Cassandra, Elections, Immoral Values, Political Crack, Propaganda, Stupid Republican Tricks

It’s All Gaslighting

You might remember that last week featured a bunch of good polling news for the Democrats, and then that that good polling news was quickly overrun with more bad news for the Dems. The bad news was pushed by a lazy press desperate to return to the mindless horse race trope for their campaign pieces.

There was a problem though with the flood of new polls—they were overwhelmingly sponsored by Republican groups, and some of then had some pretty wacky crosstabs. Some outlets only posted their toplines and zero info about how they got those numbers. I even wrote to one pollster for a link for more info and got nothing. Hmmmm.

Those polls got added into the aggregate sites, and once again depression set in on all of the anti-extremists out there. The facts tell one story and the gaslighting tells another:

Or just blatant stuff like this:

Let me be clear that I’m not making any predictions about the midterms—I’m just asking questions about the data we’re being given.

There’s another front open in the gaslighting war:  the awful attack on Paul Pelosi by a MAGA miscreant. I fully expected the extremist GOP to play it down and to lie about it. But what I didn’t expect was the sheer pleasure they took in seeing an elderly man severely beaten and imagining an elderly woman with broken knees. It’s beyond appalling:

Tenney has since deleted the tweet.

And then there was this group of people who though attacking Nancy Pelosi was hilarious, led by the completely reprehensible Kari Lake:

My cousin Kari lost her battle with cancer a few years ago. Every time I see Lake’s name I think of my cousin and how she faced her certain death with grace and I get furious. I know it’s irrational but it’s also understandable.

Of course FOX is running with all of the stupid, offensive conspiracies and blaming the Democrats. But I didn’t expect to see this crap on MSNBC:

There are a lot of sexist hot takes on social media and I had to search to find a tweet that was suitable because I am not looking to bash her for her age or her gender.

The issue is the ease with which she starts into the “both sides” narrative without even a second’s reflection about why Liz Cheney is facing threats and who those losers are. It’s all gaslighting to sell time to run  commercials, the fate of the nation be damned.

I’ll be back on Thursday with my thoughts about the midterms. Until then I’ll leave you with this, one of my favorite songs about gaslighting: