Thread by @TheMattBeebe

This write-up by @EWErickson takes a skeptical view of the whole Shadow Campaign to “steal” the election detailed in Time magazine. It’s worth the read, but Erick misses three key points:

https://twitter.com/ewerickson/status/1359500764029349892

(1) it doesn’t acknowledge how the gatekeepers in the media utterly failed us by intentionally choosing sides and putting the thumb on the scale to intentionally advocate for one side. This matters.

It shaped public opinion and if you give it an honest analysis, it deliberately and systematically promoted misinformation and actively suppressed information detrimental to Biden. Yes, the media has always shaped opinion this way, but it was beyond anything we have saw before.

(2) the electoral actions on the ground weren’t just about organizing better. They were explicitly designed to figuratively (maybe even literally) stuff the ballot boxes: through the lawfare-driven-in-conjunction-with-Democrat-partisan-bureaucrats-and-judicial-fiat rule changes.

Unlikely there was any direct fraud, but... Ballot applications sent universally? Ballots in some cases send universally? Unattended ballot boxes? Widespread enablement of ballot harvesting? Signature matching & application request tracking process aberrations? Please...

There is no doubt a significant number of ballots would have been disqualified under the previous election rules — in many places still explicitly codified in statute — that were in effect two years ago, but ignored by bureaucrats or set aside by judges this cycle.

It’s absolutely true that Republicans failed miserably to counteract this developing perfect storm of “lawfare” & administrative rule changes, and enough hasn’t been written about how they naively surrendered on these issues until after the election, and then muddled the claims.

(3) Third, if Trump or Republicans had done *anything* to tilt the playing field to his advantage for absentee ballots we would have had riots - and yet the changes to absentee balloting rules in the battleground states *absolutely* tilted the playing field toward Biden.

In reality, when the actions of well funded partisan activists and anti-Trump bureaucrats tilt the playing field demonstrably in the direction of one side, it isn’t hard to understand why many people consider it “rigged”.

Because it was.

“Stolen” or not is just semantics.