For the Left, 'Election Denial' Is Like Hindsight—Always 2020
By: Barton Swaim (WSJ)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The 2022 midterm election brought an army of Republican "election deniers" into office, or so claims the New York Times. Its website features a list of "more than 210 Republicans who questioned the 2020 election." They "have won seats in the U.S. House and Senate and in state races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general." That is, they won elections.
The term "denier" is an allusion to Holocaust denial. In the 1990s, activists and pundits exercised about global warming, or what is now called climate change, began calling their adversaries "deniers." Those "deniers" included many people who accepted the reality of global temperature change but rejected the proposed remedies. Nonetheless, in an effort to delegitimize their views, their "denialism" was tacitly associated with a form of demented bigotry.
Now we have election “deniers.” They don’t deny the existence of elections. In fact, as the Times laments, many of them have just won elections, and even more have run in them. Most of them, according to the Times’s own criteria, don’t deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election at all.
The Times defines election “deniers” as those who “said inaccurately that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged.” Its page also lists election “skeptics,” people who “stopped short of that falsehood but nonetheless criticized the election.” I’m not sure the distinction matters to the Times’s intended readers. The deniers and skeptics are all listed together, the only difference being a pink versus a red background to the head shot.
But is it reasonable or fair to associate people who merely “criticized” an election with people who denied the legitimacy of the winner? Recall that we are talking about the historically anomalous election of the pandemic year, in which election rules were changed in the middle of the race, in many cases without legislative approval. You could find yourself on the list of 210 miscreants, the Times explains, if you “embraced a narrow procedural argument that it was unconstitutional for states”—meaning state judges or officials other than lawmakers—“to bypass state legislatures when they changed voting procedures during the pandemic.” The Supreme Court will consider precisely that question in Moore v. Harper next month.
Among the list’s election “skeptics” is Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia. Mr. Kemp rejected Donald Trump’s demand not to certify his state’s electors for Joe Biden , who carried the state by 11,779 votes. Two years earlier, Mr. Kemp defeated Stacey Abrams by 54,723 votes, only to see Ms. Abrams lionized by the Times and other media outlets for refusing to concede the race. Ms. Abrams, who ran for governor again in 2022 and lost to Mr. Kemp by almost a million votes, doesn’t make the Times list of election deniers for two reasons: She didn’t win, and she denied the wrong election.
This last point exposes the panic over election denialism as the rankly partisan exercise it is. It is true that Mr. Trump and his most sycophantic allies spread falsehoods about that election. But the list of 210 deniers might have been expanded to include current lawmakers who, “without evidence,” as the Times would say, denied the 2004 election of George W. Bush. That election hinged on Ohio. On Jan. 6, 2005, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones objected to the certification of the state’s electors because some voting machines allegedly didn’t work and long lines prevented some voters from casting their ballots.
Four years earlier several Democratic representatives, including Ms. Jackson-Lee, Ms. Lee and Ms. Waters, attempted to object to the certification of Florida’s electoral votes for Mr. Bush and were gaveled down by Vice President Al Gore for lack of a Senate supporter. Many elected officials would later assert that Mr. Bush wasn’t the rightful winner. Mr. Grijalva, Ms. Jackson-Lee, Ms. Lee and Ms. Waters also attempted to object to the certification of Trump electors in 2017, as did Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
The Times also excludes members of Congress who characterized the 2016 election as illegitimate—the result of Russian meddling or “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin . That was as powerful a denial of an election as could be imagined, but including the purveyors of that act of denialism would land two thirds of the Democratic Party on the list—not to mention, if we included non-officeholders, some of the Times’s own journalists.
None of this is to say that the repudiation of the 2020 election was insignificant or didn’t happen. Some election-winners on the Times’s list of deniers, among them Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, deserve to be there. Others such as Don Bolduc of New Hampshire and Kari Lake of Arizona, would be rightly on the list if they won.
But it is not amiss to recall that 2020, the year to which the Times unaccountably limits its attention, was a year of rife unreason. Many Americans, including prominent people in academia and media and the entertainment industry, said and did unbelievably stupid things while confined to their homes and hiding their faces from each other. Some fashioned elaborate theories about how an election was stolen. Others circulated idiotic theories about the virus and demanded the closing of businesses and schools. Still others legitimized mass violence because an arrest went bad in Minneapolis.
