The media has decided on a narrative about why the Democrats weren’t slaughtered as expected in Tuesday’s election: young people saved the Democrats by turning out in massive numbers.

Gen Z to the rescue.

Now I freely admit that I am no numbers geek. I don’t pour over Excel spreadsheets looking for patterns. I can’t do charts and graphs, precinct analyses, or any of that arcane magic that some politicos excel at.

But that’s OK. There are such people, and after doing a deep dive into the numbers it turns out that the Great Youth Uprising the media is blathering on about is complete BS. Not true in the least.

This narrative is basically made up and journalists should stop reporting it. https://t.co/S60rR582Nt pic.twitter.com/pSkdmg9PgD

— (((David Shor))) (@davidshor) November 10, 2022

Quite a shock, right? Who would have thought that the MSM would be jerking your chain and feeding you a line of propaganda? Not me.

Perhaps, dear reader, you think that it is not the reporters themselves who are making up this story and that they are just repeating what they are being told.

In that, certainly, you are right. Most reporters don’t have two brain cells to rub together, and most of those who do neither have the time nor the inclination to do the deep dives necessary to come up with scatter plots like the one in the tweet.

It takes time, patience, and an amount of effort for which not one of them is rewarded. They get the same pay whether they are feeding you a real analysis or a line of BS, and frankly telling you the truth is hazardous to their careers in any case. So they take the script and read off it carefully and fully, changing a word here or there to appear authentic.

And since the same script is being read by everyone, it becomes the truth. Received wisdom. As real as the statistics about plastic waste from straws destroying the earth invented by an 11 year-old doing a science fair project that now is received wisdom.

Fake news. Fake statistics. Fake facts. If they fit a convenient narrative, it gets pushed hard into your brain.

Here are 4 real numbers: 12, 13, 13, 12. That’s the percentage of the vote among 18-29 year olds in the last 4 midterms. No change. Margin for Dems slightly down from ‘18. Where did this “youth vote saved Dems” thing ever even start??

— Bill McInturff (@pollsterguy) November 10, 2022

So why the “youthquake” narrative?

Simple: Gen Z are the most “progressive” voting block, and progressives want the story out that without them the Dems would be lost. It really is that simple.

Either the media likes that spin or they are too lazy to check it. The AOCs of the Democrats make great copy, the rest of the party is octogenarians on their way out, and this fits with the Biden Administration’s agenda to keep on plowing through the progressive checklist.

What this means is that for the next two years America is screwed. But that was always going to be the case regardless of how Republicans did during the election cycle. Losing the Senate–if we can’t keep it 50-50 at least–hurts us a lot. But the upside is that the Democrats have no reason to moderate if they think their key voting block is super-progressive.

So good news, bad news, and no news.

No news that the media is gaslighting you. Bad news that the Democrats will double down on screwing you, but we all knew that anyway. And good news is that Democrats won’t even try to hide how awful they are, and things are going to suck real bad the next two years and Democrats will totally own the consequences.

The next two year are going to be awful. That is already baked into the cake and the elections wouldn’t change a thing. Inflation is painful to tamp down, supply chains still suck, Biden still hates oil and economic growth, and the Elites™ are still evil Bond villains.

The Democrats will own every bad thing that happens, as is only fair. They caused the damage. They can take the blame.

And when they do the 2024 election results will likely be awesome. Getting there will suck.

So embrace the suck.