dread_lobster

Tall and thin goes a long way when employed as a human clothes hanger.

What do you do to fight the pressure for false balance in your work? Do your editors push you to go easier on Republicans or harder on Democrats given the huge disparity in bullshit generated from each side and a desire to maintain the appearance of neutrality? How often do you fail?

and voter fraud

Try again.

As to the Russians, Democratic and left-leaning thought leaders aren't really getting too far ahead of the leaks that have come out. Certainly nothing like a Seth Rich or Benghazi moment.

Really? Where's the Seth Rich story on the left? The Benghazi? The birtherism? The anthropogenic climate change denial? One side stretches the truth, the other molests it.

Seen it before. Doesn't really address my point. I'm not talking about the gullibility of humans across the political spectrum. I'm talking about one side using extreme measures to exploit that gullibility.

Let's look at one of the authors' examples:

As part of a 2012 national survey, we asked respondents about the likelihood of voter fraud as an explanation if their preferred presidential candidate did not win. Fifty percent of Republicans said it would be very or somewhat likely, compared to 44 percent of Democrats. This contradicts claims by Jonathan Chait that Republicans believe in electoral conspiracy theories far more than Democrats do.

Democrats are within a few points of Republicans in believing in the likelihood of voter fraud. Got it. But why do they believe something so manifestly false? Because one side has been on a decade-plus-long campaign to turn a non-issue into a serious concern for a large number of voters. You can stuff that into your cries of bigotry...