cupidsbower:

Amazing. American mainstream media are yet again telling the wrong story about the election, this time about Jill Stein’s recount push.

They’re so busy interviewing mudslinging Republican “experts” who are poo-poo-ing it and getting balance with po-faced Democrat “experts” who are also dismissive, and pro-and-con scientists who can debunk each other, that they are completely missing the actual story.

The story is this: millions of everyday Americans don’t trust the American electoral system, to the point of (currently) over five million of their hard-earned dollars, and the reason they don’t trust it is because the Democratic Presidential nominees have now won two popular votes in recent history, and lost the election, and a bunch of other wonky shit has gone on as well.

Like, that is actually a good reason to doubt the outcome, no matter how well it can logically be explained by the Electoral College system. If people think they are living in a democracy, and then the majority’s votes count for less just because they live in cities… surely that can’t sit right. It doesn’t seem legitimate, even though it’s following the rules. Throw in Russian hacking, Nazis in the Whitehouse, fake news, and statistical anomalies, and only people completely out of touch with the common consensus could possibly wonder at the grassroots push for an audit or recount of at least the key states in question. Frankly, if I were American, I’d be insisting on audits in all the states at this point. It would be money well spent.

Furthermore, Stein’s motives are completely transparent, despite all the hoo-ha about her possible ulterior motives. She is doing her job, which is being a politician, and she’s doing it well. Sure, she comes across as a crackpot on a lot of her policy issues (and Americans, our Australian Green party used to be like that too, until they got their shit together and started to be a more holistic party, so there’s hope your Greens might improve too). But this is strategic and it’s clever:

• She’s aware of the popular dissatisfaction with the lack of auditing and wonky election practices, in this election in particular. It makes sense that with the current high-profile moment and her unique position, she can win serious kudos for her and her party by championing this effort, and she  has. That is good politicking.

• Her party does actually seem to have a history of fighting for election reform, so this is consistent with their stated goals. This is about as high profile as you can get in terms of making that issue public. It’s now definitely in the conversation, and she’s created momentum that will carry on for some time, no matter the outcome.
  That is good politicking.

• Some people are calling her a patsy for Clinton and the Democrats, but that’s almost beside the point. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. The point is that Stein wins no matter what the recount finds. If there is an irregularity, Stein and the Greens are heroes for allowing it to be found, and if it’s an error in Clinton’s favour and it means Clinton wins after all, the Democrats owe the Greens a favour without Stein ever having publicly stumped for them. If there isn’t an irregularity, she’s still made her point on the world stage, satisfied the majority of voters it was a clean(ish) election, while also clearly distancing herself from Trump, for whom there is obviously a lot of hate right now.
  That is good politicking.

• If there’s money left over, her party can do some more stuff about election reform and raise their visibility.

  That is good politicking.

She and her party saw their moment and took it. This is win/win/win for her and the Greens. The only possible downside is that Trump will hold a grudge, which is potentially no small thing. But as he himself said the election might be rigged, he’d have to do one of his crazy public about-faces to call her out on it.

All of that said, going by most of the mainstream media, you’d never know that this was a politician doing her job, or that it’s pretty clear the American public don’t trust their elections. Because the mainstream media are still playing the game of This Expert vs That Expert, as though they learned nothing at all about false equivalence in the election race they just covered.

I mean, Christ on a bicycle. What does it take?