Time Magazine published an article written by Molly Ball two days ago entitled, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”. It is one of the most disturbing articles I have read in a long time.
The article claims that a “conspiracy” (their word) was executed, an alliance between the Democratic party, never-Trump Republicans, big business, silicone valley and the main stream media to set-up a “shadow campaign” (their words) to determine who wins the election. It was designed to control what information the voter saw and what it didn’t. It manipulated the democratic process to favor one candidate. This is not speculation. This is their own admission in the article.
First question; Why did it have to be a shadow campaign? Why couldn’t this campaign be out in the open? We all know why. People working in the shadows are committing illegal and unethical acts, so they must remain hidden. If the acts were legal and ethical, the campaign wouldn’t have to work in the shadows. It could work out in the open.
The article claims that it was a “shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted.” And by free and fair, credible and uncorrupted, they mean “They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding... recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.” What they did was unconstitutionally change the election laws in many battleground states. They persuaded governors or courts in violation of the Constitution to unilaterally install unsecure mail-in voting, and remove security systems such as voter ID, signature match which ensure the integrity of each vote. They allowed unsecure drop boxes to collect the vote with no insurance of ballot custody. They did not offer any plausible argument on how their unconstitutional changes to election laws in battle ground states made the vote less corrupted. They just did it.
There is no reason to have mail-in voting other than a desire to cheat the vote. The two most prominent federal crimes in America are mail fraud and identity theft. These are the two crimes that are easily committed by a mail-in voting system that was present in most of the battle ground states, and many Democrats are supporting the implementation of mail-in voting on a national level which indicates where their minds are.
Voter ID, signature matching, and ensuring ballot custody are not voter suppression tactics designed to compromise the election. They are anti-voter fraud mechanism designed to ensure election integrity. And those who are against those mechanism are the ones engaging in voter fraud and voter-disenfranchisement.
The article states that the shadow campaign “fended off voter-suppression lawsuits.” The article simply claims that Donald Trump challenging unconstitutional changes to state election laws was an act of voter-fraud and voter suppression. Which it is not. Those challenges were legal and Constitutional, but they were suppressed by this shadow campaign.
This shadow campaign also “successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.” They used their power and influence to force social media to censor conservative voices in the lead up to the election while allowing Democrats to smear their Republican opponents on their sites. The article uses language to frame what was done as ensuring election integrity when in fact it was compromising election integrity by presenting biased and distorted information to the voting public in favor of one candidate, Joe Biden.
They claim all this was an effort to protect American democracy. From what? Donald Trump. They insinuate by his very presence on the ballot, Donald Trump was corrupting the vote. They never give evidence, proof or any examples of how Donald Trump was corrupting the voting process. Not one shred of evidence. They never articulate how other than his very existence, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. They do not detail any voter fraud scheme or any other tampering with the vote planned by the Trump campaign.
They simply determined that the election of Donald Trump was in and of itself a threat to democracy. Once again, they did not explain what Trump had done in his four years in office that in any way compromised the foundation of our democracy other than promoting legal and Constitutional policies that the shadow campaign disagreed with. They refer to Trump as “autocratically inclined” but never show examples or give proof of how he was autocratic.
By the article’s own admission, this was “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” Take a second to digest that sentence. That sentence in and of itself should shake everyone to their core. But it becomes even more disturbing when the author includes this Orwellian sentence next. “They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.” So, cheating in the election was making the election more-fair. Gotcha. This is a classic ‘get out ahead of the story, so you can control the narrative’ tactic. And it has been executed fairly well. Except anyone with a functioning brain can see what they were doing. What she is saying is, yes, this sounds an awful lot like “rigging the election”, but really, they were “fortifying” it, so no more questions. Let’s move on.
How do we know the vote was fraudulent? On November 12, 2020, less than 9 days after the election, Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee released a statement claiming that the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history.” This is another example of the ‘get out ahead of the story, so you can control the narrative’ tactic. It is impossible to determine so quickly that the election was secure, without one recount, without one audit of the vote, without one forensic analysis of one voting machine, without studying the close circuit video of the polling places, without interviewing one person who filed a charge of voter fraud. They couldn’t make that determination that quickly which means they were lying. And because they were lying about what happened during the election that quickly, it is easy to conclude that the election was not, in fact, safe and secure. That’s the way criminals are caught, when they start lying.
The statement also read, “While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.” Another Orwellian proclamation.
And when Donald Trump or others objected to this overt unlawful corruption of our democratic process and requested to use Constitutional means to challenge the election results, they were the ones painted as assaulting the democracy by the complicit main stream and social media when in fact, they were the actual victims of an assault on our democracy.
The article states that, “within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.” The article goes on to detail the coordinated effort designed to thwart any attempt to Constitutionally challenge the results of the election. “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”
The article is 25 pages long, and too much to unpack here, but it is disturbing to its core. The overall premise is that Donald Trump was an unduly elected dictator that had to be stopped by any means necessary, and every means that they used whether Constitutional or not was always presented in the article as saving democracy even when what they were directly assaulting our democracy.
This goes well beyond the 2020 election. This apparatus is in place and designed to influence every election cycle moving forward. We will never have another free and fair election. The social media giants that are in collusion with this scheme will censor conservative voices and continually present information slanted in favor of the Democrats. Mail-in ballots which are not secure and easily corrupted will unfairly tip the scales of every election moving forward. The victors in future elections will not be those with the best vision for our country, or the ones with the best leadership skills, or those who care about the plight of Americans the most. No, the electoral victors will be the ones who can cheat the best.
We are moving into a very dark age in America. And as we have seen Joe Biden sign over 40 executive orders in his first two weeks, the party that is claiming to have saved the vote and preserved the Constitution from a dictator, and is so concerned about the will of the people, is the party that is ruling like a dictator by circumventing the voice of the people and violating the Constitution by passing legislation not through the Constitutionally prescribed legislative process but through executive fiat. So no, this “shadow campaign” did not save our democracy. It set up an apparatus that will destroy our democracy and turn our great country into a banana republic.
I completely agree with you.
JG you are so right. Trump was not part of politics as usual and was not maintaining the status quo. That gave the media the right to libel and smear his reputation along with anyone who dared to support him. We are in for a long dark ride with our current “dictator”(Biden’s own word) with his EOs bypassing the legislative process. He knows these are not supported by the American public. But then he does not owe anything to the American people but owes all to the elites that put him in the White House. Heaven help us.