Shortly after the Obama administration replaced the word “terrorism” with “man-caused disasters,” they stopped calling psychological operations “psyops” and began referring to them as Military Information Support Operations, or MISO. Regardless of the name change, administration officials immediately recognized that the same techniques used by the military to influence the opinions and ultimately the behavior of foreign populations could be applied in the political world.
Democrats began using their newly discovered “bloodless weapon” in 2011 to persuade Republicans that President Barack Obama’s reelection was inevitable. Professor Jacobson recognized what was happening at the time and gave it a name: Operation Demoralize. And he’s been tracking it ever since.
In the video below, posted on Wednesday evening, he defines Operation Demoralize as a “concerted effort [by Democrats] every presidential election to suppress Republican votes by creating a narrative that it’s over. There’s nothing you can do. The momentum is with the Democrat.”
Professor Jacobson notes that it’s happening again this election cycle and warns readers to resist it. He sees “it all over the internet. I see it in my inbox, I see it in comments, I see it everywhere.”
(The original post can be viewed here.)
I see it too. In fact, as much as I recognize what’s happening, I’m not entirely immune to its influence either.
Obviously, no two elections are the same. But the 2024 presidential election cycle is already one for the history books. We watched in June as President Joe Biden, the spavined leader Democrats rigged the primary to anoint, crashed, and burned on a debate stage. Three weeks later, following a successful coup by the leaders of his party, he withdrew from the race, endorsing his previously unpopular, unprepared, inauthentic, far-left running mate, a candidate once considered so weak as to be a “drag on the ticket,” as his replacement. In the meantime, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally.
The events of the past four weeks have taken our collective breath away. The Democratic Party, with the help of its communications team – the legacy media, have turned Vice President Kamala Harris into a rock star, whose victory they would have us believe is inevitable.
There’s no denying that Harris is riding high. That said, part of the excitement we see is the Left’s tremendous relief over Biden’s departure.
Call it Operation Demoralize, a psyop, or a Military Information Support Operation, but we are witnessing a real-world demonstration of the power of propaganda.
Harris has now surpassed Trump in the national polls and even leads in some critical battleground states. Just as the Democrats had hoped, a feeling of despair has engulfed the Republican Party. And unfortunately, even conservative writers, clearly affected by the media onslaught, are directing their anger at Trump.
A glance at the top three most popular articles in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section tells the story. First, columnist Gerard Baker declares that “Trump is looking like a loser again.” He claims that “about one third of his remarks at last week’s press conference were false, obtuse or lunatic.”
Next, the editorial board asks, “Will Donald Trump Blow Another Election?” The editors note that as “Harris rises in the polls, the former President doesn’t know how to respond.” Rather than reminding readers of Trump’s many triumphs on the campaign trail, they provide a list of his every misstep. The editors even swat Trump for his age: Harris “presents a youthful contrast to 78-year-old Mr. Trump, who has now been on the presidential stage for nearly a decade.”
They conclude, “[t]he political reality is that he has a ceiling of support that is below 50% because so many Americans dislike him. And now that he is in the news every day campaigning, he is reminding those voters why they didn’t vote to re-elect him in 2020.”
And finally, Peggy Noonan, a rabid anti-Trumper who served as a speechwriter and adviser during the Reagan administration, informs readers that “Harris just won her third week in a row of the first three weeks of the hundred-day campaign” while Trump spent most of the week having what a GOP strategist told Politico was a “public nervous breakdown.”
Other conservative writers wish Trump would stop talking about crowd size. And rather than applauding his courage for attending the National Association of Black Journalists conference or his restraint during ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott’s stunningly offensive interview, they condemn Trump for saying that Harris isn’t black.
Blinded by the Left’s demoralization campaign, these writers are doing the Democrats’ work for them.
Yes, Trump is a flawed candidate. He is impulsive, unpredictable, egotistical, and sometimes boorish. (These are arguably the very characteristics that make him a formidable adversary on the world stage, but I digress.)
He was also one of the most accomplished presidents in modern memory.
I would posit that Harris’s negatives far outweigh Trump’s. Anyone who trusts her election-year conversion is naive. Voters need to look at the radical positions she championed during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. To name a few, Harris supported a ban on fracking and off-shore drilling, Medicare-for-all, and open borders. She also compared U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Ku Klux Klan.
As President of the Senate throughout the Biden-Harris administration, she often cast the deciding vote on the bloated, unnecessary spending bills that triggered the worst inflation in 40 years. Their open border policy allowed more than 10 million illegal immigrants, including terrorists, into the country as well as large quantities of fentanyl, which kills over 70,000 Americans each year.
I’ll take impulsive and egotistical any day over the terrible Biden-Harris record.
Republicans need to turn off the noise, difficult as it may be, and focus on the task at hand. Exposing Harris for the far-left politician that she is.
Professor Jacobson provided some “historical perspective” in his Wednesday remarks. He noted that on Aug. 14, the Real Clear Politics national polling average showed Harris with a 1.1% lead. (A Fox poll added later in the day brought her lead down to 0.9%.)
He then reminded us that on this date in 2020, Biden was up by 7.7%. On this date in 2016, Clinton was up by 6.8%.
Summing up, he said, “That’s the historical record. That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be concerned. That doesn’t mean people can’t do better. That doesn’t mean really anything other than you are being played.”
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