Roughly 6 in 10 voters backing President Biden say they’d replace both the incumbent and his rival former President Trump on the 2024 ballot if they could, polling released Wednesday shows. A Pew R…
Democracy is perfectly fine until my candidate loses, at which point democracy is dead until late September when mid-terms start ramping up, and then suddenly democracy works again and we need to get ready to vote in 2026.
Democracy is perfectly fine until the candidate that loses refuses to accept the results, tries to retain power by force, then continues to try undermine faith in democracy for 4 years and is somehow still the frontrunner for his party.
Gore’s VP (Joe)? I don’t remember all of the details, but that was legitimately a contested election by the numbers, not by a sore loser. Won the popular by a decent margin but lost the electoral. It was by a slim enough margin to trigger a recount. As far as contested elections go I thought that could have gone a whole lot worse.
that was legitimately a contested election by the numbers
Not according to the incoming Republican administration. There are still conservatives who flog that election to prove how little Democrats care about democracy.
I’m not sure I get the comparison here.
If Gore had squeaked out a win even in the face of abundant ratfvckery in Florida and Ohio, Republicans would have insisted the election was a fraud in the same way they insisted Clinton stole the election in 1992 and Carter in 1976 and Kennedy stole it in 1960.
Because this is a partisan issue, there’s no real clean line between legitimate victory and election theft from the perspective of the partisans themselves. And because both sides routinely fight dirty (Nixon was as aggressive fucking democrats in southern Illinois as Kennedy was in fucking Republicans in Chicago), it is often difficult to talk about a clean race when the reality is more often that one person or the other lost in a dirty knife fight.
Democracy is perfectly fine until my candidate loses, at which point democracy is dead until late September when mid-terms start ramping up, and then suddenly democracy works again and we need to get ready to vote in 2026.
Democracy would be cool with primarying an incumbent president. I checked.
Democracy is perfectly fine until the candidate that loses refuses to accept the results, tries to retain power by force, then continues to try undermine faith in democracy for 4 years and is somehow still the frontrunner for his party.
Sore Lieberman '00
Gore’s VP (Joe)? I don’t remember all of the details, but that was legitimately a contested election by the numbers, not by a sore loser. Won the popular by a decent margin but lost the electoral. It was by a slim enough margin to trigger a recount. As far as contested elections go I thought that could have gone a whole lot worse.
I’m not sure I get the comparison here.
Not according to the incoming Republican administration. There are still conservatives who flog that election to prove how little Democrats care about democracy.
If Gore had squeaked out a win even in the face of abundant ratfvckery in Florida and Ohio, Republicans would have insisted the election was a fraud in the same way they insisted Clinton stole the election in 1992 and Carter in 1976 and Kennedy stole it in 1960.
Because this is a partisan issue, there’s no real clean line between legitimate victory and election theft from the perspective of the partisans themselves. And because both sides routinely fight dirty (Nixon was as aggressive fucking democrats in southern Illinois as Kennedy was in fucking Republicans in Chicago), it is often difficult to talk about a clean race when the reality is more often that one person or the other lost in a dirty knife fight.