Operation Black-Pill

As the dust settles on the US midterms we're able to get a clearer view of the landscape. One week on, vote counts are still rolling in... and so are the stories of what went down behind the scenes. As I suspected in A Battle of Votes and Narratives, there was a media con-job being played, which I called black-pilling. Additionally, being waged is an all out battle for the soul of, and for power over, the Republican party.

What makes the US midterms, any US election, confusing is that it's not just about the high profile Presidential race, Congressional and Senate seats being contested, which we tend to focus on. All levels of state roles can be up for grabs, right down to school boards. It makes it awkward to get a handle on, especially during the roller-coaster tension of election day itself.

In the 2022 midterms, the Democrats may have held on, by the skin of their teeth, to the Senate, but in every other area it was the red wave. Not only is Biden's legislative power gone with Republicans taking the House, but many states like Florida, Ohio and Montana went deep red, as in, all levels of Government. Inroads were made into blue states, such as Republican Lombardo taking the Governorship of blue Nevada.

This time it was the Republicans having to defend many more Senate seats, spreading thin what funding they had. The much smaller number of the Democrat seats being defended were in safe, deep blue states. In 2024, this will flip to Democrats defending 23 seats, not all safe blue. Dr Gina Loudon, an expert in the interplay between politics and human behaviour, writes in the National Pulse,

The 2022 midterm Senate races were always going to be tougher for Republicans because of the seats up for grabs. Now look forward to 2024, when Biden will be dragging down every Democrat on the ticket, and when Democrats will be defending several vulnerable seats. They are sure to lose several, and will have to spread their resources thin to defend them all:

Kirsten Sinema in Arizona, Jon Tester in Montana Joe Manchin in West Virginia Jacky Rosen in Nevada, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania

I'm not so sure Joe Biden will be on the Democrat ticket in 2024. Short of Pandemic 2.0, he can't hide in his basement again. I suspect moves will be made to have him step down for 'health reasons', and Vice President Harris will step into the POTUS role. She's not a strong performer, so the real power person to watch will be the new VP.

There's a narrative doing the rounds that the outcome of the midterms is down to the "poor quality" of 'Trump's picks'. As Dr. Loudon writes, of the 235 races he endorsed, 219 won. That's a batting average of 93%. Yet somehow he's to blame because he didn't get 100%? That's the black-pill propaganda. It's not accidental either. It's designed to demoralise, and to take out Trump, not just as a contender for POTUS 2024, but also as de facto leader of the Republican party.

Raheem Kassam, Editor of The National Pulse and former UKIP Advisor, notes that most of this anti-Trump content is coming out of both the Murdoch and Bezos media empires. He makes the following observation.

You know who isn't blaming Donald Trump? The 93% of endorsed candidates that won. Donald Trump's endorsement success rate is above 90%.

That is an endorsement success rate that we have just never seen before and that nobody else in the Republican party could even begin to suggest they would have that level of endorsement success rate, if they did things the same way and if they were the same target as Donald Trump is.

Who benefits from this blame game for the 93% success that's being thrown at Donald Trump? Well, it's actually the people who fought races that didn't work out too well. The McLeadership! (McConnell, McCarthy, McDaniels)

Indeed, J. D. Vance, one of Trump's successful 93% writes in The American Conservative, 'Don't Blame Trump'.

Something odd happened on Election Day. In the morning, we were confident of my victory in Ohio and cautiously optimistic about the rest of the country. By the time the polls closed, that optimism had turned to jubilance—and lobbying.

Every consultant and personality I encountered during my campaign claimed credit for their own faction. The victory was a testament to Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), one person told me. Another argued instead that SLF had actually bungled the race, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC)—chaired by Rick Scott—deserved the credit. (Full disclosure: both the NRSC and SLF helped my race in Ohio, for which I’m grateful.)

But then the results rolled in, and it was clear the outcome was far more disappointing than hoped. And every person claiming victory on Tuesday morning knew exactly who to blame on Tuesday night: Donald J. Trump.

Of course, no man is above criticism. But the quick turn from gobbling up credit to vomiting blame suggests there is very little analysis at work.

Let me repeat that last sentence, "the quick turn from gobbling up credit to vomiting blame suggests there is very little analysis at work". Quite, but I think he's being too diplomatic, possibly out of necessity for the time-being.

Vance goes on to write about the structural shortcomings and lack of funding in comparison to the Democrats, especially in races where they weren't the incumbent. That's where the analysis and focus needs to be, not opportunist potshots at Trump. For example, incumbent Ron DeSantis was awash with funding, but states like Arizona, that had a chance of flipping, got no financial support from the Republican leadership. Recall that Trump endorsed DeSantis in 2018, he lacked funding and only just won by .4%. This time incumbency gave him the finances and he won by around 20 points.

Sometimes the funding disparity in favour of Democrats is 10-1. This funding pays for the marketing, billboards, events etc. This is where Trump is in a league of his own. In 2016 he was overwhelmingly outgunned by Clinton financially, but he knows how to get 'free' publicity. It's not always comfortable, but it's better than being ignored and silenced. He has cut through and that is exactly why they needed to boot him from Twitter.

Vance's recommendations should be heeded by "the McLeadership", of the Republican party. Vance concludes,

any effort to pin blame on Trump, and not on money and turnout, isn’t just wrong. It distracts from the actual issues we need to solve as a party over the long term. Indeed, one of the biggest changes I would like to see from Trump’s political organization—whether he runs for president or not—is to use their incredible small dollar fundraising machine for Trump-aligned candidates, which it appears he has begun doing to assist Herschel Walker in his Senate runoff [in Georgia].

