Tipsheet

Sore Loser Conspiracy Theorist: No, I Can't Say the 2016 Election Was 'Legitimate'

Once upon a time, Hillary Clinton thought the prospect of a presidential candidate declining to pledge to absolutely accept the sanctity of certified election results was "horrifying."  She said so in a general election debate in order to attack Donald Trump -- who, at the time, was (recklessly) leaving the door open to challenge the outcome of an election most people expected him to lose.  Chief among these people was Hillary Clinton.  That's why she excoriated his dodging and noncommittal answers on the question as dangerous to American democracy.  Watch:

[Clinton] said she found “horrifying” the intimation he would not accept the will of the people on Nov. 8...In a striking breach of the country’s long-standing tradition, he twice declined when pressed to say whether he would accept the outcome of the election.  "I will look at it at the time," Trump said. "I’ll keep you in suspense.” There was a gasp from the audience inside the debate hall. "That is not the way our democracy works," Clinton said. "He is denigrating, he is talking down our democracy. And I for one am appalled that somebody who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that kind of a position.”

Times have changed.  In a new interview with left-wing magazine Mother Jones, Clinton refuses to concede that the election she lost had been legitimate.  Horrifying?


By "voter suppression," Clinton is referring in large measure to constitutional and widely popular voter ID laws.  This is a ridiculous reason to question the legitimacy of an election.  In fact, verifying that more voters are who they said they are actually augments the legitimacy of an election.  But her primary argument here is "Russia!" -- whose attempted interference in the election is being investigated from all angles, as it should be.  But there is not a shred of evidence that a single vote tally was changed by the Russians, despite debunked conspiracy theories believed by most Democrats.  This is a succinct and comprehensive smack-down of Mrs. Clinton's "appalling" efforts at "talking down our democracy" by a fellow at the left-leaning Brookings Institute:


She delivered additional reality checks for liberals who were "upset" by her statement of fact:


I'll leave you with this: