Delegitimizing Trump
What’s really behind the recounts and petitions.
December 8, 2016
Daniel Greenfield
If the Jill Stein recount were a car, it would be on fire in a ditch while being swarmed by angry snakes.
The failed Green Party candidate raised $7.2 million for presidential recounts that
have so far increased Trump’s lead in Wisconsin and made a convincing argument why Detroit shouldn’t be allowed to participate in elections after the ballots on the books didn’t match voting machine printouts in 59% of the precincts. Stein may end up having to pay the entire cost of the Michigan recount and is struggling in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile 42% of Clinton voters believe the recount will show she won.
They’re going to be very disappointed.
The recount follies are just one of a number of clumsy efforts to deny Trump the White House.
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It’s about delegitimizing Trump.
The left doesn’t begin with policy critiques of Republican presidential candidates. Instead it accuses them of being temperamentally unfit for the office and illegitimately elected. The anti-Trump playbook is just the anti-Bush playbook with a little dust on the cover and a few more page creases. Bush was a cowboy who stole the election. Trump is erratic and stole the election. The rest is just elaboration.
The temperamental accusation is an old one. Trump is far from the first Republican to have it hurled at him. Indeed most of the anti-Trump election tactics, from Republican turncoats to manipulating voter turnout with polls, came out of the “In your guts, you know he's nuts” Goldwater playbook. Hillary even brushed off LBJ’s Daisy ad. But the internet didn’t exist in 1964. It does today and it destroyed Hillary.
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Recounts won’t give Hillary or Jill the big chair in the Oval Office. But each step in the process will fatten up the legitimacy conspiracy theory. Stein and many of her donors understand that. The goal is to taint Trump’s legitimacy and keep a cloud of suspicion hanging over his win. The conspiracy theories, including the ones that Stein has used to raise millions, are hollow and empty. But they will become part of the narrative. Trump only won because polling places closed early. Trump only won because all the voting machines were hacked. Someone cheated. Trump didn’t really win. He isn’t the president.
Before the election, the media was sonorously lecturing us on the threat to democracy posed by Trump challenging the results. But that was before he won and the threat to democracy became… democracy.
Challenging the legitimacy of the man in the White House is a dangerous tactic because it casts doubt on the entire system of government. Nixon refused to go that route after losing to JFK because he feared a Constitutional crisis that would “tear the country apart”. But many Democrats today not only don’t fear tearing the country apart, they welcome it. They don’t just believe that Trump is illegitimate, but that America is. Raising doubts about the election outcome undermines both Trump and America.
This isn’t really about the numbers. It’s about the narrative. The election controversies shape the expectations of the Democrat base. And those will shape how elected Democrats will deal with Trump.
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The left hijacked the Democrats, drove their campaign car into a ditch and left it burning there surrounded by angry left-wing snakes. And it doesn’t want to allow the Dems any possibility of retreat. It sees Trump’s victory as an opportunity to further radicalize new recruits and tear the country apart.
That is what all the efforts to deny Trump the White House, from recounts to petitions, are really about. After presiding over two terms of unprecedented national division, they aren’t through tearing America apart.
Delegitimizing Trump