The campaign didn’t end on election night. That’s the message for America from the bipartisan uniparty headquartered in Washington, D.C. - the one that Trump supporters voted to evict on November 8th. Having lost the election they’re back with a new narrative, the sole goal of which is to undermine the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency before he even takes office.
We shouldn’t be surprised by the lengths to which the Left will go to retain their grip on power. As a people for whom politics largely has replaced religion as the source of meaning in their lives, it’s all they’ve got. But their enablers and fellow-travelers on the NeverTrump Right are more surprising and, in their own way, more pathetic.
Recall that Hillary Clinton was more than a little reticent about conceding defeat in the face of an overwhelming loss. Her much touted but evanescent “blue wall” collapsed becoming the least effective defensive obstacle since France’s Maginot Line. Reporting since the election tells us that she was in an uncontrollable rage and could not even muster the grace to address the thousands of supporters waiting for her in the Jacob Javitz Center in New York or the millions of Americans watching on television.
Shortly after the election the Clintons and their friends on the Left allied themselves with Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s absurd effort to recount ballots in a handful of states that Clinton lost (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan). Stein claimed that her motivation was to “ensure the integrity of our elections.” Tellingly, she had no interest in the integrity of elections in states that Clinton won by surprisingly small margins like New Hampshire and Minnesota.
Stein asserted in multiple lawsuits seeking to force recounts (she missed the statutory deadline to request a recount in Pennsylvania and so was forced into Court) that voting machines had been hacked. Every court that heard these claims denied them because of a lack of evidence. Got that? Stein and Clinton had their day in court and were denied relief because their claims lacked evidence. In fact, U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond said in his ruling that the claim of hacking “borders on the irrational.”
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When the recount strategy fell apart for a lack of evidence the narrative morphed from hacked voting machines to “Russian hackers” and a “hacked election.” It’s a claim that’s meant to sound terrible while remaining vague enough to avoid refutation. It’s also a phrase that doesn’t really mean anything and that’s the point. Because its real purpose is to stoke despondent Clinton voters’ resentments and leave them with the impression that Donald Trump’s presidency is illegitimate. The claims are a savvy way of preparing the political battlefield and give Democrats some leverage in their uphill battle to stop Trump from enacting his agenda.
Still, on the eve of Donald Trump’s presidency, a presidency that is paired with a Republican controlled Congress and can accomplish so much good, it is frustrating to watch stubborn NeverTrump conservative intellectuals and pundits play the part of useful idiots. The wildly overblown claims of a “hacked election” are a totally transparent trap baited and set by the Left to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency and stymie his agenda. But their ideology, which has been reduced to mere negation of all things Trump, blinds them to the trap set by the likes of Van Jones, John Podesta, and Chuck Schumer.
The claims of a “hacked election” are nothing more than warmed over stories about the emails from the DNC and John Podesta’s Gmail account that WikiLeaks released in the summer and fall. The entire country knew all about this before the election and concluded that the story was not who did the hacking - everyone knew the emails had been hacked - but the information contained in the emails.
The fact that the scandals, dirty tricks, and potentially illegal activity revealed by those emails turned many Americans off on the notoriously distrusted and disliked Hillary Clinton cannot be blamed on Vladimir Putin, WikiLeaks, or anyone else. The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the Democrats themselves.
Ultimately, their goal is to take a scalp or two by defeating some of Trump's cabinet nominees, especially Senator Jeff Sessions who is widely hated and feared on the Left, and to slow the repeal of Obamacare. The only way they can do this is by driving a wedge between Trump and some of the weaker members of the Republican caucus in Congress. They hope that endless repetition of the “hacked election” claim will leave behind a taint of illegitimacy that will become the wedge they can use. This is especially true in the Senate where Democrats have their sites on senators like McCain, Flake, Graham, and Snowe who have demonstrated a preternatural desire to buck their own party.
Republicans should see Democrats’ claims for what they are: a brazen attempt to gain political advantage by creating a phony crisis of confidence. Trump voters won a resounding victory on November 8th but NeverTrump conservatives threaten to lose the peace by playing into the Democrats’ cynical attempt to blame foreign intelligence agencies, rogue states, and lone wolves for their loss. Hacking of government systems and political operatives has been happening for decades. It’s an important security issue but it’s not news. The real story is the corruption and shady deals that the hacked emails exposed. The American people understand this - it’s one of the reasons they elected Donald Trump. Let’s hope Trump’s critics on the Right figure this out before they hand Democrats any unearned victories.
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