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You Want Unity? Seriously?
It’s like asking a person who has gone through four years of unjustified, ceaseless torture to join up with you in running the country. Let’s be unified?
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
First, let me say that I’m not a person who takes revenge, which I define as exacting punishment for a wrong in a resentful spirit. But I do feel motivated to avenge this corrupt election: I do want to inflict punishment as an act of retributive justice. At one time revenge and avenge meant the same thing, but I think the subtle difference is relevant in this situation.
Joe Biden is not justified in asking for unity. In the last four years, the Democrats and the media have scorned the President and the Presidency. They have lied, distorted, and planned ceaselessly, every single day, to destroy President Trump. Attacking the President, his family, his staff, and his supporters with such derision and hatefulness does not warrant any effort on the part of the Republicans to come anywhere close to trying to unify the government. In effect, the Democrats violated every code of integrity, decency, and truthfulness in their efforts. Political parties always have a certain amount of feuding that happens, but to begin attacking the President before he even took office is detestable. There needs to be accountability.
In addition to choosing to avenge the President’s treatment, I think we need to understand what Biden means by unity: don’t get in our way. He can’t possibly believe that the Republicans will support a far-Left agenda. Joining in his plans to destroy the country economically by trying to initiate climate change legislation, increase taxes, continue to abuse our education curricula, remove tariffs with the Chinese, pass onerous regulations against businesses—there is no way that can happen with our complicity. It not only would eliminate the economic growth that occurred during Trump’s time in office, but would take the country into an economic tailspin.
But Biden’s using the word “unity,” when other words might have been more appropriate is a “tell.” If he had said cooperation or negotiating in government, I might have had a different reaction. But Biden is addressing the entire country, more specifically Republicans. He’s talking to us, the citizens on the Right:
He wants us to make believe that the last four years never happened.
He wants us to be willing to put aside our differences and support their agenda.
He wants us to forget those who insulted, attacked, and harassed us, even making sure that people lost their jobs.
He wants us to make believe that there is no cancel culture, that it’s okay if the mainstream media continues to berate us, that we should be helpful and cooperative, just like the Republicans of old.
You destroyed any possibility of our working with you. You have no idea how deplorable we can be.
No matter who finally wins the election, you will lose.
Published in Politics
Please clap.
I try to be an optimists. So, I lean more towards the view expressed by Amy Argetsinger in that tweet/question put to David French.
Few elected Republicans want to make Trump mad. So, if Trump wants to claim that he didn’t really lose to Biden, maybe the strategy for more sober minded Republicans is to just say, “Trump has a right to seek legal action where he deems appropriate,” and then silently laugh as Trump’s attorneys lose one case after another in state and federal court. So, as Mitch McConnell said yesterday, maybe there is no damage to the Republic.
They may not need to hide it, if the powers-that-be choose to ignore it, @cliffhadley.
yeah, I noticed how the Democrats were treading very lightly the last 4 years so as to not risk any damage to the republic.
Illegitimate president, Russian collusion, Ukraine phone calls, impeachment, scandal of the day, Hitler, Dictator, 25th amendment, Charlottesville, Twitter and Facebook censors, (Need I continue? I think not. We all lived through it).
But asking if the election was legit? Dangerous to the republic. Got it.
Is any election in which ones favored candidate loses ever legit? One could argue that whenever a candidate I supported loses, it couldn’t be that the candidate lost a freely held and fairly conducted election.
Stacey Abrams can complain about voter suppression. Hillary Clinton can claim that the Russians, not the voters, elected Donald Trump. And Donald Trump can claim that fraudulent votes stole the election from him.
In sports and in politics it is hard to accept that one lost, not due to cheating, but just lost. It’s not easy because, at least in the political arena (and sometimes in the sports arena) the stakes are high.
Strangely, French’s tweet generates fear, paranoia and rage in me, but not at Trump.
Yeah, lets just assume that nobody ever cheats, and that it never makes any significant difference. At least until the next time a Democrat loses.
Anyone who resists validation betrays a serious concern that validation will expose something.
And you people thought this guy was on our side.
You should be so silent.
Just when I think my contempt for NeverTrumpers may have found its limit, I read David French and I discover that I’m nowhere near capacity.
You keep saying that. Like French, who assumes that the tens of millions of people who suspect voter fraud are only doing so because they are so much more stupid and suggestible than he is, you keep insisting that disagreement with you must stem from emotional immaturity. Maybe not everyone who disagrees with you is stupid or immature. Maybe they just read the evidence differently than you do.
News flash: Sometimes people actually do cheat in sports, and they actually do cheat in politics. The fact that not all claims of cheating are true does not mean that all claims of cheating are false. Was there cheating in this election? I’m satisfied that there is good prima facie evidence that there was. It’s not immature or stupid to want to engage the legal system to get to the bottom of it. And it’s not a threat to the Republic. Just the opposite. The system retains its integrity only as long as people resolve to defend it through legal means.
Cheating isn’t OK just because the victim was the Orange Man or some other person you don’t like. Conservatives used to understand that.
Well, Trump and his attorneys are pursuing legal avenues. We will soon know how successful they are. If Trump’s legal team is successful to the extent that Trump serves a 2nd presidential term, than you can say that Heavy Water was wrong. If Biden becomes president in 2021, then you can say that Heavy Water was right. Or maybe you will see the election as illegitimate, sort of how many on the Left viewed Bush’s 2000 election and Trump’s 2016 election as illegiatimate. It’s up to you.
