MICHAEL BARONE: DEMOCRATS SHOULDN’T BE SURPRISED THAT TRUMP SUPPORTERS AREN’T ROLLING OVER:
In 1960, Richard Nixon chose to observe that norm and not challenge results in multiple states. In 2000, Al Gore contested the results in Florida but conceded after the final court ruling and segued to issue advocacy.
Not so in 2016. In violation of longstanding norms, Obama administration intel and law-enforcement agencies spied on the opposition party campaign. Officials proffered the dodgy Steele dossier before the FISA court without revealing it was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
In violation of longstanding norms, Democrats refused to accept the result as legitimate. “I will not accede to this. I will resist,” tweeted liberal think tank head Neera Tanden (President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to head the Office of Management and Budget) five days after the election. Democrats took to calling themselves “the Resistance,” suggesting the Trump administration was morally equivalent to the pro-Hitler Vichy regime in France.
Again and again, leading Democrats — Hillary Clinton, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the late Rep. John Lewis, Joe Biden, Jimmy Carter — called Trump an “illegitimate” president. For three years, Democrats advanced the Russia-collusion hoax without finding or producing any evidence except for the discredited Steele dossier.
Joe McCarthy had the limp excuse that at some point, there were some communists in the State Department. Democrats and their many allies in the news media lacked a similar excuse for propagating the Russia-collusion hoax.
“I learned it from you!”
More (From Ed):
