I&I Editorial
Pollster Scott Rasmussen recently came up with an interesting finding. His poll showed that almost the exact same percentage of Americans think Hillary Clinton had the election stolen from her as think Donald Trump suffered the same fate in 2020.
So why is it that Democrats never get attacked for being seditionists?
Rasmussen (who founded but is no longer with the Rasmussen Reports polling firm) surveyed 1,200 registered voters, asking who they believe were the legitimate winners of the 2016 and 2020 elections.
What he found was that 52% of Democrats continue to believe that Clinton was the actual winner in 2016. Only 34% of Democrats believe Trump was the legitimate winner, and 14% aren’t sure.
How about the 2020 election? The poll determined that 66% of Republicans think Trump was the legitimate winner, with 25% saying Biden won fair and square, and 9% not sure.
In other words, a majority of people in both parties think their candidate had the election stolen. But does anyone remember any company canceling contracts with a Democrat for not wanting to certify the 2016 election results? Or endless articles about how Democrats undermined democracy? Or attempts to silence Democrats spewing falsehoods on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube?
The Washington Post recently decried what it called a “months-long misinformation campaign” by Republican elites that, it said, “can easily explain why many Republicans deny Joe Biden’s win was legitimate.” Under Trump, the Post wasn’t condemning the abuses of the FBI or labeling every claim of Russia collusion as fake. It was championing them.
Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan recently chastised Republicans for their doubt, calling it “an affront to our democratic process, and it’s diminishing the presidency.”
“It’s bad for our party, bad for the country and it weakens our position in the world,” he said.
Does anyone remember a Democrat censuring his or her fellow leaders for doing exactly the same thing? Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California attacked the vote to certify the Electoral College results in 2016, saying “people are horrified by the overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in our election.” Rep. Jim McGovern, Massachusetts Democratic, said that “the electors were not lawfully certified, especially given the confirmed and illegal activities engaged by the government of Russia.”
As columnist Michael Barone has noted, “Again and again, leading Democrats – Hillary Clinton, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the late Rep. John Lewis, Joe Biden, Jimmy Carter – called Trump an ‘illegitimate president.'” Not one party leader raised concerns about these charges.
The only difference between Democrats under Trump and Republicans today is that Republicans have a stronger case for a stolen election than Democrats ever did. There never was any credible evidence that Russia’s lame Facebook ads had any impact whatsoever on how people voted, much less that Trump colluded with Russia to see it happen. Three-plus years of investigations turned up nothing.
But there are legitimate questions about how the 2020 election chaos – engineered by Democrats under the guise of protecting Americans from the pandemic – affected the vote. Mass mailing of ballots, last-minute rule changes, questionable activities during vote counting all invited fraud. Democrats say any suggestion that fraud happened is a lie, citing judges’ rulings. But the fact is that courts ruled against Trump’s legal challenges almost entirely on procedural grounds, not on evidence gathered.
True, Democrats didn’t storm the Capitol, but they did enlist top FBI officials, who abused their authority to try to railroad Trump out of office.
Which is the bigger affront to Democracy – some property damage by a handful of angry citizens, or an attempt by top federal officials to undermine and unseat a duly elected president?
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
