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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   27332 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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They did not. When Hillary Clinton says Trump is an "illegitimate President," I just don't understand how you conclude that this is "superficially similar" language with a "real and very important difference."

Because of other actions surrounding what they said? While I really don't like that Hillary said the election was "stolen" and that Trump was "illegitimate", I still think there's a big difference between her comments and what Trump did. Hillary conceded almost immediately after the 2016 results were in. To my knowledge, Trump still hasn't conceded for 2020. Hillary never made phone calls demanding governors and secretaries of state "find" enough votes for them to win. Trump did. Hillary never egged on her followers to go to the capitol to protest or disrupt the electoral count. Trump, obviously, did.

To the contrary, I would say that it translated to the political class very well, in a variety of ways.

You linked an article where the Dems put forward abolishing the EC in favor of a direct popular vote (or some other system), but this doesn't seem germane to the argument that EverythingIsFine is making. There wasn't a broad rejection of election results by D leaders. The closest was probably Stacey Abrams refusing to concede in Georgia, but 1) she got a ton of pushback from this from her own party, and 2) even in this most extreme example, she didn't try to interfere directly like Trump did.

No: you are treating Democratic attempts to ensure their own permanent victory as "fix" while treating parallel Republican attempted to ensure their own permanent victory as "change."

What Trump did was fundamentally different from normal election reform, and thus his actions deserve to be seen differently. Dems saying we should abolish the EC (in future elections) or Rs saying we should require IDs to vote (in future elections) are very different proposals from Trump's "we need to overturn the votes from certain states (in an election that just happened).

  • -14

I am utterly unmoved by your repeated resort to "it's different when we do it," which is why I asked you the question I was interested in hearing an answer to. That you have written two responses to my downstream tangents while avoiding a direct answer to my direct question strengthens my impression that your original question was disingenuous and "boo outgroup" rather than sincere, as I had hoped.

Because ultimately if you're actually interested in the government (or anyone!) doing something to convince Republicans of the legitimacy of election outcomes, such that no one riots, or questions the legitimacy of the proceedings, or attempts arcane procedural shenanigans... that same "something" should presumably also prevent riots, or questions, or shenanigans, from Democrats.

If you can't think of a way to prevent Democrats from rioting in case of a Trump win in November, then why in God's name would you think it should be possible to prevent Republicans from doing so in case Kamala wins?

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