I don’t intend to write about Trump’s latest indictment. There’s tons of commentary out there and I doubt I could write a balanced post without writing something that might be construed as a defense of Trump which I don’t care to do.
I’ll just make this observation. The last Republican to be elected president whom Democrats accepted as legitimately elected was George H. W. Bush in 1988. In general I think they should be very, very cautious about declaring “election denial” a criminal activity. It might come back to haunt them.
To “come back” to haunt them; Democrats would need to lose an election.
If Republicans can’t legitimately win an election, how is that a problem?
The Republican victories in 2000, 2004, and 2016 were just as legitimate as the Democratic victories in 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020. What is going on is a post-modern redefinition of legitimacy.
I think you have a warped view on this. When talking with real live people I dont know anyone who thinks the Republican victories were not legitimate. Online you can find people who think maybe one more recount might have given Gore the 2000 vote but note that Gore conceded. I have no idea even online who contests 2004 and the claim for 2016 was that there was some Russian interference, and there was but not enough to matter but the vote was still legitimate.
The bigger issue is the discrepancies in the electoral and popular vote. If that continues and it remains one sided so that whenever the GOP wins it has many fewer votes it will cause problems.
Steve
“When talking with real live people I dont know anyone who thinks the Republican victories were not legitimate.”
Well, thanks for confirming what most suspect: Hillary Clinton isn’t human.
You mean other than the Kerry/Edwards campaign which went to court to challenge the election?
Set the bar low enough and you can prove anything. As a group, POTUS candidates are pretty narcissistic. That they think they lost unfairly says nothing about how their party feels. You dont even see polls asking about the 2004 election. In the 2016 polls if people separate the questions into whether or not people think there was Russian influence, if that influence may have tilted the election and whether Trump was legitimately president that last number his very low. For the 2000 election you have to look at the poll questions also. Finally, in none of those elections did the capital get mobbed and in all of them there were concessions, the kind off think candidates do to promote peaceful turnover of power.
Steve
What the rank and file think and believe is only tangentially relevant. The parties are ruled by their leaderships. Compare what the parties actually do with what people say in polling data and that’s clear. If the parties followed the will of the people we’d have a controlled southern border, a universal health plan, reasonable limits on abortion (neither abortion on demand to term nor an effective ban on abortion), less foreign aid in all forms than we presently provide, etc. That we do not have those things is a prima facie case that what the rank and file think and believe don’t really matter.
Its your blog. You can write whatever you please. But at least someone understands that the issues go way beyond Trump.
https://jonathanturley.org/2023/08/18/washingtons-whoo-hoo-moment-trump-indictment-coverage-borders-on-the-indecent/
That has not been your claim and you are moving the goalposts. If you want to claim that all politicians since they were first created never believe that they have legitimately lost, that it is always the fault of someone or something else, I am with you. If you want claim the current generation is more narcissistic and more blatant about these beliefs, fine. But your claim was about Democrats not accepting their legitimacy. It is clear that the very large number of Democrats do accept them. That is opposed to the large majority of Republicans.
Your very counterargument shows that member of the parties dont believe what some of their leaders believe or choose to act upon. (In this particular case I dont believe any Dem politician thinks they really won 2004 and few believe the others were not legitimate.)
Steve
Turley has a point.
Given the split in public sentiment and Trump’s unusual ability to connect with his audience, Democrats can’t be sure of the 2024 race unless he is muzzled.
A more solemn celebration would lend gravitas to the play.
I think election denial might be the new norm, but hopefully, one that doesn’t last. It was good to see that there was little-do-no election denial in the 2022 mid-terms, so it seems that most everyone is taking a step back from that precipice.
That said, Dems have cried stolen election plenty of times, but they’ve contested results legally (and lost). Yes, I still hear people whine about 2000, but the reality is that if Gore had got the recount that he wanted (a self-serving recount, BTW), he still would have lost. And there’s 2004, and Stacey Abrams.
But the Dems have never gone as far as what Trump did and if Trump’s actions and level of denialism are the new normal for every Presidential election loser, then our country is fucked.
Agreed. That suggests there’s a slippery slope. The way you avoid a slippery slope is by not setting out on it which is what Gore/Lieberman did in 2000.
It might also help if some Democrats didn’t lionize people like Stacey Abrams whose main claims to fame seems to be losing elections and election denial.
“The way you avoid a slippery slope is by not setting out on it which is what Gore/Lieberman did in 2000.”
Nope. Parties need to be able to legally contest elections. If that is never allowed you really will get fraud. What you need is for people to act within established norms, act within legally established parameters and accept the outcomes after multiple recounts and court hearings.
Andy- In your both siders thing are you claiming that the voters on both sides are the same? 3 years later and the large majority of GOP think the election was stolen. Are you claiming that Dem voters are the same? How many Dem voters, percentage, could I find who think the 2004 election was illegitimate?
Finally, note the vast differences in how claims were made. Clinton didnt make her remarks until 2019, well after her fairly nice concession speech. Gore only publicly commented on the election after accepting the SCOTUS decision and that was in 2002. Note that Republicans had questioned earlier elections also, like that of Clinton. The GOP has been claiming that there are vast numbers of illegal aliens voting and that millions of votes have been stolen in all recent elections and have started commissions to try and find those, and failed. So the fact remains that the denial of the 2020 elections is hugely different than anything before it.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/yes-democrats-have-called-some-elections-illegitimate-gop-election-denialism-far-worse
Steve