Counter Factual

I was reading a story on the NPR webpage about some flyers, purporting to tell migrants attempting to gain entry to the United States to vote for President Biden in November's elections once they arrive. It's a pretty long piece, but the general gist is this: more than likely, the conservative activists connected to the Heritage Foundation who "found" these flyers are lying, and the whole thing was concocted.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with my father, more than twenty-five years ago. In short, as far as my father was concerned, lying was acceptable when the truth wouldn't drive necessary action. Having met a number of activists for different causes in the intervening quarter-century, I've become convinced that it's an attitude that many activists share.

(As an aside, I find the moral panic in conservative circles around immigration to the United States to be ironic. If, as conservatives are so fond of pointing out, the United States is an exceptional nation and literally the single best place on the face of the Earth, wouldn't one expect everyone and their mother to be attempting to get in?)

The Republican Party has a problem in the person of Donald Trump, because Mr. Trump presented himself during his first four-year term as nearly completely uninterested in the work of being President. This makes an affirmative case for returning Mr. Trump to the White House difficult to make. We he up against a stronger candidate than President Biden, it's likely that November's contest wouldn't be considered as competitive as it is.

Likewise, the Democrats find President Biden to be a problem. He's also very unpopular. Sure, a lot of this has to do with partisanship; most Republicans would object to the President attempting to rescue them from a burning building, but President Biden isn't the sort of inspirational leader that motivates people to come out an show their support for him. There are ways in which Donald Trump is the Biden campaign's biggest asset at this point.

In close elections like this, where the base of each party is likely to show up, and everyone else to take a pass, attempting to motivate those voters marginally attached to your party, and demotivating those people marginally attached to the other, becomes important. And when the stakes are high, honesty becomes a luxury that people feel they simply can't afford.

To take the situation with these bogus flyers as our example, everyone understands that this is unlikely to flip any votes; those people who have already decided that they're planning to vote for President Biden are still going to do so. And prospective Trump voters won't receive a second vote, so they don't really factor into the calculus, either. But there are a number of people who may or may not vote, but if they do vote, they'll vote Republican. And to the extent that they're afraid of a flood of migrants from around the world crossing into the United States, the Heritage Foundation is attempting to give them that final nudge to go to the polls. By the same token, they're hoping to convince the more marginal Democrats that maybe it's not worth voting for them, because they're dishonest and have little respect for America's laws, both concerning the border and the conduct of elections.

Is it likely to move a substantial number of votes? No. But in an election that's going to hinge on the margins in only a handful of states, it doesn't have to. A few thousand people here or there are all that's needed to flip enough Electoral College votes to secure a victory. So I expect that the deceptions will continue, and media outlets will have their hands full with vain attempts to convey the truth of the matter to a public that's stopped caring about such things.