By all means let us consider every American election fair and legitimate, absent overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But if the exponents of elite opinion wish to stop election denialism, they might consider abstaining from it themselves.
Mr. Swaim is a Journal editorial page writer.
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What's that they say about people who live in glass houses?
On another article here on NT the consensus was that 75% of the US weren't satisfied with the way things were headed in the US and of course the blame was placed on President Biden and the Democrats
I think the blame lays on those who support these extreme whack job right wing candidates and who still support trumps big lie and failed coup and support the enablers and supporters of all the mis and disinformation and hate and ignorance that these candidates are spreading.
I think some of that75% or a lot of them may feel differently now that a lot of them have lost, the right wing whack job candidates that is
Throw bigger STONES
It's interesting that none of these 210 + "election deniers" are questioning the validity of their own elections.
Have any of the democratic election deniers questioned the validity of their own elections?
For instance, Biden said these midterms might not be legit. Do you think he's still questioning the election results?
Too legit to quit, after six years of LYING bout elections, would be Trump
Who, specifically, are these democratic election deniers?
Start with Biden Do you find it interesting he hasn't questioned the validity of these midterms?
He also chose a habitual election denier to be his administration's spokesperson. Do you think that's appropriate?
No I don't. You have any evidence of fraud Sean?
Who would that be?
Lol. Yet you find it "interesting" election denying Republicans don't question results when they win. I guess you assume Democrats are hypocrites and only find it interesting when Republicans aren't.
Who would that be?
You are unaware that Karine Jean Pierre is Biden's press secretary? I didn't think that needed to be spelled out.
I know who she is. How is she a "habitual election denier"? Anybody has a right to question election results. That doesn't make you an election denier. When you've exhausted dozens of lawsuits, recounts, and even months long audits and found no evidence to support your claim and still can't accept the results you are an election denier. I suppose that in order to be a "habitual election denier" you would have to do all that more than once.
It is wrong to deny the results of an election when the facts overwhelmingly show that the election results are correct. It does not matter the party, gender, race, ideology, class, celebrity, etc. of the candidate; the denying of a legitimate election is wrong.
Amazing that circumstances compel writing something so obvious.
It is especially bad if the sitting PotUS is the blatant denier in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is worse if said individual continues with the denial for years after leaving office.
The media always rewrites the narrative after an election. Were the 2022 elections Jim Crow 2.0? How did gerrymandering influence the 2022 elections? The yakking-heads made a big deal about those issues as a form of pre-denial before the elections. Joe Biden even pre-denied the legitimacy of the 2022 elections.
Typically following an election there is an analysis of voter turnout and a break down by demographic participation. Which, apparently, wouldn't fit the pre-denial narrative hawked by the media and (primarily) Democrats. The silence of the press speaks volumes.
So, why doesn't the Times publish a list of winners who used pre-denial of the election to gain an edge? A pre-denial fiction to raise doubts about the legitimacy of an election isn't any better than a post-election denial. They both serve the same political purpose.
Republicans have a 5 point lead in the popular vote and will be lucky to have a small majority in the house.
Screwed by who?
The Democrats have represented the majority of Americans in the Senate for the last 25 years. In many of those 25 years the Republicans have been the "majority party" even though they represent a minority of the people.
Another day, another rewrite. So, where's the threat to democracy that Biden has been whining about? The Times filled a lot of white space with that pre-election narrative to cast doubts about the legitimacy of the upcoming 2022 elections.
Democrats either got it badly wrong - or - Democrats engaged in malicious pre-denial. So, how can the country trust the media and Democrats now?
it's just amusing how much frequently democrats use gerrymandering and dark money as excuses when Republicans are just as often hurt by it (as in your state) and Democrats outspend Republicans with dark money.
I can't wait for Democrats to argue how unfair it is Republicans are underrepresented in the House.
Another pre-denial trope maliciously used to create doubts about the legitimacy of the Senate before elections can take place.
“pre-denial”
Akin to ‘alternate truth’, ‘lock her up’, ‘stop the steal’, ‘don’t say gay’, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam. Bumper sticker sloganeering in lieu of substantive policy.
Yes, vague false intellectualism meant to obscure the total abandonment of truth...
Has the threat against democracy been an 'alternative truth'? What does an analysis of voter turnout and demographic participation suggest?
The silence of the press would appear to be protecting a pre-denial 'alternate truth'. It's interesting that the pre-denial narratives of Jim Crow 2.0, gerrymandering, and threats to democracy are very, very similar to conspiracy theories.
BTW, the Democrats narrative has been to 'lock him up'. Democrats just can't seem to do the deed. Democrats have used every facet of government and, so far, have failed to accomplish anything other than promote pre-denial narratives.
This article is a good example of a sadly prevalent tendency in modern America. Use of the internet to claim that two wildly unequal ideas are "the same".
Two years after the 2020 election, and after months of open and daily whining by Trump and his team of conspiracy nut wackjobs, and after a violent assault on the national legislature, and then 24 months, til today, of entire swaths of the right wing media universe claiming Trump was cheated, we will now have the spectacle of over half of the Republicans in the US House of Representatives on record with some level of skepticism , or worse, about the 2020 election. Nothing close to this ever happened with the so called election deniers from 2000 or 2004.
The good part of all this nonsense is that Tuesdays election showed that much of America (non MAGA) are on to this ridiculous game.
One time the powers of the Presidency did not pass to a successor peacefully. Trump's...
Can you name another time there was an organized insurrection that tried to stop the legal transfer of Presidential power?
I will take that as a no and a capitulation!
Everyone reading this can see you failed!
Was comment number #5.1 "Delusional"?
The transition is not defined as merely the instant Biden became president ... it is the process itself. It is stupid to claim that the 2020 transition was fully peaceful given the Capitol of the nation was forcibly and violently entered to disrupt Congress so that it could not complete the final act of vote certification as planned. It is stupid to claim the transition peaceful simply because the violence failed to stop the scheduled inauguration. When violence ensues as part of the process, the transition no longer can be considered fully peaceful.
Trump fucked that up; quit running interference for that miserable human being.
Denials of the obvious simply destroy the denier's credibility.
Trump supporters who violently broke and entered the Capitol to disrupt the certification proceedings of Congress failed to stop the transition but they did succeed —for the first time in our history— in breaking the peaceful process of transition with their violence inside the Capitol building.
Then what are you trying to say? Please be specific so that there is no misrepresentation.
You are still at it?
This is exactly what Trump does. He denies, deflects, etc. the blatantly obvious without a care in the world that ordinary people can see that he is flat out wrong and simply refusing to acknowledge same.
Check out his 2015 deposition ... it is something to behold.
Hmmmm....
So.... to be clear... Trump's influence is, in fact, waning.
Just checking....
One would expect that failure would result in diminished influence by Trump. Stated differently, it would be unexpected for Trump to now be more influential.
But, then again, one would have expected that a historically distinct, class-of-its-own attempt to steal a US presidential election would diminish Trump's ability to influence GoP voters. One would expect, for example, that few GoP candidates would want a lying sack of shit, unpatriotic narcissist like Trump endorsing them. One would NOT expect GoP candidates to actually repeat the Big Lie and claim that the 2020 election was rigged. Unexpected results do sometimes occur.
Would they now???? You don't say. Are we sure?? Have you checked with John on this?
However, you have it backward. The failure is the result of Trump's ever-diminishing influence, not the cause.
The phrase "one would expect" expresses likelihood, not certainty.
I agree (and have stated such in this forum); the failure is very likely to be (predominantly) a result of Trump's diminishing influence (other factors apply too such as the SCotUS decision on Roe v. Wade). It ALSO (as I have noted) will likely perpetuate (and accelerate) his waning influence. The failure should illustrate to Trump supporters that he is not a good person to follow for political success and that should (at least logically) cause his influence to plummet. Note how the word 'should' (as with the phrase "one would expect") does not express certainty.
Where in the article did the writer claim that the ideas were “the same”, I couldn’t find it.
About the only demographic that was up for the Dems is young single females
The exit polling and raw vote totals actually point to a Republican wave.
The votes were just inefficiently distributed. If you said before the elections "Republicans will win the national vote by 4 or 5 points, improve margins among women, minorities and win the suburbs" Republicans would take it every time and expect to have picked up 20 plus House seats and the Senate.
