by Jeff Childers
The New York Times rushed out a broken-narrative-mending article yesterday headlined, “Why Was There a Broad Drop-Off in Democratic Turnout in 2024?” The ominous sub-headline offered: “Many Democrats failed to turn out to vote at the rate they did in 2020 when they ousted Donald Trump.” Baffling! Where could the mysterious missing Democrat voters from 2020 have gone?
It’s tempting to think the Times is edging toward uncovering a terrible truth, but do not be fooled. The New York Times knows perfectly well why all those magical 2020 Democrat voters didn’t turn out in 2024: Because they don’t exist.
The only reason the Times is talking about it now is because it has to; a lot of Democrats questions about the 2020 election are starting to boil over. So the Times raced to put a lid on that sort of thinking before it could ruin Thanksgiving dinner.
The Times had to do something. In the vacuum of any other permissive programming, some smart Democrats were connecting some very inconvenient dots and starting to think for themselves. Look at the numbers from just this one example tweet from a relatively small account — it’s had 1.4 million views:
A new BlueAnon conspiracy theory is born! They’ve re-discovered election denialism! (Where is the FBI when you need it?) While it would be fun to fact-check the Stolen StarLink theory, it would be a digression.
The frayed narrative was falling apart. It forced the Times to admit that there is, in fact, a mysterious and very thought-provoking dropoff in Democrat ballots between 2020 and 2024. Its article primed readers by first proposing a half dozen possible reasons. Then, most of the way down the article, the Times finally confessed one of the most remarkable facts about this history-shattering 2024 election. “Remarkable” meaning being worthy of remarking upon. Let us remark upon this:
Abra-cadabra! Poof! Buh bye! Adios! Amscray! Honey, I shrunk the Democrats.
In predominantly urban counties. Meaning, big blue cities.
The Times, or whichever deep-state psy-officer actually wrote this article, excreted an overflowing septic tank of excuses purporting to explain the Great Democrat Voter Evaporation of 2024. For instance:
— “Harris did not have enough time to overhaul the campaign after taking over for Mr. Biden.”
— “Some backsliding could be expected after the record turnout in 2020, which was aided by pandemic rule changes that increased mail voting.”
— “Harris was simply the latest political casualty of a postpandemic global trend favoring challengers, no matter the incumbents’ politics.”
— “New federal election rulings let campaigns directly coordinate with outside groups on pushing voters to the polls.”
— “The Harris campaign was chasing ghosts by trying to appeal to Republican crossover voters, campaigning with Liz Cheney, and talking about threats to democracy.”
— “Trump had edgier and stronger material that he was constantly communicating at rallies, on podcasts and in other appearances.”
My goodness. Even Blues Brother Jake couldn’t cough up a longer list of evasive explanations.
Could the truth that the Times was trying to bury under a railcar of rationales be that fake mail-in ballots and overnight electronic cheating falsely inflated the 2020 Democrat voting figures? And the 2024 figures are closer to the real vote? Is that the truth the Times was desperately trying to stop smart Democrats from figuring out?
Many of us feared a repeat of 2020 this year. What changed? In hindsight, the good news was that fixing egregious, 2020-style cheating only required focusing on a few urban, blue counties from which Democrats could tip the statewide scales:
The Times can never admit this, but what really changed was that in the wake of 2020, the Trump-led GOP devised a four-year strategy with two main prongs. First, it found untapped voters —like the Amish— to ensure a turnout that was too big to rig.
Second, it worked across the country to tighten election laws, through lawmaking in red states and litigation in blue states. It also successfully elected friendly or at least fair supervisors of elections, and strategically prosecuted a handful of election crimes in the right places. The plan to tighten election laws was back-loaded, shifting into the highest gear mainly in the final six months before the election.
Take a look at how it changed Florida. The Sunshine State went +3% for Trump in 2020. This year, after four years of election-law improvements and new Republican voter registrations, Florida went Trump +13%. In 2020, Orange County (Orlando) went +23% for Biden. But thanks to a disgruntled Democrat commissioner who got primaried and turned whistleblower, we learned about the Democrats’ Orange County ballot harvesting operation.
Ballot harvesting is now illegal in Florida. And in 2024, without ballot harvesting, Harris only won Orange County by +5.6%, a +18% swing. So.
What about electronic cheating? I’m only guessing, but it is true that Starlink is now a critical part of the internet infrastructure, which means any internet tampering would be much riskier, since it could be instantly traceable. To see just how much Starlink there is now, marvel at this real-time Starlink Satellite Tracker.
Either way, this time, folks were primed and looking for signs of electronic tampering. Assuming it occurred, nobody was looking for it before the fact in 2020.
The article that began this post is best seen as a progressive permission structure. Democrats will not be allowed to attribute their loss to cheating, because that would raise uncomfortable questions about 2020. Instead, they must believe it was everything and nothing.
It’s a peculiar fix they’ve cheated themselves into. It’s leading to depressing headlines like this one from CNN yesterday:
Imagine being a Democrat and having to read these kinds of migraine-provoking headlines. Call it their 2020 hangover.
But now, in the wake of this glorious victory, the quest for real election integrity continiues. We still need nationwide voter ID verification, for example. I am very optimistic. We swung this election with four years of fighting under a hostile federal regime. We now have four more years and a cooperative Administration to get it right.
Without being able to rely on cheating, the Democrats may finally need to sacrifice the zaniest parts of their platform (like DEI), and tack centerwards. Ahoy!
They just went to all those Cemeteries and took down the Names on the Headstones and registered them as Democrats