ABC put out a tweet Saturday, linking to a story about the November 2022 election and Joe Biden–then they deleted it. But it caused a lot of consternation, and you’ll see why.
Hi @ABC! Why did this get deleted? pic.twitter.com/3v543vUKBv
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 18, 2022
Numerous other sources still have the tweet, so it is likely that people will see it on their local television stations. Here’s a sample.
The House will be held by Democrats after the midterm elections in November. They could win up to four Senate seats. This will allow them to expand their majority while overcoming the internal opposition that has helped to stifle and suppress their agenda. https://t.co/Ug9Mr68gqN
— News4JAX (@wjxt4) June 19, 2022
The House will be held by Democrats after the November midterm elections. They will pick up as many as four seats in the Senate, expanding their majority and overcoming internal dissent that has helped stifle their agenda.https://t.co/Vr6PyEzHHA
— KOMO News (@komonews) June 19, 2022
It turns out that it traces back to an AP Story, and it is being tweeted by several networks who often feature AP Stories. The first paragraph of the story mirrors that tweet.
Democrats are going to hold onto the House after November’s midterm elections. The Democrats will win as many as 4 Senate seats, which would allow them to expand their majority and overcome internal opposition that has contributed to their inability of advancing their agenda.
They now follow that paragraph with the next.
His predictions for a bright future for the Democratic Party grow bolder as President Joe Biden faces more difficult challenges. The assessments, delivered in speeches, fundraisers, and conversations with friends and allies, seem at odds with a country that he acknowledged this week was “really, really down,” burdened by a pandemic, surging gas prices and spiking inflation.
The first paragraph is a prediction by Joe Biden, although they don’t explicitly say that until much further down into the story, many paragraphs later.
“I think there are at least four seats that are up for grabs that we could pick up in the Senate,” the president told a recent gathering of donors in Maryland. “And we’re going to keep the House.”
Can we talk about not only how this is poorly written when you don’t have that information in the first paragraph, but also how bad it is to put out tweets like that without context, making it seem as though they are statements of fact, not a prediction?
The other part of this is how delusional Joe Biden is — if he thinks this is true (unless he knows something the rest of us don’t about the nature of the election). There’s no doubt that he wants to project an optimistic outlook, but when you aren’t living in reality, then you’re not approaching the problem correctly–and that’s been the problem with the whole of Joe Biden’s time in office. But this time they are about to find out that their unrealistic lifestyle is going to backfire on them.
We’re already seeing the start of the wave, with things like Mayra Flores’ win in the 34th District in Texas, a district that has been held by Democrats forever, and progressive D.A. Chesa Boudin was recalled in San Francisco.
The real story is in the response to Biden’s delusion, later in the AP article.
Biden meant Ohio and Pennsylvania. Wisconsin could also be represented by No. 4. Some of his aides concede that the assessment is optimistic. According to them, the president simply wants to energize his base by making such optimistic predictions. When one was asked whether it was possible for Democrats to win four Senate seats they laughed.
The party’s chances of maintaining House control may be bleaker.
Indeed.