That is inaccurate. More Democrats voted...
lease post a link proving that
I'm sure it will also contain the long promised evidence the FBI was investigating Trump in 2014.
I can't find any information proving what Sean said or what Jbb said yet.
That being said you can't moan about redistricting when it doesn't go your way, but applaud when it does. Long Island had major redistricting and it did affect the incumbents. We were 50/50 between the parties and now we are totally red.
Then you don't know Long Island politics at all.
Sean,
I don't know how they figured that. I have looked extensively and that is the only group claiming that.
And as we all know, raw numbers don't matter. Just ask Hillary.
Cook Report is about as non -partisan as it gets. If you can't accept their numbers there's not much I can do.
w, raw numbers don't matter. Just ask Hillary.
Of course. But if the question is where is the red wave? the answer is Republicans got the votes, but the distribution was unluckily not in the districts they needed. The entire premise of a Republican red wave was a four or five point advantage in support. That it didn't translate into 20 plus seats is a tremendous surprise.
They have not even finished counting yet.
I know the Cook Report is non-partisan, but they can be wrong. It doesn't mean they are wrong. But one would think someone else would have the raw numbers and no one else does. Please prove me wrong.
Which might be why no one else is reporting raw numbers.
The raw vote in 2020 favored Democrats by 7.5 million votes yet the Democratic vote in 2022 exceeded all the models...
With no red wave it is implausible that more Republicans than Democrats voted on November 8th. When the votes are counted we will get exact breakdowns of who voted and how by all demographic groups. There was no red wave Nov 8th!
Then see comment 6.1 and correct Sean!
That really makes no sense.
e it is implausible that more Republicans than Democrats voted on November 8th
Yes. That's exactly my point.
t exact breakdowns of who voted and how by all demographic groups.
No. We get breakdowns of how people voted by exit polling. You understand the ballot is secret, right?
Umm. No shit.
You understand how analysts can call elections before every single vote is counted? Data analysts have looked at the first 100 million votes that have been counted and can predict with that Republicans will win the popular House when the last few million votes are totaled.
I know that the models turned out to be wrong. That way more Democrats voted than expected and that women voters and Hispanics and young people voted in much higher numbers than predicted...
That is why the red wave didn't happen!
Popular vote margins never mattered to them before, now they do. LOL.
“…is young single females.”
A demographic that will only grow with every election, every SCOTUS decision and every piece of legislation passed across the country that limits their right to self determination. Particularly as the baby boomer generation passes away and their party continues ‘choking on the splinters’.
I agree with the general thrust of the article, but you have to concede that it’s hard to play “whatabout” on this topic right now.
For years, I have defended the legitimacy of Presidents Bush and Trump. The chants of “not my president” - or similar proclamations of illegitimacy - that I saw for both Trump and Bush were bullshit, as are many of the election protests from the Left. I don’t always like who wins, but that person is always my president.
I also was particularly critical of Stacey Abrams (and Kamala Harris for repeating her nonsense in the 2020 campaign).
Additionally, the whining about how something as simple as Voter ID or a minor rearrangement of polling places is somehow disenfranchising to people of color is racist and absurd. The same is true for many other election reforms sponsored by Republicans - several of which already exist in Democratic controlled jurisdictions without complaint from the Left.
So there is a lot of hypocrisy on these issues.
Unfortunately, Trump supporters went full ham and lost their fucking minds on January 6, 2021. To make matters worse, a lot of people are still out there defending that insanity. It is, therefore, going to be a long time before the Republican Party gets to be self-righteous about election protests. That might not be fair, but it’s reality.
Completely agree.
They lost their fucking minds long before Jan 6.
Trump was never, for one second, fit to be president of the United States. That he made it is the fault of one group of people, his voters, and no one else.
The Big Lie campaign (which includes Jan 6th) illustrated Trump's abysmal character in bright bold letters for the world to see; it was beyond obvious at that point. The perfect time for the GoP to ditch Trump was when he left office. Not only did they not make that sensible move, but we saw many GoP candidates actually support the Big Lie to secure remaining Trump supporters.
Not ditching Trump when he was out of power and instead doubling down by supporting his Big Lie constitutes losing their fucking minds to me. It is one thing to suck it up and support a PotUS while in power, but to continue to support Trump when out of power given what he had just done is beyond stupid.