not going to change any minds, anyway, so stick to the mountain of proven and documented shenanigans in your criticisms. You’re not as apt to be dismissed that way.

Trump won, and it's quite arguable that four years of Biden and four years of mellowing have positioned Trump to make more and better changes, better decisions, and have a more positive impact on the country’s future than if he had won in 2020.

Biden's tenure unmasked and unmade the woke Left and its wild ambitions, and. We should absolutely continue to point out the provables - the social media and Big Tech suppression, the academics inculcating rather than teaching, the legacy media biases and falsehoods, the bad actors in the bureaucracy, and more. We should also absolutely demand that every effort be taken to ensure the integrity of the voting process. Those suffice, and anyone who argues against them is easily exposed as a shill or hypocrite.