Republicans, take note: While it’s supposedly a major party foul to question the results of an election (at least when Republicans do it), it’s apparently just fine to undo the results when they don’t go your way. That should be really useful information going forward.
A couple of prominent Democrats made those rules very clear in recent days, and, whaddayaknow, there wasn’t a peep out of our great democracy defenders in the dying news media.
In an interview Saturday with The New York Times, the Democrats’ latest effort to look like they don’t hate straight white men — Senate candidate Graham Platner — said when his party’s grip on power is threatened, Democrats should simply eliminate the opposition by changing the established rules and laws as they currently exist. “When you look at American history,” he said, when you look at moments in which the nation was in crisis and when large programs were necessary, when things needed to be protected or when new things needed to be built, it wasn’t enough to simply stay within the norms of the institutions as they had been built recently.”
He said it’s necessary for Democrats “to create new forms of power,” which is another way of saying “force everyone to do what we want even when we lose.”
This is why they talk about impeaching judges, packing the Supreme Court, and otherwise fixing elections, all so that even when they lose, they have it their way. Heads, you lose. Tails, they win.
Just a couple days prior in California, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is all but certain to run for president, helpfully weighed in on how his party should respond if the coming election to choose his successor results in a Republican win. “We all have agencies,” he said. “We can shape the future. … I don’t anticipate this need to be the case, but there is a break-the-glass scenario. … And there’s many people that have a deep understanding of what it would look like if Democrats were locked out, and we’re gonna do everything to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ll leave it at that.”
In other words, if a Democrat fails to win the governorship under the state’s existing election rules, the party will attempt to ensure a Democrat is seated as governor anyway. Democracy in action!
They claim they’re protecting democracy, but they’re always willing to abandon it. But, as they find out over and over again, this is a two-way street. Whatever abuse they hope to inflict on their political opponents can just as surely be done back to them.