Blaming Trump isn’t just wrong on the facts, it is counterproductive.

Given Trump's enviable 93% success rate, what's it really all about? Narrative.

Dr Gina Loudon,

The cable news experts keep repeating their new mantra of division, claiming Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is now set up to take out President Trump for 2024. Consider where this information is coming from and what their motivations might be, before you buy into it in the slightest.

Nothing that happened this week makes DeSantis – who rightfully enjoyed a large victory in my home state, in large part due to the massive inward migration of MAGA Republicans, and in a slightly lesser part due to his laughably hopeless opponent Charlie Crist – the king of the America First movement.

MAGA Republicans should also remember that they also do not simply fight the corporate media, the left, and the far left all at the same time. They also fight the same Republican moderates who are now whipping up division inside the party. Think about it. In the week Republicans retake the House, and probably the Senate, win a host of victories around the country and with more to come – the corporate Republican class wants to pick a fight with the man and the movement that got us here.

Loudon and Kassam make valid points about the role of the media and their oligarch owners. Ultimately, as voters in a democracy, we need to decide whether we're happy to let big corporate media decide who the President or PM of a country can be, or whether we turn on our critical faculties and commit to deciding ourselves.

You can understand the Democrats and their media playing the black-pill propaganda game. What is stunning is the allegation that the Establishment GOP worked with Democrats and their media to play this game, almost costing Arizona (which at the time of writing is still in play) and likely costing Pennsylvania and therefore control of the Senate. Candidates in those races were loyal Trump people. Dr Loudon,

the establishment GOP in Pennsylvania was dead set against Colonel Doug Mastriano, and they worked hand-in-hand with Democrats to defeat him. When your gubernatorial candidate is being attacked from all sides, including your own, your Senate candidate will also be dragged down, along with congressional candidates on the ballot.

If the GOP had actually rallied around the top of the ticket – Mastriano and Oz – they could have won together and delivered a down-ticket boost. But not only did the GOP establishment in that state lose the governor and the U.S. Senate race, they lost congressional races that should have been pickups. The blame lies with them, and they know it. Hence their projection – as always – onto Trump.

In addition to Arizona and Pennsylvania candidates being staunch America First/MAGA people and likely punished for it, were there other reasons to sabotage the midterms from within? It's fair to ask whether some of the investigations that Senators wanted to conduct, if they got control, might also throw some unwanted light on long-standing Republicans and family business links to the CCP? It could certainly be a motive for throwing the Senate race, ensuring those investigations were neutered.

Even now Establishment GOP leadership are silent on the drama still unfolding in Arizona. Dr. Loudon,

If I were in charge of the Republican National Committee, I would be spending more time talking about how Katie Hobbs – the presiding Secretary of State in Arizona and also conveniently the gubernatorial opponent to Kari Lake – has botched the election process in the Grand Canyon State.

That’s right: Democrat Katie Hobbs is in charge of counting her opponent’s votes. Are you surprised we don’t have results yet? This slow walking isn’t an accident. It is a feature, not a bug. Democrats know they lose those Arizona races if all the legal votes are counted, so it was imperative to withhold the biggest red wave wins of the night so the media could push the “red trickle,” instead. And shame on the Republicans who are singing from their hymn sheet.

Dr Loudon's insight on what is going on in Arizona gives context over how tens of thousands of mostly Republican game-day votes mysteriously 'disappeared' and counting seemed to stop. Kari Lake has a good team around her and fortunately she didn't concede. Four days after the election it was discovered that the missing ballots, from all those boxes labelled 3, had been 'accidentally' mingled in with already counted ballots. Naturally those responsible will claim innocent incompetence and not calculated malfeasance. At the very least these people should not keep their jobs!

Dr Loudon,

Imagine this scenario: the votes in Nevada and Arizona were all counted as efficiently as Florida, reported quickly, and the winners were declared. Would sneering CNN talking heads be able to deny the efficacy of this Trump-led wave in the face of those champagne bottles popping across MAGA country? No. So don’t fall for it.

Elise Stefanik, the New York Representative and Republican leader No. 3 has already come out in endorsement of Trump should he choose to run again for 2024. The squaring-off has begun! While ultimately all this internal manoeuvring within the Republicans can be damaging and risks that cleave I spoke of in my earlier article linked above, sometimes you've just got to lance-the-boil before you can unify, otherwise distrust festers. Despite some calling for a ceasefire in the Republican civil war until after the final count is in, I'm not surprised that there are just as many calls within the Party for elections to be held over key leadership positions. Perhaps the new blood needed is not in who runs for POTUS but with the leadership?

Both Kevin McCarthy (House leader) and Mitch McConnell (Senate leader) will need to convince their elected peers that the party's success and representing the people means more to them than shoring up their own power and/or personal/family fortunes. That they have the fortitude to fight just as hard as the Democrats fight for every inch of political territory. No more 'going along to get along'. Democrats don't operate that way, that's for sure. And no more being controlled opposition as part of the Establishment UniParty with the same alignment to corporatist agendas and globalist goals.

The stories being told, the counter-narrative if you like, doesn't put the McLeadership of the Republicans in a favourable light and they'll have their work cut out for them at internal party elections.