There’s a longstanding axiom that Democrats accuse Republicans of doing what they’re guilty of doing themselves. We’ve seen it repeatedly, and we’re witnessing it as we speak.
“[Donald Trump] is going to try to steal this election,” Biden said Wednesday during an interview for The Daily Show With Trevor Noah.
It was only a few short months ago that Nancy Pelosi tried to federalize elections and make them more susceptible to voter fraud. Her plan included such proposals as mandated automatic counting of provisional ballots, national same-day voter registration, and nationalized ballot harvesting—all things that make our elections vulnerable to fraud. As social distancing persisted the next big-ticket item on the Democrats agenda to undermine our elections was nationalizing mail-in voting.
The potential for fraud with mail-in voting is huge. Absentee ballots are one thing, but universal mail-in voting is just asking for trouble. Meanwhile, commonsense initiatives to protect the vote, like Voter ID, are instinctually opposed by Democrats, and overturned by radical activist judges who buy into the idea that minorities are too stupid to get a valid state-issued identification card.
During the same interview, Biden claimed, “I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced [the military] will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”
I can’t help but roll my eyes. The left has been speculating a long time now that should Trump lose in November, he will refuse to concede and refuse to leave office. This is legally impossible and literally not even worth wasting time contemplating, but that didn’t stop Biden from throwing it out there like this is actually a legitimate argument. But, this all goes back to that axiom that Democrats accuse Republicans of doing what they’re guilty of doing themselves.
Let’s consider history.
Which party has a history of failing to accept election results?
Let’s look at the presidential elections of the past twenty years.
Which of course brings us to the most obvious example of a Democrat who clearly hasn’t excepted an election result: Hillary Clinton. Much of 2016 was spent speculating how Donald Trump would handle his inevitable defeat and whether he’d accept the results of the election, yet Hillary Clinton is given airtime and applause and money for not accepting the results of that very election. She gets away with it because her supporters haven’t accepted the results either. Following Trump’s victory, five more states joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Hillary Clinton has secured her sore loser status by regularly making jabs at Trump on Twitter or during public appearances. Do you remember John McCain or Mitt Romney doing that to Barack Obama?
You don’t, because they didn’t.
Democrats just don’t handle defeat well at all. Just look at John Kerry. He still thinks George W. Bush rigged that election. This despite there being no evidence, and the theories behind this claim just lacking any sort of credibility.
The next example, as you might expect, is Al Gore, who conceded the 2000 election, unconceded, and then tried to steal it from George W. Bush with bogus ballot counting and disqualifying military ballots. Despite all his attempts to change the ballot-counting rules to increase his chances of winning recounts, which of course he only wanted in select areas, eventually, the Supreme Court had to step in and put an end to the madness. Al Gore, to his credit, saw the writing on the wall, conceded defeat, and pretty much shut up.
Democrats are too entitled to understand that the bitterness they feel is sour grapes. After the 9/11 attacks, Al Gore, again to his credit, called for unity and declared, “George W. Bush is my commander in chief,” and called on Democrats and Republicans to come together and support the man he so narrowly lost to less than a year before. But the left still hasn’t quite accepted that election result. Liberals came up with slogans like “Selected, not elected” and “Not my president” and generally refused to accept Bush as legitimate.
Let me put it this way: In the past twenty years, every single Democrat who lost his or her presidential election has refused to accept the results.
This isn’t even limited to presidential elections.
Stacey Abrams quite clearly lost her 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Despite a margin of defeat of over 50,000 votes, she never conceded the race, making unproven claims of voter suppression. Despite her transparent defeat, prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have claimed that had the election been fair, Abrams would have won. Her cries of a stolen election effectively elevated her on the national stage enough that she was (or is?) under consideration to be Joe Biden’s running mate. Abrams is famous for being a sore loser, but apparently Trump is the one we have to be worried about not accepting an election result? Seriously?
The discussion shouldn’t be about what will happen if Trump loses and doesn’t accept the result, it should be about what will happen if Biden loses and doesn’t accept the result.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
