Liberals have a short memory when it comes to accepting election outcomes – Joseph Simonson
Trisha Mazumdar and Hannah Winnick
For all the cries that President Trump’s challenge to November’s election result constitutes an unprecedented attack on political norms, it was only four years ago that influential Democratic politicians and left-leaning pundits were calling for him to be stopped from entering the Oval Office.
In 2017, the late Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who died this year, refused to attend the president’s inauguration out of his belief that Trump was an “illegitimate president.”
This is just the actions of one representative; his choices do not represent the whole party. By including this one example, it leads the reader to believe every Democrat views President Donald Trump as an illegitimate leader, which is false.
Then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted in May 2017: “Our election was hijacked. There is no question.” Just over a week following this year’s election, Pelosi sang a different tune in a joint news conference with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, calling Trump’s legal challenges “an absurd circus.”
“The longer Senate Republicans are playing this sad game is the longer they are denying families much-needed relief from the COVID health and economic crisis,” Schumer added.
Including this quote from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has the potential to be misleading because this quote is in reference to COVID-19, yet the article itself has nothing to do with the pandemic. The inclusion of this quote is confusing and does not contribute to the argument; Schumer’s critique of Trump’s response to the pandemic is irrelevant to the legitimacy of the election.
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Prominent economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman opined earlier this month that presumptive President-elect Joe Biden “[will] be the first modern U.S. president trying to govern in the face of an opposition that refuses to accept his legitimacy.”
Again, this is just one person’s opinion; not even a government official. Paul Krugman is a journalist who was simply stating his view, therefore not representative of a larger majority. The placement of this quote seems as if Simonson wanted to include the most polarizing quote for shock value, regardless of relevance.
Contrary to Krugman’s claims, a number of those on the Left refused to recognize Trump’s victory. In the immediate aftermath, the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart floated the idea of stopping Trump’s ascension to the presidency via the Electoral College and having state electors simply cast their votes for Hillary Clinton due to the existential risk of climate change or nuclear war.
“The prospect of a Trump presidency, however, is terrifying too, terrifying in unprecedented ways. Which is why, for the first time in modern American history, there’s a plausible case for urging the electors to vote their consciences,” he wrote on Nov. 21, 2016. “The case is not overwhelming. But it’s not absurd. It all depends on how dangerous you think President Trump would be.”
Shortly after that column, a coalition of a half-dozen Democratic electors signed a pledge to block Trump from achieving an Electoral College majority, citing his lack of a popular vote win and the supposedly unique threats he posed to the country. A week before that effort, California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, quietly proposed a bill to abolish the Electoral College altogether in a not-so-subtle-effort to potentially deny Trump a win months before his inauguration.
Simonson is suggesting the Democrats attempted to block Trump from winning the electoral vote simply because they dislike him; however, there was plausible reasoning behind doing this, for he did not win the popular vote. This comparison should not be made, for president-elect Joe Biden won both the popular and electoral vote. To include Sen. Barbara Boxer’s proposal of a bill to abolish the Electoral College makes it seem as if this was done specifically against Trump, which is false. Dozens of similar bills have been proposed since the 1960s. Simonson also misleads the reader with the inclusion of the word “silently” to support the incorrect theory that this was a direct attack on Trump and the GOP.
Various Electoral College schemes reached the airwaves of MSNBC, with prime-time host Chris Hayes surmising that states Trump won could simply refuse to send GOP electors to Congress in a heroic effort to save the country.
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“There are people who have been pushing very hard who think that because of some of the constitutional perils of the emoluments clause, because of the popular vote margin, because of fundamentals they think are a threat to liberal democracy that electors should be persuaded and pressured on Monday and to part to what their pledge is and vote against Donald Trump,” Hayes said in an interview with left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore, who applauded the idea.
His interview with Moore was followed by a tweet in December, mentioning the technically constitutional but unprecedented scenario where states can simply ignore who voters picked for president.
