What May Win the Midterms for Dems? Answer: Left-wing “News” and Social Media

“Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper,” humorist Mark Twain once quipped. Of course, newspapers’ circulation these past decades has declined like that of someone gaining 50 years and 60 pounds. Yet their influence and that of other left-wing media sources is magnified — by social media and Big Tech generally. In fact, the bias is so intense, warns one observer, that it may win Democrats the midterms.

Like it or not, the electorate is like a computer: garbage in, garbage out. As to this, the Washington Examiner’s Ken Convoy wrote Tuesday:

To win elections from a local school board to the presidency requires neutralizing key parts of the leftist media and Silicon Valley, which promote lies and misinformation about President Donald Trump, or any Republican president, and Republicans in general, while covering up Democratic wrongs.

This manipulation of the American electorate, also by selective coverage of news stories, delivers hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free Democrat media during each election cycle that the GOP cannot match.

… The problem is Democrats and their media partners control the message, which becomes control of the mind. The leftist party is leveraging a ruthless media apparatus to be pro-Democrat, anti-Republican, knowing the truth is difficult to break through. It’s the oxygen enabling the Democratic Party to exist and thrive even as it lacks positive policies. Their goal: to achieve power by any means necessary by creating a distorted reality that threatens the very foundation of our country.

Without platforms such as social media, the New York Times, CNN, The View, ABC News, Salon, Meet the Press, Morning Joe, etc., plus Google ensuring their stores [sic] are always at the top of searches, Democrats winning elections would be extremely difficult, as the leftist media might be worth five or more points in every election.

We can perhaps bet on “or more” — and this is nothing new. Just consider research by UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose. He found, he wrote in his 2011 book Left Turn, that

media bias aids Democratic candidates by about 8 to 10 percentage points in a typical election. I find, for instance, that if media bias didn’t exist, John McCain would have defeated Barack Obama 56 percent to 42 percent [in 2008], instead of losing 53-46.

And what about the bias’ Big Tech aspect? Instructive here is the work of Dr. Robert Epstein, a Democrat-favoring liberal who is the senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. He has warned that Big Tech companies could shift upwards of 12 million votes in midterm elections. That’s perhaps sufficient to determine control of Congress. He has also stated that tech could shift 15 million votes during a presidential election. That is more than enough to swing a White House race, especially given how close our elections now are.

(Note: Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now X — which occurred after the above predictions were issued — has changed the equation. What I once called the “GoogTwitFace” axis lost the “Twit,” thus reducing its anti-conservative censorship power. It still packs a punch, though.)

On the Agenda…

Returning to Convoy, he reveals what’s at stake. If the Democrats retake the House in November, they’ll impeach President Donald Trump. They’ll also, the writer asserts, try to “imprison every Republican associated with him.” This would, “for all intents and purposes,” end Trump’s presidency.

And what if the Democrats control Congress and retake the White House in 2028? Convoy considers the implications too frightening to contemplate — and this isn’t paranoia. Numerous Democrats have expressed that they’re willing to overturn our checks-and-balances system to achieve permanent power. Outlined ambitions include packing the Supreme Court, naturalizing millions of illegal aliens, and making Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., states. Why, some leftists have even floated the idea of abolishing the Senate and Electoral College.

This agenda is absolutely as serious as a heart attack. As political strategist James Carville has counseled, keep it quiet. “Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it,” he said. “Just do it.” And given that this is what media/tech bias is enabling, it’s an actual existential crisis.

A Gamed System

Convoy laments the fruitlessness of trying to counter the lies. Sure, Trump’s press secretary, or some other figure, can issue corrections. But the same media that spread the lies will suppress the corrections.

Moreover, conservative shows such as Sean Hannity can’t correct the record because they’re preaching to the choir. The same is true of watchdog sites such as NewsBusters.

In fact, Convoy likens these efforts to symptomatic treatment; the underlying cause remains unaddressed. “It is comparable,” he writes, “to repeatedly applying lotion to poison ivy rashes without removing the poison ivy bush.”

Convoy provides the example of cellphone company Metro by T-Mobile, which boasts 19 million subscribers. This base is 35 times the size of CNN’s, and it’s a lot younger. The company exposes them, too, to a multitude of articles daily that automatically appear on their screens. And how many are from rabidly anti-Republican outlets such as Salon, MS NOW, and HuffPost?

More than 90 percent.

Convoy further mentions how polling outfits typically over-sample Democrats, knowing this will skew the results against Republicans. The purpose is to capitalize on the “bandwagon effect.” This is the psychological phenomenon whereby many people have a tendency to embrace what’s popular.

Of course, you may say that none of this will influence you. Well, it won’t influence me, either. But it’s not about us. Rather, the goal is to sway low-information voters — and the swing vote (the two are often synonymous) — which can be 30 percent of the electorate. Capture most of them, and you win.

The Good News

All this said, it doesn’t even begin to fully present the problem of media bias. (Note: I’ve written about it here, here, here, here, and here.) And I’ve experienced it firsthand. I’ve caught Big Tech, for example, suppressing The New American’s articles in general and mine in particular.

The good news is that many young people are now getting information from podcasts such as Joe Rogan’s. There is, too, the aforementioned transformation of Twitter into X. And this may explain something.

Robert Epstein correctly predicted the 2020 GOP defeat, saying that Big Tech bias ensured the “Republicans [couldn’t] win.” But they did prevail in 2024. So maybe, just perhaps, the Truth will manage to get its boots on in time for November’s election as well.