This! And I totally agree. I have no idea whether the legal challenges will end with Trump being re-elected. To me, that’s not the point. The point is to make sure the election process was legitimate – no matter which candidate winds up in the Oval Office for the next 4 years.
If Trump’s attorneys lose most of the legal challenges they make in state and federal courts, some of those who support Trump in his claims of voter fraud will remain skeptical that the election process was legitimate while others will accept the legitimacy of the election based on the courts’ rulings. I think the election was legitimate even if not 100 percent free of error and fraud.
I grew up too close to Chicago to be anything but skeptical about election tallies.
Our difference is not about whether Trump’s legal challenges will succeed. I don’t know if they will or not. I’m not sure of the complete extent of the evidence of voter fraud. We’ll find out in court. You seem certain there isn’t any. I don’t know how you could possibly know that.
If Trump’s challenges fail, and it is established that Biden won with legitimate votes, I’ll be satisfied. It will prove that the system still has integrity, which is far more important than any particular result. That’s much better than leaving it in a cloud of suspicion by Trump simply ignoring the indications of fraud. Elections are not only supposed to be fair, but to appear fair. This one doesn’t.
Fighting the good fight is worth doing, even if you aren’t certain of winning.
I’m skeptical of election tallies in the sense that it’s a safe bet that they contain error or fraud. But that could go either way. Are we to believe that 100 percent of Trump supporters are incapable/unwilling to stuff a few illegal ballots to boost Trump’s vote total?
Both parties can make any and all assertions that they want, calling any election victory for the other party illegitimate.
I wasn’t impressed by Stacey Abrams when she refused to concede the governor’s election in Georgia in 2018 and I’m not impressed by Trump’s unwillingness to refuse to concede either.
And if they win, some of those who support Biden will be skeptical that the courts’ decisions were on the up and up. There’s absolutely no way to please everyone. I still believe that at least some of the allegations of fraud look legitimate enough to warrant examination.
Yes.
I don’t say that there was no error and/or fraud in this election. But in reality Trump supporters are just as capable of filling out fraudulent ballots as Biden supporters are. So, while I admit that I lack perfect knowledge of exactly which votes were cast legally and which votes were cast illegally in every county in every state, I don’t find Trump’s allegations impressive.
I’m 54 years old and I have been through many election cycles and I have watched how losing candidates behave. Many losing candidates have made allegations of error/fraud/cheating to explain their defeat. None ended up having their defeat converted into a victory using the methods Trump and his attorneys are using.
But we’ll see.
Human nature always wins Susan. Human nature is corrupt and socialist.
I’m late to this thread, but after the last four years, the Democrats and the Media (but I repeat myself*) can take their unity and cram it up their respective poop chutes.
*h/t Chris Plante
Welcome, @oldphil. I couldn’t have said it better!
The problem I foresee is that judges will refuse to acknowledge any fraud unless they have a stack of ballots in front of them where the “voters” added to the ballot “this ballot is fraudulent.” Which is essentially impossible. In fact, “chain of custody” and other type rules should apply, and the mere fact that poll watchers were kept out or told to leave while counting actually continued, should be enough to disqualify those ballots. Or are we to believe that all the GOP observers were told to leave only because they wouldn’t stop popping their gum, or something?
The other likely reason is that the judges don’t want to have BLM coming to their homes later, although that’s likely to happen regardless of the decisions they make.
I don’t expect that judges or justices are going to go out of there way to make difficult or controversial decisions. Why should they risk those kinds of decisions? I agree, @kedavis, that unless t’s are crossed and i’s dotted, they’ll dismiss a case.
Yes, we’ll see. Your position, if I understand it, is that we shouldn’t even try to see. As I already said, the point of the challenges isn’t necessarily to overturn the outcome. It is to ensure that the outcome was fair, and to bring to light all the evidence of fraud, even if it doesn’t change anything. I don’t see the point of sweeping everything under the rug.
I’m 57 so I’ve been through at least as many election cycles as you. I’ll never shrug my shoulders at vote fraud no matter how many cycles I live through, or how futile the legal challenges to it are.
I think the moral equivalence you draw between Trump supporters and Biden supporters with respect to voting is, frankly, repellant. Republicans have consistently pushed for procedures that would limit vote fraud, for instance no mail in voting and using voter ID. Democrats always resist these efforts and deliberately put in place policies that invite vote fraud and generate chaos in the election aftermath. The chaos and questionable results are always in Democratic strongholds, and somehow always favor Democratic candidates.
This is the sort of thing that really does demoralize Republican voters. To work hard and honestly turn out the vote, as the Trumpers did, only to be told by their own side that vote fraud shouldn’t be investigated because they think the Trumpers are likely vote fraudsters just like the Democrats. Who would want to stay in a party that thinks this of its own people?
Maybe the mailed-out ballot issue could have been helped if, though the Dems wouldn’t have wanted this, if the outside envelope had two dozen lines to be signed with chain of custody, from leaving the printer to leaving the mail, to being picked up by the mail to being delivered to the election place, etc.
The problem here though, as mentioned in the previous paragraph i wrote, is that they will expect a level of proof that is likely just impossible to provide in a situation like this. As mentioned, something like ballots with “I am fraudulent” written on them. That’s not going to happen. (And even if it did, the judges could still overlook that because they’re not signed and notarized.) So the judges need to be willing to see that deliberately excluding poll watchers etc, should be taken as sufficient evidence on its own. Combined with odd changes in numbers happening at the same time, etc, what other good reason is there for watchers to be excluded, other than they didn’t want to be watched while they committed fraud?