After impeaching President Donald Trump for the so-called insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, House Democrats want to, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, "establish a bipartisan agreement for a 9/11-style commission to report on the facts and the causes of the attack." Before the Senate vote to establish this commission, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, "The American people will see where every member stands: on the side of truth or on the side of Donald Trump's big lie."
Having already pronounced Jan. 6 an "insurrection" sparked by Trump's "big lie," Democrats like Pelosi and Schumer tell us, with a straight face, they only want "the facts," which they did not need before impeaching Trump. About Trump's so-called big lie, Democrats insist it "undermines our democracy" and "compromises the integrity of the vote." These are the same Democrats who, for four-plus years, allowed Hillary Clinton to call the 2016 election "stolen" and Trump "illegitimate." Somehow, our republic survived.
How have claims made by Clinton and others affected the way Democrats view the 2016 election?
The nearly 1,000-page Senate report on 2016 election interference found, "The Committee has not seen any evidence that vote tallies were manipulated or that voter registration information was deleted or modified." The Senate report reached no conclusion on whether Russian interference affected the outcome of the election. President Barack Obama's Department of Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, testified, "I am not in a position to know whether the successful Russian government-directed hacks of the DNC and elsewhere did in fact alter public opinion and thereby alter the outcome of the presidential election." But Johnson's testimony did not stop California Sen. Dianne Feinstein from saying the interference "altered the outcome" of the election.
According to a 2018 YouGov poll, 66% of Democrats believe that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected." And according to a 2018 Gallup poll, 78% of Democrats believe Russian interference "changed the outcome of the election." Again, Democrats completely ignore the report's finding that the Russians changed not a single vote tally. Again, the report reached no conclusion on whether the Russian interference changed the outcome of the 2016 election, but Democrats either do not care or do not believe what the report says about vote tallies and the election outcome.
Given the rejection of these findings, one must ask whether Democrats pushing for a Jan. 6 commission truly want "the facts about what happened." Because it looks like this is just another Trump Derangement Syndrome-driven attempt to smear the man they fear will come roaring back in 2024.
Why do Democrats remain so fearful of Trump? Remember these numbers: 4, 6, 8 and 12.
In 2008, when Barack Obama got elected, his Republican opponent received 4% of the Black vote. When Obama won reelection, the Republican got 6% of the Black presidential vote. When Trump ran in 2016, he received 8% of the Black vote. When Trump ran for reelection in 2020, Republicans received 12% of the Black vote, a 50% increase over the previous four years. Republicans haven't reached that percentage of the Black vote since 1980, when President Ronald Reagan got 14%.
Quite simply, this 4%, 6%, 8%, 12% trendline gives Democrats nightmares. These numbers are moving in the wrong direction. So, Biden and the Democrats push the "systemic racism" theme despite the election of a Black man who received a greater percentage of the white vote than Democrat John Kerry, who ran four years earlier. Democrats push this narrative despite the election of Black mayors, police chiefs and superintendents of schools in most of America's big cities. Democrats double down on telling Blacks that they are victims, whether they know it or not, and on telling whites that they are oppressors, whether they know it or not.
If, for votes, Democrats must slander America for its "systemic racism" and cause greater tension and mistrust between Blacks and whites and between cops and Blacks, so be it.