Ever since Donald Trump started promoting his MAGA brand, which by the way, happens to be a phrase on which he owns the copyright, and therefore gets a buck whenever anyone buys a MAGA hat or a MAGA flag, the Fake News media has tried to create the image of MAGA supporters as being nuts, idiots, insurrectionists or all three.
At the same time, we know ‘for a fact’ that if you’re a supporter of the Democrat(ic) Party, you’re basically a rational, normal kind of person who knows the difference between fact and fiction, and you don’t buy into any of those conspiracy theories which get bandied around MAGA and QAnon circles and are repeated by Donald Trump.
Although he’s quieted down somewhat about the national conspiracy put together to steal the 2020 Presidential election, Orange Shithead still continues to mention it, such as when he was on CNN and refused to say that he would accept the 2024 election results if he lost again.
Most political conspiracy theories tend to promote right-wing arguments involving the dangers posed by the national government, particularly when the government is in the hands of liberals and worse yet, when the liberal running the government happens to be black.
The first and most persistent contemporary political conspiracy theory was a completely bullshit story about how Obama was born outside of the United States and that his birth certificate issued by the requisite public agency in Hawaii was a fake.
Trump got big-time into this conspiracy in 2011, when he began promoting the ‘birther’ conspiracy which he was testing for use in 2016. When the Obama conspiracy theory fell apart, Trump then trotted out another ‘birther’ conspiracy against Kamala Harris which never got beyond the crazy, alt-right fringe.
But if you think that conspiracy theories only float around in the alt-right world, think again. Because it turns out that one of the craziest, if not the most bizarre political conspiracy theories is still mentioned on the alt-left fringe of the Democrat(ic) Party, i.e., people who consider themselves to be members of the so-called progressive wing of the blue team.
I am referring to the idea that Jill Stein, who was the Presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2016, is actually an agent for Vladimir Putin and made a deal with the Russian leader to pull votes away from Hillary so that Trump would win.
Now, the point about conspiracy theories is that invariably there’s a tiny bit of truth in all those false grains of sand. In the case of Stein’s alleged work as a Putin stooge, In the case of Stein and 2016, Trump beat Clinton by 44,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Stein got 49,000 votes. In Michigan, Trump flipped the state by 11,000 votes, Stein’s Michigan total was 51,000 votes. In Wisconsin, which went for Trump by 23,000 votes, Stein pulled 31,000 votes.
Since we can assume that most, if not all of Stein’s votes might have gone to Hillary if the Green Party had not been on the 2016, it can be said with some degree of correctness, that Stein cost Hillary the election in 2016.
But the same argument could be made about other third-party candidates in close elections, such as what happened in 2000, when the 98,000 votes that Ralph Nader received in Florida would have prevented George Bush from seeking as recount and an ultimate victory over Al Gore.
Except in 2016, the Fake News media got their hands on a picture of Jill Stein sitting at a dinner in Moscow across the table from Vladimir Putin, and by the time Rachel Maddow and the rest of the ratings-hungry bunch got done blasting the picture all over the place, Stein had become a person of interest for the Progressive Left.
And don’t indulge yourself into believing that only the alt-right can be induced into believing such crap, because when I ran a story on Daily Kos last week about how Hillary made a mess of her 2016 campaign, I got emails from Daily Kos readers telling me that Hillary was the victim of a conspiracy funded by the Russians and led by Jill Stein.
All Trump has to do to get re-elected next year is figure out a clever narrative that will persuade some of the so-called Progressives in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to not vote for Joe and stay home.
I’ll bet Trump’s working on such a scheme right now.