Don’t be a political hypocrite, let the courts decide
Trump isn’t wrong for not conceding yet
We stand at a strange moment in time, the President-elect Joe Biden has declared victory, journalistic outlets have declared him the apparent winner of several closely contested states, and President Trump has not yet conceded.
Twitter and journalists seem to be having a melt-down. There’s a hint of toddler tantrum in their demands for the big bad orange man to leave office. Why won’t he concede? [Just a reminder he won’t be leaving till January, regardless.]
While certain people are in hysterics, spouting conspiracy theories that Trump is going to somehow barricade himself in the White House and not ever leave, there is something important going on.
The democratic process.
We should feel relived and reassured that it is playing out in the process as it should.
The hypocrisy of Biden-supporters telling Trump voters to ‘suck it up’ is eminently obvious.
Did Democrats just ‘suck it up’ four years ago when Hilary Clinton lost? No, they claimed Russian interference in the election, they said #notmypresident, they held a woman’s march, they challenged the result in legal battles for weeks. By the time Trump was inaugurated, some leftist had decided that he was not the legitimate president, and they spent the next four years acting accordingly. It made for a pretty turbulent presidency.
Trump voters are dismayed with the most recent election outcome, they are worried about the integrity of the voting system. News flash, that’s exactly what Democrats were worried about 4 years ago.
AG William Barr has announced an investigation into allegations of fraud and I think he should be warmly congratulated. Any taint of corruption and fraud should be found and prosecuted, with a proper investigation Americans can either substantiate or dismiss allegations of fraudulent ballots. I don’t think it’s likely that doing so will produce a Trump victory, but it will substantiate a Biden victory.
It is the courts in each state that have the responsibility of certifying the election result. It can only be a good thing for America to reassure blue and red voters that the process happened correctly.
Democrats claimed for three years that Trump wasn’t the legitimate president, until the Mueller Report proved that Russian collusion did not take place. Trump was cleared of the allegations and the incident could be put behind him. That only happened because the process worked, it played out. Instead of having the idea of a stolen election hanging over his head for the next four years Biden should allow the legal process to take place, then we can move on confidently from these allegations.
We tend to think elections are valid when our guy wins, we tend to think they are stolen when their guy wins. It’s a natural bias.
71 million Trump voters are disappointed at the moment, they have seen lots of videos of ballots being ripped up, dumped, or filled in by poll workers. These videos are disturbing. Even if those videos only account for a few hundred bad ballots, they should be investigated and those people held accountable. Because in 4 years time, we want the elections to go ahead with a sense of confidence in the process.
There seems to be a growing move towards declaring politicians illegitimate if you don’t like their politics. This is a bad trend, and bad for American politics generally. There was a much smaller group of people who had the same complaint about Obama( ie the birth certificate scandal). Trump experienced 4 years of somewhat spurious investigations, and for many Americans, they never accepted him as the President. I would like to see that trend stop with Biden.
We should encourage every law-enforcement group at federal and state level to investigate any and all allegations of fraud. Republicans are taking these challenges to the court, as the process prescribes. This is how it should work, we want them to go to the courts, not the streets.
We can all take a deep breath in the mean time and appreciate that this is how the process works, count all votes, throw out the bad votes, and let Judges make a definitive ruling about criminal tampering and interference. I don’t think journalists have the right to discredit the process that’s currently underway and mandate that Trump concede.
Trump doesn’t have to concede, because the election isn’t decided by Trump. Depending on the votes he will either leave or stay in office. Restoring as much confidence as possible in the democratic process should be a bi-partisan goal. So don’t be a Democratic hypocrite, encourage and support the investigations, and agree to abide by the outcome.
