Six Degrees of Hasan Piker Not a Winning Strategy

 Voters have often declined to judge candidates by their company.

Hasan Piker told Axios.com this week that he judges America as worse than al Qaeda in terms of terrorism. He explained, “We have caused tremendous terror all around the world.” 

Speaking of terrorism, Piker says “America deserved 9/11,” calls Hamas “a thousand times better than the fascist settler colonial apartheid state” of Israel, and confesses “no issue” with Hezbollah, which he maintains flies “a dope flag” that features “an AK on it and a f—ing hand holding it up!”(RELATED: Hasan Piker and the Democrats Who Embrace His Violent Rhetoric)

The American military that defeated the Evil Empire without firing a shot, liberated Dachau, and freed the slaves, in Piker’s telling, wears the black hats. Hezbollah, Hamas, and al Qaeda, in his morally inverted universe, wear the white hats. What does it say about the Democratic Party that a candidate gains advantage in one of its primaries by campaigning with that guy?

Piker has campaigned this cycle for, among others, victorious New Jersey U.S. House candidate Adam Hamawy, Colorado U.S. House candidate Melat Kiros, and, most conspicuously, Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. In this last race, El-Sayed faces not a drooling, shiny-eyed, deep-blue electorate but that of a large, diverse state of rural outposts and industrial hubs, and voter rolls on which Republicans and independents constitute 47 percent of those eligible to cast ballots in November.

El-Sayed’s association with Piker deserves mention but not obsession by Republicans.

Michigan, in other words, ranks as no outlier state. Because of this, Republicans seek to highlight El-Sayed’s very real ties to Piker as a means to question his judgment and expose unsavory views beneath the candidate’s veneer. This seems fair. It also seems unlikely to work. 

In 2008, Republicans carted out boogeymen Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Jeremiah Wright as a way to derail Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Dohrn praised the Manson Family in 1969, and Ayers, whom she later married, bombed a New York City police station, the U.S. Capitol, and the Pentagon during the early 1970s. Michele Obama served as a law firm colleague of Dohrn’s and placed Ayers on a conference panel. Obama and Ayers served on a nonprofit board together. The couple hosted a candidate’s event for Obama in their home upon his run for the state senate in the mid-1990s. Wright, who famously stated his preference for “God damn America” rather than “God bless America” in the wake of 9/11, served as the Obamas’ pastor and officiated their wedding.

Clearly, Obama associated closely with Grade-A crackpots. Conservatives appeared convinced that Obama’s infamous friends acted as a disqualifier. But hanging out with the wrong crowd did him little damage. He won a convincing victory over John McCain that fall.

Democrats fell for this guilt-by-association delusion with Ronald Reagan. Members of the conspiracy-laden John Birch Society supported Reagan in his 1966 run for governor of California. His opponent, Pat Brown, had sicced the apparatus of the state against the private advocacy organization.

The California Senate Subcommittee on Un-American Activities hectored the group with investigations for two years, but the state’s Democratic attorney general famously issued a report that characterized the JBS as harmless, i.e., “little old ladies in tennis shoes.” The left-wing Santa Barbara News-Press carried Brown’s water in crusading articles against the Birchers that resulted in a Pulitzer Prize. 

Reagan effectively parried Brown’s attempt to marry him to the controversial outfit by saying that just because a group endorsed him does not mean that he endorsed them. Reagan won the election in a 16-percentage-point landslide.

The lesson

El-Sayed’s association with Piker deserves mention but not obsession by Republicans. The reason for this involves efficacy. Surely it says something bad about El-Sayed that he associates with such a loathsome character. But most voters do not know Piker, and damaging El-Sayed here requires not only explaining Piker but connecting his rhetoric to El-Sayed. It’s a high-effort, no-effect pursuit with low-information voters. Knowledgeable voters can decide without the constant prodding of GOP ads whether El-Sayed’s collaborations with Piker should boost or block the Democrat’s  political ascension.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon acts as a fun parlor game. Six Degrees of Hasan Piker, like Six Degrees of Robert Welch and Six Degrees of Bernardine Dohrn before it, fails as a political strategy.

READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn:

A Massachusetts Jury Legalized 4th Trimester Abortions

Trump Victim of Own Success on Immigration

Statuary Murder Moves From the Streets to the Courtroom

https://spectator.org/six-degrees-of-hasan-piker-not-a-winning-strategy/

https://spectator.org/be-very-suspicious-of-the-put-the-brakes-on-ai-crowd/

https://spectator.org/five-quick-things-invasions-invasions-everywhere/