George W. Bush didn’t do this. Bill Clinton didn’t do this. We shouldn’t tolerate Biden and Schumer doing it, either.
Following the president’s big speech in Georgia, I asked if the press was ready to put this question to Joe Biden about his hyperbolic claims in support of the Democrats’ voting and elections bills: Does Biden truly believe that, if these bills do not pass, America will not have democratic elections in 2022? Will he reject their outcomes as illegitimate?
Well, today he was asked that question, and his answer was, basically, that it depends if Democrats win:
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. . . . I think it would easily be illegitimate. The prospect of it being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reformed passed.
This does not seem accidental. It comes on the heels of Chuck Schumer’s saying about passing Electoral Count Act reforms, “That makes no sense. If you’re going to rig the game and say, ‘Oh, we’ll count the rigged game accurately,’ what good is that?” When the Senate majority leader says our elections are a “rigged game” and the president says “it depends” when asked if he’ll accept the outcome of the upcoming elections, that is a dire sign for the party in power’s respect for democracy. With Biden hitting a new low in approval ratings today, over two dozen House Democrats already retiring, and all sorts of ominous portents in shifts in party registration and polling among key groups such as Hispanics and young voters, Democrats know that they are likely in for a world of hurt in November. By the leaders of their party attacking our election system as “rigged” in advance of that, they are playing with fire.
It is not an entirely new thing, of course. There were multiple occasions of Democrats and their pundit class doing a similar “if Trump wins, it was rigged” pre-spin in 2020. Some examples:
Joe Biden just now in Erie, PA: "The only way we lose this is by the chicanery going on with regard to polling places.”
— Tyler Pager (@tylerpager) October 10, 2020
“The President's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won,” lead impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff says during his opening statement at the Senate impeachment trial. https://t.co/14mXcvjVzh pic.twitter.com/F2OZhLYx7v
— CNN News Central (@NewsCentralCNN) January 22, 2020
President Trump Needs To Be Break a Lot of Laws to Get Reelected in 2020. Everyone Shld Be Prepared Because He Definitely Will. https://t.co/KMf38Fgk91 via @TPM
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 17, 2019
it’s very clear what the game is here
step 1: openly rig elections
step 2: shield the offender from political or legal accountability
step 3: “win” the rigged election
step 4: “We have a mandate from the American people."— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) January 31, 2020
So they're just going to roll the dice and hope we have a real election in November? https://t.co/UFhREHsrRs
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) April 8, 2020
What's happening in Wisconsin right now is a dry run.
If the pandemic is still raging this fall, Republicans in the state will resist making voting safer — to salvage the presidency for Trump — even if it puts lives at risk.@paulwaldman1 and me:https://t.co/ttoxC9Fzaf
— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) April 6, 2020
Democrats have a long history of refusing to accept the legitimacy of defeats, and a culture of doing so is now deeply entrenched in their party. But this is still an alarming escalation. Democracy only works when both sides grasp the core republican virtue of accepting defeats. The fact that Donald Trump was the sorest of sore losers should not immunize Biden from criticism on this; if anything, it illustrates the dangers of going down this path. This isn’t normal. George W. Bush didn’t do this. Bill Clinton didn’t do this. We shouldn’t tolerate Biden and Schumer doing it, either.