The real reason Trump won't commit to backing GOP nominee

[ericson00]

10. while I don't mean to attack you because of the myth's seeming ubiquity,

how the hell is the Ross Perot myth still on Democratic leaning websites? If I went on a Republican site, Redstate or FreeRepublican, and debunked the "effect" of Ross Perot, a pro-choice pro-gun-control anti-NAFTA non-conservative, I would get banned.

While I'm not trying to hijack this thread about Donald Trump, given how popular the Perot-spoiler myth is despite several recent debunkings by Maddow, Kornacki, Nate Silver, etc. (and even an increasing amount of Republicans amount of debunkings), the devil is in the data: all the data is linked to in a thread I wrote a bit ago. These kinds of myths damage presidencies: Clinton might have gotten a lot more done had he gotten 50% of the vote in his elections, even tho in both of them he would've still won in Perot's absence, per the actual data/numbers/stats that exist, rather than GOP wishful thinking. It also damages a party when the opponent's narratives take root, especially the non-true ones. The Perot-myth precedent and its uses inspired the "Obama's a Kenyan-born Muslim" in that it was meant to delegitimize. It was used in the same way.

There are two versions of the Perot myth: one is that he was a siphoner, which the numbers smash to pieces. Once that gets debunked, its proponents move to "oh he weakened Bush and created a bad atmosphere, and caused approval rating problems." That's actually a plaigiarism of what Jimmy Carter currently still believes and what some Democrats believed in the early '80s. Good thing our party wisened up tho. Makes sense: both Bush Sr. in 1992 and Carter in 1980 had cratered approvals and primary challenges too.