Tipsheet

Ouch: Biggest Newspaper in Wisconsin Slams Stein, Hillary Over Hopeless Recount

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  November 30, 2016 4:01 PM

"Hopeless" isn't just my assessment; it's the clear implication from Wisconsin's Democratic election commission chairman. We highlighted this quote yesterday, but its subject matter seems relevant to this post, so here it is again:

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Trump won narrowly. Sen. Ron Johnson won fairly comfortably. It's over. The editors of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel -- no bastion of conservatism -- aren't the least bit entertained by Jill Stein's recount misadventure.  Their unbridled scorn also transfers over to the Clinton campaign for playing footsie with this "vanity project." Oof:

Jill Stein may actually believe that demanding a recount of presidential tallies in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania will ensure that “democracy” is served. More likely, she believes the Green Party will be served by her audacious PR stunt. Either way, the Stein recounts are a colossal waste of money and energy when there is not a shred of credible evidence of fraud or error and when the final vote in these three states likely will not change very much...Hillary Clinton’s campaign should have stayed far away from this nonsense. Instead, her campaign is participating in the recount. Clinton blasted Trump for refusing to say during an October debate whether he would accept the results of the election. Her campaign wrote on Twitter at the time: “Donald Trump refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election. By doing that, he’s threatening our democracy.” Does she still believe that? She should reaffirm that view.

Team Hillary is playing the role of reluctant backers of this dead-endism, supporting the recount (for no apparent solid reason), while whispering to reporters that they recognize that it's going nowhere. Good plan, guys. Terrific work all around:

There’s no push to have Clinton say anything public about the recount — or even for anyone on the campaign side to weigh in beyond occasional blog posts and tweets from campaign lawyer Marc Elias. The election, they know, is over. “Recounting votes is as American as apple pie. There’s nothing wrong with the effort, but it’s not somewhere where I would put the political energy of my groups, and I’m not,” said David Brock, a Clinton ally whose network of Democratic political firms supported the nominee’s White House bid.

Again, this whole ridiculous exercise is all based on...absolutely nothing. So why even lend any credibility to it? Two possibilities: (1) They're still so shell-shocked that they really lost to Donald Trump that they're lost at sea, desperately clinging to any buoy that floats by. (2) Hillary doesn't want to anger the core base by throwing in the towel completely, especially while the hunger for conspiratorial explanations (and bad arguments) remains to acute. Wouldn't want to alienate primary voters for the big 2020 comeback tour, now would we? I ask that question mostly in jest, but Democrats are demonstrating a well-honed ability to double-down on radicalism and failure these days: