A shady “cabal” coordinates a “conspiracy” on secret Zoom calls attended by “powerful people,” funded by billions of dollars from partisan interests, resulting in a complete rewrite of how we conduct elections. Who are the conspiracy theorists now?
“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.”
Amazingly, these are the very words Time Magazine chose to describe the forces in play before, during, and after the 2020 election, but don’t worry: It was all for your and America’s benefit, because shadowy cabals operating behind the scenes to change rules and influence perceptions are always working on your behalf. Nothing says “trust” like a “cabal” and even a “conspiracy to save the election,” more on that in a moment.
We used to say that transparency was the best disinfectant for corruption, but apparently not anymore. Now, we prefer powerful people operating in secret. The only thing missing is the smoke filled room. As Time itself describes, “This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster.”
If you’ve ever wondered why many conservatives believe the 2020 election was rigged, look no further. Here’s Time Magazine bragging about the unprecedented steps that were taken, in secret, the private money that was raised, the unknown people involved, all supposedly protecting my interests. I know I feel much better after learning that, “In the end, nearly half the electorate cast ballots by mail in 2020, practically a revolution in how people vote. About a quarter voted early in person. Only a quarter of voters cast their ballots the traditional way: in person on Election Day.”
Translation: The 2020 election was the most radical change in the conduct of a Presidential race since 1920. This change was foisted upon America by the coordinated actions of mainly the virulently anti-Trump, including billions in shadowy money.
How did this once-in-a-century shift come about?
The story starts with Mike Podhorzer, senior advisor to the President of the AFL-CIO and liberal activist. According to Time, “Among Democratic insiders, he’s known as the wizard behind some of the biggest advances in political technology in recent decades. A group of liberal strategists he brought together in the early 2000s led to the creation of the Analyst Institute, a secretive firm that applies scientific methods to political campaigns. He was also involved in the founding of Catalist, the flagship progressive data company.”
In October 2019, Podhorzer concluded that the usual tools wouldn’t be sufficient if the President himself was trying to disrupt an election. “‘Most of our planning takes us through Election Day,’ he noted. ‘But, we are not prepared for the two most likely outcomes’ – Trump losing and refusing to concede, and Trump winning the Electoral College (despite losing the popular vote) by corrupting the voting process in key states. ‘We desperately need to systematically ‘red-team’ this election so that we can anticipate and plan for the worst we know will be coming our way.’”
Let’s pause to take a step back here for a moment: One powerful man concluded this on his own, believing somehow, more than a year before the election no less, that it was Trump who couldn’t win without “corrupting” the process in key states. Of course, his solution was to corrupt the process, in secret. On March 3, 2020, Podhorzer drafted a “confidential” memo on the “threats” to the election, saying “Trump has made it clear that this will not be a fair election, and that he will reject anything but his own re-election as ‘fake’ and rigged.”
The memo served as a clarion call for progressive activists, and Podhorzer was soon hosting secret, invitation-only Zoom meetings with hundreds of participants. According to Time, “The group had no name, no leaders and no hierarchy, but it kept the disparate actors in sync.” Their first task was “overhauling America’s balky election infrastructure,” an effort that required $2 billion in funding, much of it raised from private, partisan actors. For example, Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, donated $300 million to the cause.
I’m not sure what to tell you if you think that cause was to benefit Trump. It’s also worth noting that they and they alone decided the system was “balky,” much like Podhorzer reached his conclusion about Trump corrupting the election on his own. In this case, the group in its infinite progressive wisdom decided that our election infrastructure was no good and only they could save it. This is after we had clean Presidential elections in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016, but now there was a new threat and the threat was clearly Trump himself, circular logic if ever there was such a thing.
So, the “cabal” decided that the election needed to be protected from one of the contestants, but, no need to worry, it was an entirely non-partisan decision. Thus, the supposedly non-partisan National Vote at Home Institute took the lead in coordinating the action, helping 37 states and D.C. “bolster” main in voting. The Voter Participation Center stepped in as well, sending ballot applications out to 15 million people in “key” states, meaning the states the Democrat candidate needed to win the election, of course. How else do you read that? “In mailings and digital ads, the group urged people not to wait for Election Day. ‘All the work we have done for 17 years was built for this moment of bringing democracy to people’s doorsteps,’ says Tom Lopach, the center’s CEO.”
Nor was the cabal’s role limited to changing voting rules. They also launched a campaign to combat “disinformation,” you can read that as Republican disinformation only of course, and to personally pressure social media to clamp down. This effort was spearheaded by a progressive activist. “Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem a few years ago. She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it.”
What’s with these people and secret projects?
Ultimately, her research determined that the only way to stop misinformation was to have it blocked by the social media companies. The key was to get the companies to comply. In that regard, Mark Zuckerberg, the same guy that donated $300 million for supposedly non-partisan purposes, helpfully met with liberal activists in November of 2019 in his own home to discuss this very problem. Amazing how that works, right?
“They warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked.” Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and now a nominee for Associate Attorney General under Biden said, “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement.” Of course, she also met with Twitter, CEO Jack Dorsey and delivered the same message.
“It was a struggle, but we got to the point where they understood the problem. Was it enough? Probably not.” Gupta explained. “Was it later than we wanted? Yes. But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down.”
Allow me to recap just to make sure the story is straight for everyone: A liberal activist and magically now a Biden appointee, I’m sure her services here have nothing to do with that, personally meets with the CEO’s of the two largest social media companies to pressure them to clamp down on speech they don’t like. The meeting is in secret. Neither CEO reveals they were pressured by liberal activists to take action. There were Senate hearings on this very topic, and not a word. Why should we be concerned? The election was saved in this manner.
Amazingly, all of these efforts together still weren’t enough to fully “fortify” the election. They also had to organize a misinformation campaign of their own. “Beyond battling bad information, there was a need to explain a rapidly changing election process. It was crucial for voters to understand that despite what Trump was saying, mail-in votes weren’t susceptible to fraud and that it would be normal if some states weren’t finished counting votes on election night.”
Again, this group reached this conclusion on their own, stating it was fact with no public debate or oversight. In fact, they ignored and suppressed studies in the past that reached the opposite conclusion. For example, in 2005 none other than liberal darling, Jimmy Carter, spearheaded a commission with James A. Baker on mail in voting. They concluded “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud,” noting specifically “Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation. Vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.”
Of course, this commission and the valid concerns they noted were completely disregarded, but, again, it was done for purely non-partisan purposes. How do we know this?
The effort was spearheaded by a former Democrat “House leader turned high powered lobbyist,” Dick Gephardt; yes, lobbyists are now good as well, apparently. Gephardt raised $20 million from the private sector for the effort, more private, shadowy, untracked money, because that’s also always good. Gephardt’s group was joined by others, including some with supposedly some Republicans onboard (I’m sure they weren’t Never Trumpers as Time assures us some were rabid Trump fans, and I’m sure you trust that). In totality, they “ran ads in six states, made statements, wrote articles, and alerted local officials to potential problems.” They also created “state-specific memes” that were viewed 1 billion times and “issued reports and held media briefings.”
Once again, it’s important to step back and consider what Time Magazine is actually saying here: This “cabal” decided that our voting system was “balky,” spent hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it from partisan actors, to change the system without any debate, and then spent millions convincing us the new system was secure. Of course, the key question is obvious: How did they know the new system was secure? It had never been used and they ignored contrary evidence and concerns. At the time they were mounting this campaign, they couldn’t possibly know, instead they just promoted pure propaganda, but, trust them, it was for your own protection.
You know what else was for your protection? The organization of liberal mobs to take to the streets in the event they needed a show of force if the election didn’t go their way. “We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street,” said Angela People’s, director for the Democracy Defense Coalition. “As much as they were eager to mount a show of strength, mobilizing immediately could backfire and put people at risk.”
Yes, you read that right: If the results didn’t go their way, they planned to take the fight to the streets. Exactly who was going to corrupt the election again?
The protests groups met on a Zoom call at 11.00 PM on election night. According to Time Magazine, “hundreds joined, many were freaking out,” but somehow Podhorzer already knew the outcome. “As the numbers dribbled out, he could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.” How did he know what?
Well, the “returns were exactly in line with his modeling,” apparently making him the only person in the political universe with a crystal ball. Again, note the use of the phrase if all the votes were counted; these are the supposed votes the group conspired in secret to harvest. Forgive me if I find myself a little skeptical that the organizer of the cabal knew the outcome of what the cabal did in advance.
Thankfully, however, the order to stand down was given and the activists didn’t take to the streets. Protect the Results announced it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.” The rest is history as they say. I feel so much better now, don’t you?
Let’s recap here one more time for good measure: Liberal activists decided Trump was a threat to the election, they then decided on their own to change the way elections were conducted more radically than we’d done in a hundred years, they used hundreds of millions of private money, much of it from liberal groups to enact that change, proceeded to spend millions of dollars to promote propaganda about the change while simultaneously blocking information they didn’t agree with, and finally they ultimately organized mobs to take to the streets in the event things didn’t go their way.
Am I missing anything? How is that not the very definition of rigging? Oxford English Languages defines rigging as “manage or conduct (something) fraudulently so as to produce a result or situation that is advantageous to a particular person.”
Well, that’s precisely what Time Magazine brazenly describes here, and make no mistake: They are bragging about it.
Of course, liberal activists will disagree. I’m sure they believed Trump was a threat, but that’s the point. Liberals decided this, they took unprecedented steps in secret, and the entire premise of the “cabal” wasn’t based on any evidence or debate. Meaning, it was “fraudulent” to claim that our electoral system didn’t work and needed to be changed, and then it was fraudulent to promote the new system as safe and secure without any evidence. It was equally fraudulent to meet personally with social media heads in private to suppress information they didn’t like, and all of it was clearly done to benefit the Democrat candidate over Trump.
Again, these moves occurred in secret at a cost of billions of dollars. They say it right there in black and white: None of this was above board, none of it was public, none of it has happened before in the history of the country. Putting it another way, if this was a secret Trump group making the very same moves, do you think Time’s description would be the same? Do you think they would claim Trump “fortifying” or “saved” the election? Me neither.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 