In a democracy, few things are as important as ensuring the fairness of the electoral process, since without open and fair elections the public may well doubt the authority of those who seek to govern. Such doubt has the potential to act as a cancer, eating away at, and eventually destroying the legitimacy of any government. Given the interest that we all have – or should have – in a stable government, it therefore follows that questioning the legitimacy of an election should only occur where there can be little doubt that the election was not fair, and that the lack of fairness actually changed the results of the election.
With these principals in mind, what the Left has done in the four weeks since the election is all the more remarkable. By “Left” I mean the National Democratic Party, its allies in academia and the media, and the Obama Administration. Together, since November 8, they have launched a three pronged attack on the election of Donald Trump which has been without precedent in this country.
The first prong of the attack, launched immediately after the election, was to attack the legitimacy of the Electoral College as a means of determining the winner of presidential elections, and to simultaneously “persuade” Electors to vote for Hillary Clinton where that Elector’s state voted for Donald Trump. The means used in the attempt to “persuade” Electors have included various levels of harassment, and in some cases threats of violence, all of which have been implicitly endorsed by the Left through its silence. That an Obama Administration actively committed to the election of Hillary Clinton has so far refused to investigate the attempt to coerce electors to vote for Hillary Clinton should not come as any surprise, but that does not make it any less of a disgrace, or any less of a threat to our democracy.
The second prong of the attack, launched shortly after the start of the assault on the Electoral College and the Electors, was the demand for a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by Jill Stein, who won roughly 1% of the vote in those states. Stein is clearly working in active cooperation with Hillary Clinton and her campaign, and the demand for a recount was not based upon any credible evidence that fraud had been committed. Stein admitted as much in an interview with CNN where she was also asked the following regarding the lack of any evidence of fraud: “But without having the evidence, aren’t you actually contributing, perhaps unfairly, to that lack of confidence in the system itself?” The CNN interviewer likely missed the whole point of the recount effort, which is to undermine the “confidence in the system itself.”
The third prong of the attack was launched within the last week, and is based on the factually unsubstantiated allegation that Russia interfered in the election to elect Trump. This attack was launched by the Obama Administration, and it should be abundantly clear at this point why the Obama Administration will not investigate efforts to coerce Electors to disregard the votes of their states and to vote for Hillary Clinton. The vehicle for this particular attack is the CIA, and is based on the assertion that Julian Assange works for Russia, and at its request released thousands of emails damaging to Democrats in general and Hillary Clinton in particular. There are no facts to support this contention, only the assertion that Russia had the motive to do so since it would allegedly fare better under a Trump Presidency than under a Clinton Presidency. Of course there are no facts to support this contention either.
The FBI is not buying any of this, and it was reported that in testimony before Congress last week, a senior FBI counterintelligence official refused to corroborate the CIA’s claims, describing those claims as “fuzzy and ambiguous”.
Common sense also suggests these claims to be false. The Democrats in general and Hillary Clinton in particular have never challenged the authenticity of the released emails, and their argument seems to be that the results of the election are invalid because Russia revealed to America who Hillary Clinton really is and what she stands for. Moreover, even if you find it difficult to believe Assange’s repeated claims that he is not working for Russia, if he were, why would he be living the life of a vagabond, uncomfortably confined to the Peruvian Embassy with no means to leave, rather than living large in Russia at Putin’s expense?
The common thread running through all of these attacks by the Left is a win at all cost mentality. What has the Left so infuriated is that its means and methods were fully exposed in the lead up to the election, and they lost. Having been defeated at the ballot box, the Left is now embarked on an attempt to either steal the election from Trump, or render the results so uncertain in the eyes of the public that he will be unable to govern. For the Left, the overriding goals are either power, or in its absence, the ability to deny anyone else the power to govern, their belief being that a crippled president won’t be re-elected. That the Left’s craving for power might cost us the political stability on which our relative peace and prosperity depend, and which is so uncommon for most of the world, is of secondary importance only. For, when power is your overriding goal, and you would rather “rule in hell” than suffer rule by anyone else, then playing with fire is worth the risk, because you alone will have the benefits of power to sooth the burns that we all will inevitably suffer.