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Normies don't care about being anti-censorship on principle, they only care when it impacts a political opinion they personally agree with. And even then, they only raise a stink about it when their trusted political influencers tell them it's a problem. The "I just want to grill" conservatives might grumble a bit about covid censorship, but they really don't go to bat against it. Instead, half the Republican party is obsessed with trying to commit electoral suicide by loudly forcing women to have their rapist's child.
We've never been in the situation where elections are "mostly" decided by corporate censorship, nor will we ever be. However, it could push things lightly at the margins. But this is really no different than what the media was always capable of doing.
Right on the leadup of the 2020 election the New York Post's twitter account got suspended for publishing a story about the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop. The rationale at the time was 'misinformation' but pretty much every aspect of the story and the contents of the laptop has been verified as true and accurate.
The story was clearly newsworthy. And yet it was censored, at what we know now was likely the request of state actors.
Was the media always capable of crushing the spread of a story that a different media outlet published?
Could the marginal effects of this story spreading have impacted the outcome of the 2020 election?
There's a possibility it could have, but mostly because recent elections have been decided by razor-thin margins in a handful of swing states. Almost anything can impact the outcome of elections in such a scenario, like how the Comey letter plausibly cost Clinton the election in 2016.
Which certainly would explain why the sitting government would want to tip the scales so that the odds are generally more in favor of news that helps them coming out whilst stories that hurt them are more likely to be suppressed.
Literally, you're suggesting that even a tiny bit of thumb on the scales would be all it takes to, tip most otherwise stochastic elections towards the party with power to influence the media.
Well yes, it can be a factor. But then, lots of things can be factors. The original question asked:
Which is still a resounding "not really", same as it's always been. It's like asking if the media alone can start wars. If you squint, you can sort of see it, but you'd have to ignore a lot of other factors first if you wanted to declare it was "mostly decided" by the media (or censorship thereof).
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in your view, was the Comey letter more or less harmful than indicting Clinton on multiple felonies would have been?
The Comey letter was an example of an FBI effort to protect Clinton breaking down, due to absurd malfeasance on the part of Clinton herself and other Clinton-related individuals. The FBI did their best, but there were literally too many crimes to cover up. That is to say, subsequent crimes broke the coverup on previous crimes.
In pure polling terms, the Comey letter made Clinton go from +5ish over Trump, to ~+1ish. It'd revert a bit when he posted the "lol jk" retraction 3 days from the election, but most of the damage had already been done. By contrast, Trump being convicted of felonies did almost nothing since he's judged on an extremely generous curve. So in terms of polling, the Comey letter was far worse.
If the left was anywhere close to being as conspiratorially minded as the right is, it could have easily claimed that Comey made a conscious effort to throw the election to Trump with his October Surprise, and that the 2016 election was therefore functionally "stolen". But of course, they didn't do that.
Or many people believe the charges for Trump are trumped up kangaroo charges—not that he is graded on a generous curve.
Republicans will think any charges against Trump for any reason are politically motivated. Most don't think he's a saint or something, it's just pure culture warring -- circle the wagons and defend the leader from the outgroup no matter what.
Can you point to a case where the FBI offered Trump or his underlings blanket immunity in exchange for testimony that implicated only themselves, thereby forestalling any possability of prosecution?
Can you point to a case where the Logan act has been used to prosecute the underlings of politicians other than Trump?
If there is a clear disparity in how the law interacts with Trump versus other politicians, why should Trump's supporters not take this disparity into account, and object to selective application of the rules against their candidate?
Can you point to a case where the FBI leader wrote a dubious memo to measurably change the dynamics of a tight race by 3%+ on the eve of an election?
It's not that I'm unpersuadable that the FBI has an anti-right bent to it, but Trump is moderately-to-significantly more corrupt and disorganized than the median presidential nominee, so it's obvious why he'd encounter more troubles with the FBI. You describing the Comey letter upthread as "an FBI effort to protect Clinton breaking down" and "The FBI did their best, but there were literally too many crimes to cover up" is just goofy. It gives me the vibes that the arguments I'm hearing are being filtered through an aggressively partisan lens, where the ingroup candidate never commits any crimes yet is infinitely persecuted, while the outgroup candidate commits infinity crimes that get "covered up".
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Sure. But the NY charges were bullshit. The Florida charges may have been politically motivated but they aren’t bullshit.
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