Avowed Leftist Michael Smerconish Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud
There’s an old saying: When you’re in a hole, stop digging.
Apparently CNN’s Michael Smerconish finally found a ladder.
After years of treating concerns about election integrity as the intellectual equivalent of believing Elvis works at Walmart, Smerconish now says he was wrong. His epiphany came after learning that thousands of noncitizens had been improperly registered to vote in New Jersey. Suddenly, what was once dismissed as “conspiracy thinking” has become… worthy of discussion.
Welcome to the party, Michael. We’ve been saving you a seat.
What’s fascinating isn’t that someone changed his mind. Good people do that when confronted with new evidence. What’s fascinating is how impossible it has been to have this conversation without being labeled every name in the Left’s well-worn playbook.
Question election procedures?
You’re an extremist.
Ask whether voter rolls are accurate?
You’re spreading misinformation.
Suggest that noncitizens shouldn’t appear on voter rolls?
Clearly you’ve been spending too much time wearing a tinfoil hat.
Until…
Oops.
Six thousand registrations later, suddenly we’re told maybe there was something worth examining after all.
Funny how that works.
Here’s the real question.
If Smerconish now admits he was wrong about this, what else deserves another look?
How many stories were declared “settled” before anyone bothered asking inconvenient questions?
How many debates ended not because the facts were resolved, but because one side declared the discussion over?
The modern Left has developed an interesting relationship with reality. Reality is welcome… just not until it receives official clearance.
We’re seeing this pattern everywhere.
COVID.
The border.
Crime statistics.
The economy.
Now election administration.
Yesterday’s “dangerous misinformation” has an uncanny habit of becoming tomorrow’s accepted fact after enough evidence piles up to block traffic.
Then there’s the messaging.
I’ve often wondered why campaigns spend so much money producing Spanish-language political advertisements in states experiencing massive illegal immigration.
Citizens of America speak English. Hell, most people around the world speak English. Anyway, as elections go, you can bet that Germany isn’t running English ads encouraging traveling American tourists to vote in their elections. The only reason why border states run ads in Spanish is for illegals to vote in our elections.
Trust is earned.
And when government agencies admit that thousands of people who shouldn’t have been on voter rolls ended up there anyway, they shouldn’t be surprised when citizens start asking harder questions.
Instead, what do we hear?
“It was a computer glitch.”
Really?
We’ve reached the point where technology has become the political equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.”
Computers don’t wake up one morning and decide to rewrite election records for entertainment.
Software reflects human processes.
Data reflects human inputs.
Systems reflect human oversight.
A “computer glitch” isn’t an explanation.
It’s an invitation to investigate.
Government doesn’t get graded on intentions.
It gets graded on competence.
Imagine if your bank accidentally credited six thousand people with money that wasn’t theirs.
Would anyone accept, “The computer did it,” as the end of the investigation?
Of course not.
There would be audits.
Reviews.
Hearings.
Accountability.
Yet somehow elections, the very foundation of representative government, are expected to receive less scrutiny than your checking account.
Citizens have every right to ask questions without being ridiculed for asking them.
Democracy doesn’t become stronger by discouraging scrutiny.
It becomes stronger by surviving it.
So here’s my challenge to Michael Smerconish.
Don’t stop here.
Keep pulling on the thread.
If you’ve discovered that one assumption was wrong, have the courage to examine the others with the same intellectual honesty.
America doesn’t need more people who never admit mistakes.
We need more people willing to say, “I got that one wrong.”
That’s not weakness.
That’s the beginning of wisdom.
The real question is how many others are about to make the same confession.
