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Start Making (Non)Sense of January 6
So I was listening to Start Making Sense, a podcast put out by The Nation (yeah, I know) because I wanted to get a progressive take on the January 6 hearings. As expected, their take is that Trump intentionally provoked a violent insurrection by pushing the Big Lie that the election was stolen when he knew it was not. Then, The Nation’s National Affairs Correspondent, John Nichols, offered this comparison to the disputes of the 2000 election:
Election night 2000, back when Bush was running against Gore. Karl Rove made a series of instantaneous decisions that made George Bush president. They hired up all the lawyers in Florida. They got on message in a whole bunch of ways. They decided they were going to send James Baker in. These were instantaneous decisions which all ended up benefiting Bush tremendously, even though he actually lost Florida and lost the election.
So. One minute they are saying it is sedition to push the lie that Biden actually lost in 2020; but it’s apparently responsible progressive journalism to push the provably false claim that Bush actually lost Florida in 2000. (He didn’t.)
And this rolled out of National Affairs Correspondent John Nichols’ mouth without a flicker of self-awareness.
So I didn’t learn much from these guys about the January 6 hearings, but I learned this: hyper-partisanship makes you stupid.
Published in Politics
Seems more likely to me that stupidity makes you hyper-partisan, on the Dimocrat side.
Do people actually pay attention to this drivel? I remember the good old days when The Nation had a subset of reasonably intelligent, but misguided, readers.
They have to be as stupid as the stupid people who read them, otherwise the stupid people won’t subscribe/read them.
Maybe I’m viewing the past to favorably, but I seem to remember when we could agree on facts, and our real disagreements were about the correct priorities. Now, we have alternative facts. We’ve had that problem for a while and it seems to me that it started for real sometime between 1998 and 2002.
The Nation author you are quoting has as much of a hold on reality as does Donald John Trump.
Unnecesary yet illustrative of a mindset. Goes to credibility.
The takeaway is that for Leftists, any deviation from their narrative is illegal and must be stopped. They are classical tyrants.
At least he properly identifies the moment in time when the Democrat Party went insane. Ever since the “hanging chad” 2000 election they have gone collectively crazy. They have been dead-set on impeaching a Republican President – for any reason whatsoever – ever since. And the J6 thing is custom made to fit into their fantasy … they finally get the ‘attempt to steal the election’ trial they have even dreaming of since 2000.
Right. As others have said, the last presidential defeat the Left has clearly accepted was 1988.
We’ve learned over time that if it doesn’t match their agenda, it simply can’t be true. Easy.
This sounds like alternate history.
I seem to recall one of the papers (I think the Post) paid to have the vote count completed in Florida, and sheepishly reported a few months later that Bush still won the vote by about 500 or so.
Clearly the left has learned if you are going to cheat by stuffing the ballot box, you need to go big (2000 mules will do the trick).
Yeah, I’ll admit to being fuzzy on the details, but didn’t the FL Secretary of State “certify” the results for Bush before or during the court challenges? Didn’t we just learn that this is end of story? Maybe I’m wrong but I do recall the woman being roundly denounced by the Gore camp.
Pushing the idea that advocating a political position (e.g. Trump won) or legal position (e.g. the VP’s role in counting electoral votes is not merely ministerial) on a matter of public importance, or any other matter, can ever be a crime is itself a crime if done in order to actually prosecute those who pushed that theory, like John Eastman who the took the Fifth the other day when being grilled by the J6 committee.
What’s going on is not just stupid, it’s really scary. The criminalization of your political opponents’ political and legal positions.
(But wait… Trump and his team were told by Bill Barr and others that the election wasn’t fraudulent! They knew what they were saying was wrong!!! That changes everything!!! You don’t have the right to disagree with experts!!!)
She was required by law to certify the results (within 10 days of election day, if I recall). This was required for the proper appeal/challenge process to proceed. The Gore team worked hard to delay her job and that ended up costing them valuable time that could have been useful later on. In the end, again from memory, Bush had more votes in every recount…yes, this is “alternate history” or just those who live within their own lies feeling emboldened in these times that now promote such things to bring it all out into the public square.
BTW, if the FL Supreme Court had been tarred and feathered as their actions dictated should have been done, maybe the PA Supreme court wouldn’t have felt so cock sure that they could get away with the jackassery they pulled in 2020.
Agreed. Urging a client to go with a far fetched, hare-brained legal theory is bad lawyering, and may even be malpractice, but it should never be a crime.
To my recollection, the Democrat-appointed Chief Justice in Florida was in the minority on that judgement, and castigated the majority. I think he called it a black day in the history of Florida jurisprudence.
Sort of makes a different argument that he thinks. Doesn’t it.
Sometimes, grasping at legal straws is all you have.
Guilty.
Within the last 3 to 6 months I have heard both Hillary Clinton and Jimmy Carter among others stating how the 2016 election was stolen and thus invalid. Why is it a “Big Lie” when democrats talk about it non stop when they lose but not when a Republican does?
Trump and even moreso the voters stopped Hillary from stealing the 2016 election, therefore it was “stolen” FROM them.
We’ll work on that right after we figure out why the behavior of a couple of hundred unarmed nut jobs is a “dagger at the throat of the Republic” and warrants a partisan committee, but hiring secret agents, weaponizing the FBI, and bugging a sitting President isn’t.