In its own bizarre way, the alternative universe that much of the right-wing blogosphere inhabits is living proof of the theory of evolution. Yes, in their world Barack Obama won re-election because of VOTER FRAUD! At this point, they have evolved their denial of reality to a whole different plane of existence. I don't think they actually live among us anymore.
Case in point, right-wing blogger Dean Chambers supplied aid and comfort to tea partiers across the country when he assured people that the polls were systematically skewed in favor of the islamofascistsocialist (Democratic) vote. By recalibrating the polls to magically erase the millions of Latinos, Asians, and young people that have been added to the voting population over the last few years (and working his powers of resurrection to bring hundreds of thousands of old white males back from the dead), he painted a Norman Rockwell picture of a United States of America that still exists in this evolved unskewed world that they now inhabit exclusively.
But, on November 6th, cosmic forces realigned the parallel universes. OBAMA WON. The polls that showed the dark forces of well, dark people, showing up on Election Day actually coincided with the vote count. Horror of horrors -- the effeminate-looking gay-sounding guys, and guys with names that rhyme with those of Charlie Chan villians not only know math, but they were right! THIS CANNOT BE!
Leave it up to Messiah Dean Chambers to once again lead his flock away from the sin of acknowledging reality, and pointing them back to their parallel universe promised land -- where down is up, and Jeep really did ship all their jobs to China. After wandering in the wilderness of post-election humiliation and getting his arse handed to him by Nate Silver, he had to join with the rest of us and acknowledge that reality is a bitch that you don't toy with.
Or he could continue to live as proof of evolution. Today, he posted a new website where he alleges that Barack Obama won the election due to VOTER FRAUD. He also posts a map where the alleged fraud occurred. No surprise, the fraud occurred in swing states so rife with corruption because their elections are run by ... uh ... Republicans.
It leads off with a map of the 2012 election that blacks out Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. They are "states won by Obama fraud."
Needless to say, these allegations have gotten quite a bit of amused reaction.
Slate's David Wiegel interviewed Chambers and got the reasoning behind the voter fraud allegations. Chambers alleges that it's impossible for any precinct to vote 100% for Obama. In Philadelphia, 59 precincts voted entirely for Obama. Wiegel looked into this, and found that in 2008, 57 precincts voted entirely for Obama.
So, this means that either it is entirely possible for precincts in cities that have largely African-American neighborhoods to vote entirely for one candidate. Or voter fraud handed the election to Obama in 2008 as well. Guess which option Chambers would opt for...
What's not crazy? "Things like the 59 voting divisions of Philadelphia where Romney received zero votes," says Chambers. "Even Larry Sabato said that should be looked into." (I've looked into this: 57 precincts gave McCain no votes in 2008. There's such a thing as a 99% Democratic precinct, and such a thing as a 99% Republican precinct.) Same story in Ohio. "Some of the precincts or divisions in cleveland were projected to be 99% Obama. That's a part of the state where it's known that a lot of ballot box scamming has been done in the past. There were isolated reports of people voting for Romney and having votes changed, though they didn't get much attention.
Notice that Chambers uses the time-tested Rovian tactic of throwing unsubstantiated allegations of past indiscretions as evidence of current tampering.
Rachel Weiner of the WaPo thinks Chambers' 15 minutes have passed. I would guess that dashing the hopes of gullible low information voters (and the GOP candidate and right wing media) doesn't bode well for taking someone at their word.
Slate’s David Weigel talked to Chambers, who pointed to some overwhelmingly Democratic districts and the way Virginia’s votes came in as signs of voter fraud. Both are easily explainable without any conspiracy theories.
Many Republicans believed that public polling was too favorable to Obama in the run-up to Nov. 6. While voter fraud is also a concern for many Republicans, this site will likely be far less popular than Chambers’ previous effort.
Meanwhile, conservative
Justin Green (on David Frum's Daily Beast blog) goes even further, basically telling Chambers to get the hell out, stop trolling, and leave the post-mortems to the adults in the room.
But you, sir, by peddling in such blatantly filthy silliness, are the enemy of the conservative movement. You actively seek to profit by misleading your fellow citizens and supposed ideological allies. You contribute to an epistemic bubble and make it harder for everyday Americans to discern truth from fiction, partisanship from objectivity, and skewed from unskewed. You are the very definition of a troll.
I don't know how much traction Chambers will get with his latest fishing expedition for webhits, but we've seen much crazier talk take root in the tea party movement.