Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Election 2020: A Nice Mess You Gotten Us Into

And some other random related topics. Via the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 05.11.21, from the unsinkable Mollie Hemingway at Da Fed, Mollie Hemingway Is Writing The 2020 Election Book The Media Don’t Want You To Read. If this doesn't get you to buy it, nothing will:

If questioning the results of a presidential election were a crime, as many have asserted in the wake of the controversial 2020 election and its aftermath, nearly the entire Democratic Party and media establishment would have been incarcerated for their rhetoric following the 2016 election. In fact, the last time they accepted the legitimacy of a presidential election they lost was in 1988.

After the 2000 election, which hinged on the results of a recount in Florida, Democrats smeared President George W. Bush as “selected, not elected.” When Bush won re-election against then-Sen. John Kerry in 2004, many on the left claimed that voting machines in Ohio had been rigged to deliver fraudulent votes to Bush. HBO even produced and aired “Hacking Democracy,” a documentary that added fuel to the conspiracy theory fire of conversations about the 2004 results. But nothing holds a candle to what happened in 2016 after Donald Trump’s surprising defeat of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Rather than accept that Trump won and Clinton lost, the political and media establishments desperately sought to explain away Trump’s victory. What they settled on was a destructive conspiracy theory that crippled the government, empowered America’s adversaries, and illegally targeted innocent private citizens whose only crime was not supporting Hillary Clinton.

With baseless claims of hacked voting totals, illegal voter suppression, and extensive media manipulation, the Russian collusion hoax had it all. But more than anything, the belief that Trump stole the 2016 election had the support of the most powerful institutions, individuals, and even government agencies in the country.

“You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,” Clinton told her followers in 2019.

“I know he’s an illegitimate president,” Clinton claimed of Trump a few months later. She even claimed during an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” that “voter suppression and voter purging and hacking” were why she lost.

Former President Jimmy Carter agreed.

“[Trump] lost the election and was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf,” he told NPR in 2019. “Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016.”

Their view was widely shared by most prominent Democrats in Congress. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, for example, said he was skipping Trump’s inauguration in 2016 because he believed Trump was illegitimate, and that “the Russians participated in helping this man get elected.” Lewis also skipped the inauguration of President George W. Bush, claiming that Bush, too, was an illegitimate president.

A few members of Congress joined him in 2001. In 2017, one out of every three Democrats in the U.S. House boycotted Trump’s inauguration. Many said they refused to take part in the installation of an illegitimate president.

Not only did corporate media not condemn leading Democrats’ refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election, the media were also super spreaders of wild conspiracy theories about how Trump and Russia colluded to steal the election from Clinton. They dutifully regurgitated false leaks from corrupt intelligence officials suggesting that Trump and his staff had committed treason. They ran stories suggesting that Republicans who didn’t support their conspiracy theory were insufficiently loyal to the country.

Some even suggested Russia may have hacked voting machines and vote totals in a bid to steal the election from Clinton. It was all nonsense. Even Robert Mueller, who ran a multi-year and multi-million-dollar government investigation into claims that Trump personally colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal the election from Clinton, found there was no evidence to support the claim.

Rather than being shunned by their peers for peddling leaks and lies that had no basis in reality, the reporters who pushed this conspiracy theory were lauded by their peers, received raises and promotions, and were given Pulitzers for “reporting” that turned out to be detached from reality.

From 2016 through 2020, the easiest way to achieve stardom on the political left was to loudly proclaim your belief that 2016 was an illegitimate election stolen by the Russians on behalf of a corrupt traitor. Dissent, up to and including the assertion that the President of the United States was a secret Russian spy, was the highest form of patriotism.

And then 2020 happened. . . .

Insty, FROM BACK WHEN IT WAS PATRIOTIC TO QUESTION ELECTION RESULTS: Liberal Media Scream: Six more years of ‘Stacey Abrams for president.’. Breitbart, Black Georgia Leaders: Stacey Abrams ‘Doesn’t Speak for the Black Community’

ET tells us 13 Percent of Maricopa County Ballots Counted in Audit So Far: Official. Relax, it will be a while before we know anything.

Da Caller, House Republicans File Ethics Complaint Against Democrats Who Made Unsubstantiated Claims That GOP Led ‘Reconnaissance’ Tours Before Capitol Riot. Liars, liars, pants on fires. 

Ed Driscoll at Insty, BYRON YORK: Republicans push FBI over ‘suicide by cop’ outrage. Of course, this was long before the election, but the difference in FBI handling the Jan 6 incursionists and the actually Democrat who shot Republican Congress members is astonishing. As Ed says "No enemies to the left."

Selwyn Duke at Am Think considers How the Left Plans To Put Boots on the Ground to Subdue Middle America while Jared Peterson ponders on Dislodging the Dems. Two of his four point plan might be possible.

Fox Reports, Democrats' HR1 election bill boosted by liberal dark money group financed by foreign national "Sixteen Thirty Fund has spent nearly $2M to lobby on issues, from HR1 to DC statehood" And here I thought it was illegal for a foreign national to interfere in our elections. Silly me!

At Red State 'Bonchie' claims We Don't Have a President. Sadly, we do. 

And on the tiresome yet topical topic of Liz Cheney:

HOT TAKES: Glenn Greenwald Shows No Mercy After Joe Scarborough Beclowns Himself in Heated Exchange – RedState
The Real Steal Is Coming - The Bulwark
POLITICO Playbook: Could McCarthy face a Cheney backlash? - POLITICO
Leadership fight? Chip Roy says Stefanik's not conservative enough to lead caucus in memo to House GOP – HotAir
Sen. Bill Cassidy Backs Liz Cheney to Remain in GOP Leadership Post
Bring on the Liz Cheney death match – HotAir
McCarthy tells House Republicans to expect vote to remove Cheney, says GOP must stop 'relitigating the past' - Fox News
Excellent News, On Eve of Liz Cheney Ouster 100 DeceptiCons Proclaim Threat to Create a Third Party - The Last Refuge
Graham warns about trying to 'drive' Trump from GOP: 'Half the people will leave' - TheHill
Life after leadership: Liz Cheney plots her long game against Donald Trump – HotAir
Over 100 Republicans, including former officials, threaten to split from GOP – HotAir
Althouse: Cheney defiant.
The House GOP’s Trump trap - POLITICO

With several more at the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 05.11.21


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