UPDATED: Why The Time Election Narrative Is Good News

Time has published a lengthy article that purports to tell how the heroic coalition of Big Labor and Big Business "saved" Election 2020--they're such patriots, looking out for the interests of We The People! If you believe that this story was put out to tell the truth of the election then I have a slightly used but still very serviceable bridge in Brooklyn to sell you:

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

Time wants you to believe this was a "bipartisan" effort, an "unlikely alliance" between Left and Right. Wrong. This was a "unipartisan" effort, as in Uniparty. What the appearance of this story tells us is this:

1) The Establishment realizes that they have so far been unable to control the public perception that Election 2020 was a Big Steal. That remarkably wide perception--in the face of a relentless full court disinformation press--bodes ill for the 2022 elections

2) As a result they're putting out a counter narrative to the Big Steal, the purpose of which is to make it look legit. In other words, it's yet another attempted exercise in perception management--and that's what tells us that they know they're failing. They wouldn't bother, otherwise. The appearance of candor in the story is simply part of the technique and is another indicator of desperation.

If you can bear it, read this bit of flim-flammery. You're supposed to believe that the Establishment is just oh-so-eager to tell us the Real Truth, the "Secret History". The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Trust us--we're not lying this time! Puh-leeze!

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–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. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.

The true giveaway is the lie about "changing" rules and laws. The truth, as is well known, is that in state after state the rules and laws were flouted and broken--because they knew they could get away with it, at least long enough to get the Big Steal ratified by the Senate.

Who thinks there was no coordination with power brokers in the Senate? Like the Chamber of Commerce didn't coordinate with Mitch McConnell? The AFL-CIO didn't talk to Chuck Schumer? C'mon!

What's driving this? As I said, it's the perception that "behind the scenes [efforts] to influence perceptions" aren't working. Of course, that's a bit of nonsense, too. There's nothing "behind the scenes" about Big Tech and Big Media efforts to "influence perceptions." The fact that these efforts are failing is why this pretense of a Big Reveal about what "really" happened is being attempted.

A highly perceptive Canadian observer of the American scene, Conrad Black, sees this, too. Writing before the Time piece was available to him, Black first describes the policy shambles the Zhou Baiden regime is creating with its plethora of hard Left executive decrees, bypassing Congress. But he then moves on to the issue of the election itself:

Biden’s Rapidly Deflating Honeymoon Balloon

Biden and his media supporters will see the prohibition they have imposed on any questioning of the election result blow up in their faces.

Notice this right up front. Black rightly refers to "the prohibition they have imposed on any questioning of the election result." The "prohibition on questions" is a well known Marxist tactic, as described long ago by Eric Voegelin in Science, Politics, and Gnosticism. Black maintains that this prohibition will "blow up in their faces." My contention, above, is that the appearance of the Time article is evidence that they're already seeing this prohibition blowing up.

Now, before I quote Black, keep in mind what I highlighted in red above, and my description of that as a patent lie. Yesterday, commenter Mike Sylwester and I were discussing the inclusion of the "prohibition on questioning" in the faux impeachment as a mistake, in that it opens up the issue of election fraud for Trump's defense. One can only surmise that the Dems were hoping against hope that this ploy would somehow legitimize the "prohibition on questioning". I wouldn't count on it. It looks more and more like an own goal, an error forced by desperation.

As I noted, Trump has hired a pair of highly experienced liberal attorneys who are not at all impressed with the Dem House's handiwork and rhetoric. Now, here's Black, writing about this whole situation

... polls indicate that the former president has been the chief beneficiary of the comparative quiet and civility in Washington in the two weeks since his departure.

Those polls, showing Trump with higher approval ratings than Zhou Baiden, is the tell that the perception management operation is failing so far. Now, in what follows, pay attention to what I've bolded in red. Trump's attorneys are directly addressing the falsehood that the Time article attempts to propagate--that rules and laws were "changed". No they weren't changed, say Trump's lawyers--laws can only be changed by state legislatures. Acting in deliberate contravention of the election laws is, quite precisely, election fraud.

The reply of Trump’s counsel to the impeachment charge on Tuesday was a withering dismissal of trying to remove from office someone who does not hold that office, a textual reminder that he did not incite violence, that the disgraceful action at the Capitol was not encouraged by him and was not an “insurrection,” and that he was only exercising his First Amendment right:

to express his belief that the election results were suspect, since with very few exceptions, under the convenient guise of COVID-19 pandemic ‘safeguards,’ state election laws and procedures were changed by local politicians or judges without the necessary approvals from state legislatures. Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th president’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies that they were false. Like all Americans, the 45th president is protected by the First Amendment . . . If the First Amendment protected only speech the government deemed popular in current American culture, it would be no protection at all.

In allowing the impeachment of Trump to proceed, Biden is placing front and center in the political arena the outright assertion that his election was illegitimate, which Biden’s supporters in Congress and the totalitarian media have tried to expunge and cancel.

Biden is arming his late opponent with an argument similar and in some respects stronger than the one General Andrew Jackson carried to victory through the four years separating the elections of 1824, when he led in the polls but lost in the House of Representatives, and 1828.

... 

There seems to be some spontaneous movement among some senators of both parties to try to replace impeachment with a censure vote. It is very late for that, but if any senior people in this administration are thinking sensibly, they will get that bandwagon rolling at once. If they do not, Trump will have the last laugh at the end of this term and loom as a force of great electoral formidability as the clock ticks toward the next election. Joe Biden’s honeymoon is passing with the swiftness of air leaving a punctured balloon.

The Time story offers conservatives good news. The good news is that the Dems and all the authors of the Big Steal know they have a Big Problem. They realize that all their perception management efforts thus far have gone for naught.

UPDATE: Wow! Glenn Reynolds is all over this angle with a truly smokin' article:

Why are Democrats so scared of Donald Trump when they just defeated him?

Another way to frame that question is: Why aren't Dems secure in their victory? The obvious answer--given their "prohibition on questions" is: They know that we know that they didn't actually win. And that's why they're trying this new tactic of, Here, now we'll tell you the secret truth that makes everything OK--for us! We wuz protecting the country!

Reynolds quotes Rasmussen polling:

“Almost half of ALL VOTERS are concerned about US election integrity: – President Trump left office w/ a job approval of 51%. – 47% of ALL VOTERS believe there was election fraud in Nov 2020. – 45% of ALL VOTERS want a debate on election integrity.”

Then he really gets on a roll--and all this reinforces what we said above:

Donald Trump is washed up. A has-been. Everyone hates him, and he has no future. That’s what the press is constantly telling us.

So why are the Democrats still afraid of him?

According to the press narrative, Trump suffered a crushing electoral defeat. Democrats are firmly in charge of the White House and Congress. America is returning to normalcy, ...

That’s the story, but the Democrats’ actions give it the lie.

In a nation returning to “normalcy,” does Congress cower behind armed troops and 12-foot fences? Does a party securely in control try to enlist tech firms and media to snuff out voices of opposition?

In a normal America, does a defeated presidential incumbent pose such a threat to the party in power that he must be impeached after leaving office, to ensure he doesn’t win back the White House in four years?

And of course there are more signs of this fear every day.