Will Hillary Accept Defeat?
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
The headlines are in. Trump is the “anti-Democratic”
candidate because he refuses to rule out challenging
the results of an election that has yet to take
place. Such a course of action is “beyond the pale”.
It’s a threat to democracy. And it is utterly and
thoroughly unacceptable.
Except when Democrats do it.
It
was the day after the election. While the Democratic
Party faithful waited in the rain in Nashville,
William Daley strode out and announced, “Our
campaign continues”. Al Gore had called George W.
Bush to withdraw his concession. “Are you saying
what I think you’re saying?" a baffled Bush asked.
“You don’t have to be snippy about it," Gore
retorted snippily.
Gore did eventually concede. Though years later he
would attempt to retract his concession a second
time. But his political movement never did concede.
It remained a widespread belief in left-wing circles
that President Bush was illegitimately elected and
that President Gore was the real winner.
How mainstream is that belief?
When Hillary dragged Gore away from playing with his
Earth globe to campaign for her, the crowd booed at
his mention of the election and then chanted, “You
won, you won”.
Hillary grinned and nodded.
Hillary Clinton has always believed that President
Bush illegitimately took office. She has told
Democrats that Bush was “selected” rather than
“elected”. In Nigeria, of all places, she implied
that Jeb Bush had rigged the election for his
brother.
But it’s not unprecedented, beyond the pale or
utterly unacceptable when Democrats do it.
It’s just business as usual.
The media’s focus has been on whether Trump would
accept the results if he loses. Yet a better
question might be whether Hillary Clinton would
accept her defeat.
Even when it came to the battle for the Democratic
nomination, Hillary Clinton refused to concede
defeat until the bitter end and then past it. Not
only did Hillary refuse to drop out even when Obama
was the clear winner, while her people threatened a
convention floor fight, but she insisted on staying
on in the race for increasingly bizarre and even
downright disturbing reasons.
In South Dakota, Hillary explained that there was no
reason for her to drop out because somebody might
shoot Barack Obama, "We all remember Bobby Kennedy
was assassinated in June in California."
There’s something disturbing in the revelation that
Hillary was basing her decision to stay in the race
in the hope that her rival would be assassinated.
Obama’s spokesman said that her remark “has no place
in this campaign”. But it had a place inside Hillary
Clinton’s very warped brain which preferred to see
Obama die than concede the election to him.
If that’s how Hillary felt about a fellow Democrat,
imagine how she feels about Trump.
Even after Obama had clinched the delegate votes,
Hillary’s speech brought back the Gore argument
insisting that, “Nearly 18 million of you cast your
votes for our campaign, carrying the popular vote
with more votes than any primary candidate in
history. Even when the pundits and the naysayers
proclaimed week after week that this race was over,
you kept on voting.”
Then the fabulously wealthy Hillary asked those 18
million people to go to her website and give her
money while refusing to make any decision on ending
her campaign. It took her another day to do that.
It’s not as if the Obama side was any better. It was
arguably worse. Governor Wilder, an Obama ally,
threatened a return of the 1968 Chicago Democratic
convention riots if Hillary won. "If you think 1968
was bad, you watch; in 2008, it will be worse,”
Wilder warned.
Unprecedented. Outrageous. Beyond the pale. Except
this is how Democrats act even to each other.
Now how would they respond to a Trump victory? Would
they urge Hillary to concede or to fight on? Would
they stage more riots while claiming voter
disenfranchisement had stolen the election?
Hillary Clinton has made it clear that she views
Trump’s candidacy as illegitimate. She has called
him “unfit” and described his supporters as
“deplorables”. Democrats, all the way up to the
White House, are constantly accusing Republicans of
scheming to disenfranchise voters. These “schemes”
involve asking undocumented Democrats to show some
ID instead of relying on an honor system and
removing illegitimate voters from the rolls. But
beyond enabling voter fraud, such arguments can
easily be employed to attack the legitimacy of a
Republican winner. They provide the fodder for
another Florida.
Does anyone really believe that Hillary Clinton, who
couldn’t even graciously concede to Obama will
graciously concede to Trump?
And, given the fact that Hillary won the nomination
by using the DNC to rig the process, leading to the
resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, are Trump’s
concerns of a rigged election illegitimate?
Donald Trump has clarified that he would accept “a
clear election result” but that he was “being asked
to waive centuries of legal precedent designed to
protect the voters.”
And he’s right. No one preemptively cedes elections.
And Hillary Clinton has faced accusations of abusive
and fraudulent tactics from Democratic rivals in two
different presidential elections.
Why should Republicans assume that she’ll treat them
better than she treated Barack Obama and Bernie
Sanders?
Not all that long ago, the left wanted Gore to fight
to the bitter end. A Gore adviser recalled, "People
were calling us from everywhere, telling us, 'Don't
concede.'" Left-wing voices urged Bernie Sanders to
stay in the race long after it became obvious that
the left-winger had no realistic path to victory
left.
But the same behavior that is virtuous when
Democrats do it becomes an unpardonable sin when
Republicans take it up.
That’s a pernicious double standard that cannot and
should not be allowed to stand.
When Democrats warn of voter disenfranchisement, the
media backs them up. When Republicans complain about
voter fraud, they are accused of voter suppression.
When Democrats fight elections past the point that
they’re lost, then they are courageous. But when
Republicans do it, they are a threat to democracy.
But democracy does not mean Democratic Party rule.
That’s just the mistake that the media makes.
Whatever rules we have, run both ways. Any
practices, new or old, also apply to both sides. If
challenging election results is legitimate, then it
is so for both sides. Whatever options were
available to Gore and Hillary cannot help but be
available to Trump.
That is how democracy, rather than Democratic Party
rule, works.