Donald Trump is not a threat to democracy. He wasn't in his first term and he won't be in his second term. I say this as someone who did not vote for Trump in 2016, because I was worried about how he'd govern and strongly believed his candidacy would hand the White House over to that contemptible shrew, Hillary.
I admit I was wrong.
Donald Trump is the democratically elected Republican nominee for president, and all signs point to him winning the Electoral College soundly. Real Clear Politics (RCP) today put the Electoral College vote totals at 302 for Trump, 236 for Kamala Harris.
That means the American people have spoken and decided to give Trump another four-year term in office.
But the Democrats -- those so-called defenders of democracy -- plan to thwart the will of the American people if Donald Trump wins.
Scoop: Some top House Democrats won't commit to certifying a Trump victory https://t.co/cMSgORbcNM
— Axios (@axios) October 11, 2024
House Democrats railed against House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for hedging on whether a GOP-controlled House would certify a Kamala Harris victory. But some of their senior members are playing a similar game.
Why it matters: Those Democrats are trapped between their deep distrust of Donald Trump and their vigorous denunciations of any election challenges in the years since the Jan. 6 attack.
- Democratic leaders, however, seem fully prepared to certify a Trump victory – making potential dissenters a small minority.
What they're saying: Raskin, the House Oversight Committee ranking member and former Jan. 6 committee member who objected to Trump electors in 2017, told Axios in an interview that if Trump "won a free, fair and honest election, then we would obviously accept it."
- However, Raskin said he "definitely" doesn't assume that Trump would use free, fair and honest means to secure a victory.
- Trump "is doing whatever he can to try to interfere with the process, whether we're talking about manipulating electoral college counts in Nebraska or manipulating the vote count in Georgia or imposing other kinds of impediments," Raskin said.
How, exactly, will Trump interfere with the election process?
Tell poll workers to leave and then count ballots like they did in Georgia in 2020?
Oh, wait, that was Democrats.
My bad.
Here's how this game will play out: they'll accuse Trump of 'interfering' with the election, with no evidence to prove it, and try to refuse to certify the election.
To 'save democracy'. Or something.
Because Trump's going to win the Electoral College. It's trending that way and -- as I pointed out earlier -- the RCP has him well over the 270 vote threshold. I thank God every day the Founding Fathers had the foresight and brilliance to install such a mechanism in our Constitution.
When I'm not pondering the dystopian nightmare America would be if we were a direct democracy, my curiosity leads me to wonder what Liz Cheney, David French, Tom Nichols, Jen Rubin and the rest of the so-called 'conservatives' who've thrown in with Kamala Harris think about this real, actual threat to democracy.
I would love to ask them why this is somehow acceptable to them, who are so concerned with preserving America.
I don't doubt they'd say something along the lines of 'Well, Donald Trump is an unique and singular threat to democracy, so we have to destroy our norms to save them.'
Bull. S**t.
There is no excuse, none whatsoever, that warrant refusing to certify the election results simply because Donald Trump won. I have long argued that the reason the Liz Cheneys and David Frenchs and Tom Nichols of the world hate Trump is because they hate the voters who elected him.
For years, the Republican party -- led by Cheney and the rest -- gave voters milquetoast candidates who made promises they had no intention to keep. Candidates who sold out to Democrats, who did nothing to advance conservative agendas or principles. They didn't listen to voters, because they didn't like the voters.
So Donald Trump came along and finally voters felt like someone was listening to them, and not the Republican Party elite. When voters elected Trump, the Republican elite were furious with voters. And their goal since 2016 has been to punish those voters.
Which is why they went all in for Biden and are all in for Kamala.
But in their hatred of Trump and their desperation to end his political career, they're setting themselves up to get played. Mark my words: if the Democrats pull this stunt and refuse to certify the election if Trump wins, it won't stop with Trump.
Why?
Go back through every election cycle. The current Republican president or nominee is always, invariably, literally Hitler.
Until the next Republican comes along. Then the Left pines for the days of 'reasonable' Republicans like Mitt Romney -- the guy Joe Biden said was going to put black Americans back in chains.
There is zero reason to believe they won't say the same about the next Republican. In fact, bank on it.
And when the next Republican is worse of a threat than Trump, it logically follows they'll threaten to not certify that election, be it in 2028 or 2032 or 2036.
If they get away with it this year -- aided and abetted by so-called Republicans -- they'll do it again.
So I don't ever, ever, want to hear the Left or the Liz Cheneys of the world say they care about democracy or that Trump is an existential threat to our political process. Not when they are the ones who have decided that they know better than the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump to give him the Electoral College victory he needs.
