Dem
47
GOP
53
Someone at CNN, probably an intern, did the yeoman-like work of combing through the social media history of state Senator, and would-be U.S. Senator, Mallory McMorrow (D-MI). They found a bunch of deleted tweets from the mid-2010s that included the following:
Those are the shocking revelations, the dirt that CNN was able to dig up, by going through deleted tweets that were more than a decade old.
Obviously, we are extremely unimpressed with this sort of "investigative" reporting. Social media is a curious beast, an odd combination of diary, therapist and combat sports. In contrast to getting caught, say, posing for a yearbook photo in blackface, it's really hard to ascribe too much meaning to what someone might write in these particular fora. Particularly when they are still pretty young (McMorrow was in her late twenties) and are likely coping with the upheavals that involve moving to a whole new state with a whole new culture and a whole new climate and a whole new job, etc.
We have wondered, in past items, what the political impact of "old social media" would be on political campaigns, since we are just now really entering into an era where candidates might have a decade-long social media footprint. McMorrow seems to be weathering her particular storm without much damage. In fact, her history of calling Trump a Nazi might actually be helpful among Democratic voters (but note, Michigan has open primaries so Republicans can vote in it if they wish). Her current political rival, Abdul El-Sayed, had a similar situation last year, also prompted by CNN digging through the Wayback Machine, in which it turns out he expressed support for "Defund the Police." He's weathered it, too. And, of course, Graham Platner (D) in Maine seems to have overcome his social media indiscretions, as well, even though they were worse than McMorrow's or El-Sayed's by a fair margin.
It would seem, then, that we have a pretty good preliminary answer to the question: Social media skeletons turn to dust quite rapidly. We cannot say we are surprised by that. We suspect that most people who might take note of a candidate's social media feed are themselves on social media, and know that if they too were subjected to the same scrutiny, it would turn up some embarrassing stuff. Alternatively, it could be that given the vile stuff that is published to Truth Social on a daily basis, it's hard to get worked up about statements that were only moderately provocative, and were made while Barack Obama was still president.
Oh, and as long as we are on the subject, there hasn't been all that much polling of the Michigan Senate race recently—only three polls in the entire month of April, and none since April 19. Those three April polls report the following results: (1) Rep. Haley Stevens (D) is in first place, well ahead of McMorrow, and slightly ahead of El-Sayed; (2) Stevens is in third place, well behind the other two candidates, and (3) it's a dead heat, with less than a point separating all three candidates.
In other words, the polls are all over the place, and they all have roughly 35% of voters undecided. So, it could be anyone's race on the Democratic side. On the Republican side, it's pretty clearly going to be former representative Mike Rogers. (Z)