Are People Actually Afraid of Democrats?
By: Eric Medlin
Tags: Technology, Politics, History, Joe Biden, Social Media

The impossible might finally become a reality.

A smiling Joe Biden. Source: Vanity Fair

Last week, the New York Post attempted to do the impossible and launch an October Surprise. As I noted back in June, this prospect would be daunting. The October Surprise has been nullified by our increasingly polarized political atmosphere and the machinations of the Trump administration. And, as any neutral observer would have expected, the Post story failed to move the country. It was a story about a candidate’s son, not the candidate himself. The details were sketchy. The sources were questionable. Most importantly of all, the story came from an obviously biased tabloid. There was a good chance that the story would be forgotten by lunchtime on Wednesday, or at most the next day.

It turns out that the Post’s article had a bit more life in it than many expected, thanks to the subsequent actions of Facebook and Twitter. The social media giants responded to the story by banning it outright at first. After outrage from the right and civil libertarians, the social media companies backed off on this strong stance over the next week. But the damage had been done and the message had been made clear. Facebook and Twitter were not going to repeat the role as unwitting pawns for Trump supporters that they played four years ago.

Facebook and Twitter’s decision to suppress the Post story has caused considerable alarm in many circles. But in addition to the question of big tech’s role in society, one more intriguing aspect of the decision is exactly why Facebook and Twitter decided to intervene in this particular political fight. Are they trying to be crusaders for real news as opposed to facilitating misleading stories based on hacked materials? Or are they, unlike many writers on the left, actually afraid of the power of a Joe Biden administration?

In 2016, many of the nation’s institutions either actively or passively supported the Donald Trump campaign. Facebook and Twitter took a laissez-faire approach to their platforms that allowed Russian disinformation to spread. Leaders in Congress and the White House refused to comment on the Russian hacking approach and its unequivocal support for the Trump campaign. The FBI downplayed its own investigations of Trump while making several public pronouncements regarding Hillary Clinton’s personal email server. FBI Director James Comey gave Trump the biggest gift of all, reopening the Clinton email investigation at the exact moment when it would do the most political damage.

These institutions aided the Trump campaign for two complementary reasons. The first, and the reason many of them admitted to, is that they did not believe that Trump had a chance of winning. Barack Obama did not want to risk his reputation and that of future President Clinton by announcing the Russian effort and appearing to be trying to swing the election. The FBI wanted to undercut the Republican argument that it was suppressing information to help Clinton. Facebook and Twitter also wanted to avoid the wrath of a Republican Congress, which seemed likely even if Clinton won.

But in addition to fearing a vengeful Republican Congress, the nation’s institutions were simply not afraid of Democrats. Democrats had refused to prosecute any crimes of the Bush administration. They had allowed Republicans to stall district court judges, appeals court judges, and executive branch nominees. They did nothing to push through Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court and sought compromise whenever Republicans threatened to bring the nation to the brink of calamity. The FBI knew that Democrats would respect the norm of independent law enforcement and do nothing to rein in rogue FBI officials or the agency’s Trump-friendly investigation announcements. Mitch McConnell knew that President Hillary Clinton would never breach protocol to punish him for doing nothing about Russian interference. These institutions could not say the same for Republicans, and so they left the Democratic Party and the Democratic candidate in the lurch.

The past few months may have shattered this image of the Democratic Party. Democrats took their polling lead and turned it into massive early voting gains over 2016. They have openly floated bold policy proposals such as expanding the Supreme Court and securing statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. These sorts of ideas have always been popular among the party’s left wing. But they are increasingly being embraced by the moderates who will hold the balance of power in a potential Democratic Senate. Joe Manchin and Chris Coons, two of the most moderate Democrats in that body, have openly discussed ending the filibuster and even tampering with the Supreme Court. This sort of talk would have been unheard of during the Obama administration, when that president famously offered to cut Social Security in order to appease the Republican Party.

Facebook and Twitter know their precarious political situation. They realize that a Democratic Party powerful enough to alter the Supreme Court is certainly powerful enough to regulate them heavily or even break them up under antitrust rules. The decision to throttle the Post’s October surprise is an acknowledgment of the Democratic Party’s newfound ascendancy. It is no longer 2016, and the nation’s social media giants know that the nation’s political system has changed. Donald Trump and the New York Post should pay attention.