In the coming days, it’s going to be incredibly important for my media colleagues to refer to tactics of election stealing as just that, and not as a political strategy for winning.
Like, don’t do this: https://twitter.com/ap/status/1321602291561074688
If my son locks my daughter in their room in order to eat the full cookie by himself, it’s not fair to call that his strategy for sharing the cookie.
To be precise, what Trump is doing in his efforts to suppress the vote and get votes not counted is not a strategy for winning. It’s a strategy for staying in office despite losing.
And, unwittingly, perhaps, the language of strategy and winning, which is the familiar language for political reporters, in this case casts the profoundly abnormal as normal.
. @mashagessen makes this point about unconsciously normalizing press language very crisply here:

https://the.ink/p/how-to-block-an-autocratic-breakthrough
You can follow @AnandWrites.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: