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The Left’s Miraculous Change of Heart on Accepting Election Results
DEMOCRATS WERE COMPLETELY AGAINST QUESTIONING RESULTS WHEN THEY ASSUMED CLINTON WOULD WIN
Green party nominee Jill Stein is calling for a recount in three traditionally Democratic states that voted for Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential elections. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Before the election on Nov. 8, Democrats chastised Donald Trump for saying he would “totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election… if I win.”
CNN’s Jeremy Diamond, in an article posted in “politics” — not “opinion,” — called Trump’s words “a caveat that threatens to cast unprecedented doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral process.”
Diamond was not alone in his claim. Clinton herself repeatedly claimed Trump was “threatening our democracy” by refusing to accept the results of the election. At her rallies after Trump’s remarks, Clinton said Trump’s refusal to say he’d instantaneously accept the results was a “direct threat to our democracy” and chastised him for claiming the system was “rigged.”
She also claimed at a rally in Philadelphia, Pa. just weeks before the election that the U.S. always had a “peaceful transfer of power,” which was “the difference between the rule of law and the rule of strong men.”
This claim was also tweeted from her official Twitter account, again saying Trump “refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election” and that it was a “direct threat to our democracy.”
But after the election—when Clinton lost—the media and Democrats completely changed their tune. Clinton had derided Trump for suggesting he wouldn’t concede, yet we later learned that Clinton herself didn’t want to concede, but was urged to do so by President Barack Obama.
On the night of the election, after Trump passed 270 electoral votes and secured the presidency, Clinton refused to address her supporters at her “victory” party. Her supporters, distraught and crying after waiting at the venue for hours, were instead subjected to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Podesta said there would be no comment until all the votes were counted.
Shortly after, Trump delivered his victory speech and Clinton had called him to concede.
That call was apparently at the behest of Obama, according to Hill senior White House correspondent Amie Parnes and Roll Call columnist Jonathan Allen.
After the dust had settled on election night, many on the Left began arguing that Clinton had truly won the election because she won the popular vote, and suggested the Electoral College be eliminated. They failed to realize (or simply ignored) that Clinton’s popular vote lead came almost entirely from California, a populous state and Democratic stronghold.
Neither Trump nor Clinton campaigned for the popular vote, because that’s not how our elections work or should work. Fifty percent of the U.S. population resides in just a few major cities. A popular vote would give those cities near total control over deciding the president and forcing their urban priorities onto suburban and rural voters. The Electoral College gives those outside of the big city a real voice.
Also, Clinton and Trump campaigned in the states most likely to swing. Clinton only needed to go to California for celebrity and mega-donor fundraisers, not to ensure the state would vote for her. If she were running for the popular vote, she could have campaigned there just to increase her vote total. As it stands now, she only needed enough votes in any given state to win that state, so essentially, a U.S. presidential election is made up of more than 50 elections (due to some states that split electoral votes). Trump could have campaigned more in Texas to secure more votes, but it was a waste of his time—just as campaigning more in California was a waste of Clinton’s time.
In reality, we don’t know who actually won the popular vote because the candidates didn’t campaign for it.
This hasn’t stopped Democrats from attempting to overturn the election through recounts. Just as Al Gore wanted certain counties in Florida recounted in 2000 because he thought he should have won them, Democrats—led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein—now want three states that usually vote for Democrats but voted for Trump in 2016 to be recounted.
Stein is attempting to raise millions to pay for recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, despite there being no evidence of any election “rigging.”
Clinton has now joined in this effort. What was that about refusing to accept election results being a “threat to democracy?”
Now the Left is claiming Russia interfered with the U.S. election and rigged the results. So, they rigged the election but didn’t give Trump the popular vote? Seems either incredibly specific or completely ridiculous.
The Clinton campaign even admitted there was no “actionable evidence” of vote hacking, but are still going along with the recount because their supporters—the same ones who mocked Trump for suggesting the election was “rigged”—now believe Russia hacked the election.
Lost in all of this is the danger to the Democratic Party if this recount continues. Stein, a Green Party candidate whose views align more with extreme Leftists than anyone on the Right, is raising money and her and her party’s profile. We won’t know how much of the money will actually go to the recount effort until it’s actually underway.
Stein initially asked for $2.5 million, but raised that amount to $7 million when donations poured in, citing filing fees and massive lawyer fees. Fine print on her website says they cannot guarantee a recount will actually occur, and that any money left will go toward “election integrity efforts and to promote voting system reform.”
Trump has called the recount effort “sad.” He’s absolutely right. These three states were chosen because Trump won and they traditionally vote Democrat. In Michigan, which has yet to be officially called, Trump won by 11,000 votes, a margin of 0.2 percent. In 2012, Obama won the state with a 9.5 percent margin. Rather than assessing how they could lose the state in the past four years to Trump, Democrats have decided to eschew any soul searching and instead insist they only lost the state because of hacking.
Trump won Wisconsin by 22,000 votes and Pennsylvania by 68,000 votes, yet that is too close for Democrats.
I can only imagine what the Left and the media would be saying if Trump had lost and tried to orchestrate a recount. Remember, it’s only a problem when the Right does it.
Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.
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hillary clinton debate - disrespect to the opponent, disrespect for the American people. debauched, liar.
Art of the lie
Politicians have always lied. Does it matter if they leave the truth behind entirely?
Hillary is a Pathetic, Lying, Hypocritical Racist! Judge Jeanine Opening statement 9/17/16
CONSIDER how far Donald Trump is estranged from fact. He inhabits a fantastical realm where Barack Obama’s birth certificate was faked, the president founded Islamic State (IS), the Clintons are killers and the father of a rival was with Lee Harvey Oswald before he shot John F. Kennedy.
Mr Trump is the leading exponent of “post-truth” politics—a reliance on assertions that “feel true” but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power. And he is not alone. Members of Poland’s government assert that a previous president, who died in a plane crash, was assassinated by Russia.
Turkish politicians claim the perpetrators of the recent bungled coup were acting on orders issued by the CIA. The successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union warned of the hordes of immigrants that would result from Turkey’s imminent accession to the union.
If, like this newspaper, you believe that politics should be based on evidence, this is worrying. Strong democracies can draw on inbuilt defences against post-truth. Authoritarian countries are more vulnerable.
Lord of the lies
That politicians sometimes peddle lies is not news: think of Ronald Reagan’s fib that his administration had not traded weapons with Iran in order to secure the release of hostages and to fund the efforts of rebels in Nicaragua. Dictators and democrats seeking to deflect blame for their own incompetence have always manipulated the truth; sore losers have always accused the other lot of lying.
But post-truth politics is more than just an invention of whingeing elites who have been outflanked. The term picks out the heart of what is new: that truth is not falsified, or contested, but of secondary importance. Once, the purpose of political lying was to create a false view of the world. The lies of men like Mr Trump do not work like that. They are not intended to convince the elites, whom their target voters neither trust nor like, but to reinforce prejudices.
Feelings, not facts, are what matter in this sort of campaigning. Their opponents’ disbelief validates the us-versus-them mindset that outsider candidates thrive on. And if your opponents focus on trying to show your facts are wrong, they have to fight on the ground you have chosen. The more Remain campaigners attacked the Leave campaign’s exaggerated claim that EU membership cost Britain £350m ($468m) a week, the longer they kept the magnitude of those costs in the spotlight.
Post-truth politics has many parents. Some are noble. The questioning of institutions and received wisdom is a democratic virtue. A sceptical lack of deference towards leaders is the first step to reform. The collapse of communism was hastened because brave people were prepared to challenge the official propaganda.
But corrosive forces are also at play. One is anger. Many voters feel let down and left behind, while the elites who are in charge have thrived. They are scornful of the self-serving technocrats who said that the euro would improve their lives and that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Popular trust in expert opinion and established institutions has tumbled across Western democracies.
Post-truth has also been abetted by the evolution of the media (see Briefing). The fragmentation of news sources has created an atomised world in which lies, rumour and gossip spread with alarming speed. Lies that are widely shared online within a network, whose members trust each other more than they trust any mainstream-media source, can quickly take on the appearance of truth. Presented with evidence that contradicts a belief that is dearly held, people have a tendency to ditch the facts first. Well-intentioned journalistic practices bear blame too. The pursuit of “fairness” in reporting often creates phoney balance at the expense of truth. NASA scientist says Mars is probably uninhabited; Professor Snooks says it is teeming with aliens. It’s really a matter of opinion.
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