On cue, knee-jerk NJ scam: Loser yells fraud, balks at concession & threatens recount. Yawn.
Virginia election results demonstrate how a slick culture warrior, Glenn Youngkin—distanced from Trump against a tired incumbent in an off-year—scores a purple state’s governorship. But there’s a more important, if less widely-covered message – and bad news for the Authoritarian-in-chief. The eerie absence of right-wing howls when its latest, neophyte fat cat “conquers” the “corrupt” voting system proves that GOP hypocrisy expands with the infinite cosmos.
Despite months of Trumpist “fraud” fulminations, the right without challenges endorses the instantly-hallowed, though unchanged election tabulation system. We learn again that Trumpist “election fraud” not only surpasses his other cons, but has nothing to do with illegality or voters or elections—only how connivers try to cheat (and fail) without finesse, planning or smarts. Echoing the most dismal presidency, predators are caught in their own trap.
Second act: in New Jersey, gubernatorial loser Jack Ciattarelli indicts the results, calling the media “irresponsible” for certifying the loser. Quick summons to “anyone” to forward “allegations of fraud” to an “integrity hotline set up by the NJGOP.” Like Texas’ vigilante abortion law, behold true populist poppycock, as if random interrupters can unearth fake fraud. Like Trump, this NJ con artist won’t concede until convinced “every legal vote is counted” (since he couldn’t lose without “theft”)—and that means “a recount or audit”—equally defied if the results match. It’s the Idiotic Trump Effect as witless schemers squeal “steal.”
How simple is this schtick: if you lose, you just squawk loudly. This gang sniffs our “deception” quicker than a supremacist makes his last Lost Cause gasp: “Don’t retreat, just reload.” Dems on the other hand acknowledge reality, concede, and thus escape this self-made, sectarian quick sand. Who says there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats? On voting integrity alone, the gap matches that between free and slave states, with today’s thugs “enslaved” to their unbelievably weak manipulations. As Wash Post’s Dana Milbank quips on the NJ nonsense, “maybe [Ciattarelli] can save us the wait and just skip to the part where his followers storm the state capitol.”
Thus does the Idiotic Trump Effect (ITE) become a double conspiracy to defraud—not just boldface lying to rig the results but a torpedo to sink democratic values. Thus do dirty tricks sabotage majority rule, waving about court-crashing litigation whenever they lose. How simple that makes campaigning: only right-wingers need apply as only they deserve to win. Thus do elections descend to a discriminatory, crooked club, driven by well-heeled, extremist loudmouths ready to violate law and justice. The first fascist ploy—de-legitimatize fair voting.
Never retreat, just recount, forever
Just imagine if normal people imitated this lawless flummery. What shreds anyone’s good faith quicker than falsely bellowing fraud, then using money and courts to maximize the mayhem? By this logic, we should audit every VA village and hamlet, confirming that only certified, unassailable citizens voted. Oh, but that spells government invasion of privacy. Good news: if Democrats fostered a fierce protest at the VA state house, at least there’d be no fatalities. Only white supremacists get away with racist violence. Latest MAGA hats, “Never retreat, just recount forever and forever.” Thus disrupted “elections” never end, only fragile democracy.
What’s newsworthy here are the non-barking dogs: Trumpers only throw fits when they lose. Unapologetically accepting the VA win reinforces their profound immorality. So, will the embraced Virginia results reverse the majority of Republicans buying into the Big 2020 Lie? Don’t hold your breath: the only Trumper consistency (hobgoblins of little minds) is the irrational loyalty to the clown, the ultimate in whining hobgoblin.
Per Newsweek and the Business Insider story, let’s heed the Trump logic: forget wild exaggerations about Democratic cheating, Youngkin now only won because of MAGA voters. “All these people that turned out last night. Look, without MAGA, (Youngkin) would have lost by 15 points,” Trump said. “More, I think more than that.” Certainly, MAGA voters helped Youngkin but 15 points in a purple state is delusional. But it gets worse, with this jaw-dropping whopper: this unrelated 2021 result confirms Trump won Virginia in 2020: “Yeah, I don’t believe that we lost there. I don’t believe we lost Virginia,” Trump said, “What a mess, what a mess, this election process. Now I don’t believe it. They said Virginia’s blue. I never believed it was blue.” Illogic reigns supreme.
Trump the miracle worker?
Yep, the dumbest political analyst in world history is certain that, despite a double digit ’20 loss, he was just as popular against Biden as Youngkin against this much weaker Democrat. That’s called brassy revisionist history since the first election confirmed what Trumpers can’t stand: reality. As always Trump knows better than everyone else, still late last month “not a believer in the integrity of Virginia’s elections.” “We’ve got all kinds of irregularities right now going on.” Yes, the idiot beat goes on and on, into tiresome oblivion.
And not only was Trump cheated out of his 2020 VA triumphs, no one else can liberate us all from a “very corrupt election process in this country, and I’ve exposed that.” Hold the applause: what Trump exposed is how a corrupt authoritarian loser could attempt to corrupt legitimate elections with trumped up lies about a non-existent, overblown theft. In fact, between 1900 and 2020, Virginia voters chose Democratic presidential candidates 17 times and Republicans 14 times, according to Ballotpedia. Virginia has voted blue for the last four presidential elections.
Youngkin is no innocent here: before securing the GOP nomination in May, he wouldn’t say that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election and pushed for a “commission on election integrity.” He avoided a close Trump embrace, but he’s simply a slicker Trump (and far shrewder campaigner and better business tycoon): he knew how to manipulate loaded wedge issues without offending voters. Though Critical Race theory is not taught in VA schools, Youngkin made it sound like that’s the only history taught. He bettered Trump by corralling the racists, fundamentalists, and the scared suburban parents tired of a Clinton-Obama hack who, like Hilary in 2016, ran a bad campaign, was blind to negatives, and defensively fell back on blunted, outworn messages.
VA helps the party, but not Trump
But if hypocritically accepting this now pristine VA election results doesn’t undermine Trump’s and the GOP’s staggering audacity – contradicting a year of appalling lies, one wonders what will. Even dim right-wingers will eventually get the void of defense for the bad faith that “accepts” elections only when your side wins. VA for me helps expose the contradictions and failures of Trump’s most appalling scam.
All in all, however VA is bad news for the Democratic Party, still incredibly bereft at effective messaging, where’s much good news for the Trump fanatics, exposed on the national stage as indefensible liars and manipulators? Further, barely winning an off-year election in a purple state against a vulnerable incumbent does not predict next year’s election, nor Dem chances in the distant 2024.
As there’s no end to Trump whining and infamy, so there’s no end to the national story that exposes how unprincipled is Trump and the unthinkable horrors of a second term. Mounting negatives make Trump an un-electable national candidate and, if nominated, that looks increasingly like a gift to any Democrat, untarnished by scandals, who can walk and chew gum at the same time. After all, the Big Lie is only the most prominent, self-sustained Trump scandal. Still on tap are shocking exposes when the full, gruesome, horror story of the self-incriminating January 6 insurrection rears its ugly head. Bring it on: nothing good here for Trump. The Dems have time to pass legislation that helps people and hire some decent messaging advisors. We should all live so long.
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