In referring to the following tweet, Simonson suggests a system in which electoral votes were determined by the results of the popular vote would unfairy ignore what voters within the state actually picked. Simonson is showing clear bias towards the Electoral College, which has been historically favored by Republicans over Democrats. Ironically, the Electoral College in practice does exactly what he is warning against; ignores the popular vote, the candidate voters themselves chose, in favor of a selected few.
“Fun fact: states decide how to apportion their electors. They could give them all to, say, whichever candidate won majority of counties!” he tweeted in December.
When the time came to formally certify Trump’s Electoral College victory In January 2017, a number of House Democrats voiced objections. Lawmakers from Michigan, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and North and South Carolina all motioned against formalizing the election’s results, citing Russian interference and alleged voter suppression.
Simonson conveniently fails to include the many Democrats who voiced objections, instead choosing to list off various states. This makes it unclear whether a significant amount of Democrats actually voiced objections, or the author is just attempting to make the outrage over Trump’s victory in 2016 seem comparable to the Republican’s response to Biden’s victory today. Simonson fails to recognize that the outrage from these two situations are not comparable.
“… The confirmed and illegal activities engaged by the government of Russia designed to interfere with our election and the widespread violations of the voting rights act that unlawfully suppressed thousands of votes in the state of Alabama,” Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern said on the House floor before being overruled by then-Vice President Biden, who said the Democratic lawmaker’s objections were out of order.
Much of the discussion about denying Trump an Electoral College was fueled by the conspiracy theory Trump was an agent of Russia or that the country interfered with voting totals in key swing states.
Again, Simonson avoids drawing direct parallels between the actions of Democrats four years ago and Republicans today, though he does concede that the talk about denying Trump an electoral college was, in fact, all talk. In contrast, Trump has taken legal action in a number of states to contest Biden’s victory. By choosing to not include this key information, Simonson paints the actions of the Democrats as severe and unreasonable.
A strong majority of Democratic voters agreed. A 2018 poll from YouGov found 66% of Democrats believed Russia tampered with the election results to hand Trump a victory.
Hillary Clinton potentially did as well, who initially waited a night to concede to Trump in November 2016. Three years later, she still referred to her former opponent as an ” illegitimate president.”
Simonson jumps to conclusions about 2016 presidential candidate Hilary Clinton’s beliefs, assuming that she too believed in conspiracy theories involving the results of the 2016 election. However, Clinton never said this directly; Simonson just infers this because she did not concede until the following night and called Trump “illegitimate.” However, he fails to address that Trump has still failed to concede, despite Biden officially declared the president-elect as of Dec. 14. Simonson also falls short in providing the context of this Clinton quote, allowing its meaning to be taken however the reader chooses.
In an interview with Hardball’s Chris Matthews, Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat, was asked by the host if he believes Trump is an espionage asset of Vladimir Putin, akin to domestic Soviet spies in the 1940s.
“He’s working on behalf of the Russians, yeah,” the lawmaker responded.
For all the complaints about Trump’s legal hijinks, Democrats remain supportive of Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s refusal to concede her race against Republican Brian Kemp in 2018. That race was decided by fewer than 55,000 votes, and Abrams remains insistent that voter suppression cost her a win, despite record-high turnout.
Simonson fails to draw an accurate conclusion once again, as the claims made by Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Trump are fundamentally different. While Trump is referring to voter fraud and the intentional miscount of ballots, Abrams is alleging voter suppression. Voter suppression is a serious issue that has been existent for decades, and has been a point of concern from people from all political parties. Voter fraud, however, is limited to Trump and his supporters in this context.
In Sunday’s debate between Georgia Sen. Candidate Raphael Warnock and incumbent GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the Democrat alleged Abrams’s complaints differed from the president’s.
“Listen, suppression is something that happens all across our country. It’s happened here in the state of Georgia,” he said.
Source:
- https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/liberals-have-a-short-memory-when-it-comes-to-accepting-election-outcomes
Written by Trisha Mazumdar and Hannah Winnick.