Biden, Trump and ‘Illegitimate’ Elections
By: By The Editorial Board
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
One piece of President Biden’s news conference that deserves more scrutiny is his positively Trumpian refusal to say that the 2022 elections will be legitimate. The White House is now trying to walk this back, which is a good sign, but if Mr. Biden is changing his mind, he should say so himself.
In tweets on Thursday , press secretary Jen Psaki insisted Mr. Biden “was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election.” Rather, he was “explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results.”
Is that the truth? Roll the tape.
Question: “Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn’t passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?”
Mr. Biden: “Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election.” Asked a second time, later in the news conference, he added: “The prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.”
The White House’s attempt to say oopsie is even less convincing given Mr. Biden’s rhetoric about “Jim Crow 2.0” last week in Georgia. “The goal of the former president and his allies is to disenfranchise anyone who votes against them,” he said. “The facts won’t matter. Your vote won’t matter. They’ll just decide what they want and then do it. That’s the kind of power you see in totalitarian states, not in democracies.”
Who else does that sound like? “We had a rigged election, and the proof is all over the place,” President Trump said last week. “I ran twice, and we won twice.” Now Mr. Trump is claiming vindication in a statement Thursday: “President Biden admitted yesterday, in his own very different way, that the 2020 election may very well have been a fraud, which I know it was.”
A big difference is that Mr. Trump’s theories were refuted by the press and have alienated even many Republicans. Mr. Biden’s claims, to the contrary, are being encouraged by much of his party and many in the press, despite a comparable lack of good evidence. Sorry to be a broken record, but Georgia has more days of early voting, and offers more of its citizens mail ballots, than either New York or Delaware.
Democrats are on fire that Georgia’s election law lets the state suspend local officials. But this requires proof of “nonfeasance, malfeasance or gross negligence.” Democrats are equally furious about a plan by Lincoln County, Ga., to consolidate polling sites. But the county’s elections director, who happens to be black, says the proposal is related to Covid-19 protocols and low numbers of voters. This is also a county that went 68% for Mr. Trump.
If the White House is starting to fear that its narrative is getting out of hand, that would be welcome. The U.S. deserves to have two parties that talk in a way that buoys public confidence in elections, but one is better than zero. The danger as November nears is that if Democrats look like they’re in for a shellacking, the pressure to blame the voting laws will be intense. Swear it off today, Mr. Biden.
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