Despite Recent Maddow/Kornacki Empirical Debunking, Media Still Largely Pushing Perot-Spoiler Lie

[ericson00]

Daniel Patrick Moynihan also said "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

George Orwell said "He who controls the past controls the future." That is scary. However, with the power of data and the internet today, it should be proving harder than ever to do this as ordinary people have access to information, not just the elites.

I think the Republican Party learned from this in 1992, shortly after Clinton ended the potential for one-party rule, when the idea that Perot was a 3rd party "spoiler" first came about. Since then, it has festered, is and was used to make Clinton less "legitimate" than other Presidents, used as impetus for Clinton witchhunts, to peddle the idea that America was more conservative than it really was (nevermind Perot's relative liberalism) used to descredit and deny his huge electoral achievements and their role in history, used to hit at Hillary Clinton's electability by some in 2008, and today, used to try to push a REAL spoiler, Donald Trump, out of the GOP race, who coincidentally, is Hillary's weakest rival. No matter what, it is never OK to rewrite history, no matter the agenda. Oh yea, some on the fringe-left have also tried to use it to attack the DLC, and while you can like/dislike the DLC, doing such conservative things like lying about history is never ok.

Ironically enough, the GOP uses it even tho it was their guy, George W. Bush, who did not even win the highest number of popular votes in 2000. Clinton, Nixon, Reagan, Bush in 1988, and all the other 20th century presidents at least always had the most votes, even if they didn't have most of (over 50%) the votes. W. was the first person in 112 years to not have the most votes. The other three Presidents to win less than the most votes were NOT Democrats, btw. Nobody living on Earth today has lived thru such a President that was not George Walker Bush.

Recently, Steve Kornacki and Rachel Maddow have joined in the debunking of this lie. I've also made a thread with lots of links to the data which suggests that Perot as a "spoiler" is a big lie, often enough told that it has become "true." Some out there, like the AP, also have avoided peddling it, tho they should have used to opportunity to repudiate it altogether.

Sadly, some out there, like McClatchy Political Report, CS Monitor, and even Reuters have continued to make the assertion with no supporting anything. These guys are not alone.

This is America, not Orwell's 1984. While big lies have come and go in recent years, this one has stayed, but with data, we have the power to potentially end it once and for all. I call on everyone, Hillary and non-Hillary supporter alike, who is disgusted by such outright lies about President Clinton, about history, and the sheer disregard for empirical data and numbers (similar to disregard for science) to help tear down this myth!. Any article, any blog piece that you see peddling this lie ought to be rebutted and refuted.

I'm also shocked by Media Matters for America's silence on this. They generally do a good job refuting lies, but I haven't seen 'em cover the Perot-lie yet, which frankly, given its staying power, warrants a final debunking once and for all. Oh yes, Barack Obama ought to join in against this lie as well. This myth is as brazen in its disdain for empirical evidence as climate change denial.

The Perot myth and "born in Kenya" have things in common. They're Democratic presidents' "original sin" and used to delegitimize them.