Democratic Socialist Communist Party = Threat to Democracy!

One thing we all know about Politics is that if the Dems blame the Pubs of doing something then you know they're just projecting what they themselves are guilty of... And screw the RINOs too.

 

People have a right to bitch and vent all they want about election irregularities if that is as far as it goes. It's when it is used as a predicate for action that's the problem.

 

I agree that hypocrisy is rampant. I would go so far to include it as a diagnostic trait of humanity.

That said, this clearly doesn’t mean that all comparisons are equally apt. In 2016, Trump actually claimed the election was rigged before it happened. Awkwardly, Larry Elder accidentally even showed he had evidence for voter fraud before the election.

Larry Elder isn't even waiting to call the California recall election a fraud - CNNPolitics

Even if you don’t see these as a difference in kind from what happened with Gore, it has to be a difference in degree, right?

 

You're premise is one degree is better than the other? As the saying goes when you lower the bar it makes that much easier to lower it some more.
In Philadelphia, Joe Biden Peddled a Competing Brand of Authoritarianism

"Each side is using some legitimate complaints to build a permission structure for seizing power by any means necessary and raining down destruction on its foes," Reason senior editor Stephanie Slade writes in the October issue. "One result is a sort of bipartisan apocalypticism: A recent Yahoo News poll found that more than half of each major party believes it's likely that America will 'cease to be a democracy in the future.' Under these circumstances, extreme medicine can start to seem like the only logical response."

So, Democrats and Republicans race each other to jettison respect for the Constitution, limited government, and liberty, using the excesses of their opponents as the excuse. Inevitably, their adversaries return the favor, moving further down the path of delegitimizing opposition.

"He's an enemy of the state, you wanna know the truth," Trump shot back at the president at a Pennsylvania rally two days after Biden's "threat to this country" speech. "The enemy of the state is him and the group that control him."​

 

Well “better” is clearly a value-laden term, but if we are comparing Gore to Elder, I’d say it’s clear that one showed less respect for election outcomes than the other. I’m actually surprised you are arguing against that, carpe.

As for the Reason article, I pretty much agree with it. However, I also don’t think it is really talking about the same thing, faith in elections (my point) vs overall authoritarianism (Reason’s thesis).

 

One is louder and more adamant than the other is the only difference. Each intends to do one thing and one thing only which is contest an election in the hopes they get favorable results.

Politicians that continually state an election was stolen as well as social media and MSM are just as guilty. The 2016 election certainly sheds light on the subject matter. The 2020 election raised it to new level of discontent.

You cannot disregard the people who believed former President Bush stole an election and still believe it to this day. You cannot disregard the people who believed former President Trump stole the election and still believe it to this day. You cannot disregard the people who believe President Biden stole the election and still believe it to this day. Fact is the seeds of election integrity have been planted long ago and we now have an overwhelming electorate that looks upon our election processes as a scam that knows no bounds. That is unless their side is victorious then nothing to see here is the mantra.

Some might find this podcast worth a listen.
Saints, Sinners, and Salvageables: Denial Is a River In . . . American Elections

Why is the right to vote important to a democracy? What legal protections should there be? How do we counter electoral refuseniks who won’t accept outcomes? Hoover Institution visiting fellow Ben Ginsberg, a preeminent authority on election law, interviews Stanford University political scientist Bruce Cain and Stanford Law School professor Nathaniel Persily on the struggle to restore the public’s confidence in the accuracy of elections.​

 

Once again, complaining about the process or even the impact of an archaic constitutional provision that had the effect of giving the election to a candidate who lost the popular vote is not the same as refusing to accept the result of an election.

You can always look at post #6 in this thread to watch videos of the concession speeches of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. I have yet to see a similar speech from Donald Trump and probably never will even though he lost the 2020 presidential election by a larger margin in the Electoral College than either Bush or Clinton as well as losing the popular vote by a margin of almost 8 million votes and just because members of his sheeplike cult actually believe his big lie and Republican politicians who know better publicly support it doesn't make it true. The reality is that Donald Trump is a narcissistic loser who refuses to face reality and citing examples of Democratic politicians who have complained about past elections doesn't change that reality.

 

What a ludicrous bunch of bothsidesism here.

Yes, hard feelings remain over 2000. No one tried to construct a gallows and hang Dick Cheney over it.

Yes, people believe Trump got illegal Russian help in 2016. No one gouged out a cop's eye over it.

Yes, people believe Trump won in 2020. Those people are trying to install people in key local positions to not certify votes if he doesn't win again in 2024. The SCOTUS, with 3 Trump justices, is hearing a case soon where they could very well rule that state legislatures can choose presidential electors regardless of the vote.

