Are People Actually Afraid of Democrats?
The impossible might finally become a reality.
Last week, the New York Post attempted to do the impossible and launch an October Surprise. As I noted back in June, this prospect would be daunting. The October Surprise has been nullified by our increasingly polarized political atmosphere and the machinations of the Trump administration. And, as any neutral observer would have expected, the Post story failed to move the country. It was a story about a candidate’s son, not the candidate himself. The details were sketchy. The sources were questionable. Most importantly of all, the story came from an obviously biased tabloid. There was a good chance that the story would be forgotten by lunchtime on Wednesday, or at most the next day.
It turns out that the Post’s article had a bit more life in it than many expected, thanks to the subsequent actions of Facebook and Twitter. The social media giants responded to the story by banning it outright at first. After outrage from the right and civil libertarians, the social media companies backed off on this strong stance over the next week. But the damage had been done and the message had been made clear. Facebook and Twitter were not going to repeat the role as unwitting pawns for Trump supporters that they played four years ago.