Joe Biden believes that the 70% of the country that rejects Trumpism shouldn't be gerrymandered into minority irrelevance. MAGA America believes they should run things everything else be damned.

 

I am not sure the only difference is volume. What about the timing issue I brought up? Do we have examples of Biden or any major Democrats claiming fraud before the election takes place?

And polls suggest that democrats have a lot more faith in elections than republicans. CNN Poll: Americans' confidence in elections has faded since January 6 - CNNPolitics

I am not sure how all this adds up to no difference whatsoever.

 

The poll seems to demonstrate that Joseph Goebbels had it right regarding human nature and the value of manipulation.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
And that seems to apply to the majority of self-identified Republicans.

 

They are just so desperate to cover for the Trump/MAGA election denialism. There is no comparison to what has happened since the 2020 election in our history. Even in 1860/1861 the election losers didn't deny that Lincoln won the election. They just seceded because of it.

 

Go to mark 19:12 in the video interview of Oct 2020. President Biden talks about putting together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics. If you think the team President Biden put together during his campaign was for defensive purposes only that would be highly myopic. Had the election gone the other way what do think this team would have been doing. BTW he also acknowledges this is exactly what President Obama did. I'll bet this team was put together well before Oct 2020 this was not something thought of on the spur of the moment.

Joe Biden Breaks Down Donald Trump, Climate Change and The Election | Pod Save America


This was an interview given by President Biden in Oct 2020. The entire interview is worth listening to and people can judge what he said versus what he's accomplished.

 

Theres a classic psychology experiment where groups of people were asked to compare the lengths of lines of obviously different sizes. Unbeknownst to the subjects, the rest of the people in the group were part of the experiment. When the rest of the group chose what seems to be a clearly wrong answer, the real subjects often went along with the same answer.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

A more recent follow up study watched people’s brains via MRI during the a similar experiment and found that it kind of looks like these people aren’t faking it. The social cues around them may actually have been changing their perception.

These kinds of results suggest that group beliefs may truly change our vision of the world. On one hand this makes sense. If everyone else on an island avoids eating a particular fruit, it’s probably best to follow their lead. But clearly, such a system could also produce spread of a lot of baseless beliefs throughout a community. Perhaps this is just an example of an adaptive function of social knowledge misfiring in our modern age.

 

We can compare/contrast 2000 with 2020. Let's start with election integrity. In 2000, there were hanging chads and confusion with the butterfly ballot in Florida. We may never know what the election might have been had Florida been using 2020 type ballots in 2000. Would Bush still have won? Would Gore have? We honestly can't know. What we do know is under the rules at the time, Bush was declared the winner, and the decision was backed by the Supreme Court.

In contrast, in 2020, we have Bill Barr declaring the election to be clean, and anything to the contrary is complete BS. In Arizona, there was an initial count, a recount, and a major audit. The result of all three? Biden won. Trump filed over 60 cases, and lost all but 1, and none of the cases ever made it close to the SCOTUS. In short, in Florida 2000, there were issues, but they did the best they could, and came up with a result they could defend. In 2020, there were no issues with the vote or count that has been substantiated with a scintilla of evidence.

Now, let's talk response from the losing side. In 2000, Gore conceded. There was no plot with alternative electors, nor did anyone tell Gore, who was the Vice President at the time, to do anything to subvert Congress from doing their job in electing W. Bush. There were no rallies, and certainly no pro-Gore riots, and after Gore conceded, the results were accepted. W. won.

In contrast, in 2020, Trump didn't concede. In fact, he's never conceded. And between the election an inauguration, there were "Stop the Steal" rallies, which culminated in the Jan 6 insurrection riot. There was also a coordinated effort with fake, alternative electors, and Pence has gone on record saying he was told he had the power and should have stopped the proceedings, and allow Trump's team to take care of the rest.

When it's a close election, and your guy or gal lost, there is going to be people on the losing side complaining. Between election and inauguration, there's going to be investigations, recounts, and even lawsuits. That's not out of the ordinary. What is out of the ordinary? The loser never conceding and his/her followers never accepting the outcome.

 

Thats an interesting comparison. I am not hearing it the same way as I hear I’ll accept the outcome of the election only if I win, but perhaps I am myopic.

Maybe I am seeing your point a bit more though. What if we change your one side is louder thesis to one side is explicit? I am sure both sides have lawyers ready for a battle in a close election, but only one side seems to have made fraudulent elections a core part of their platform’s identity.

 

Including the Senate intelligence committee chaired by a Republican.

 

Yet another republican filed a lawsuit YESTERDAY in Michigan to decertify the 2020 presidential election.

But by all means, tell me both parties are the same again.

Macomb County Republican Party sues to try to decertify 2020 presidential election

 

Just a reminder that what we’re seeing is nothing new.