Every conservative right now “Well, Trump is just using all his legal options. It took Al Gore 38 days to concede. There’s no difference.”
These Al Gore comparisons are dead wrong for so many reasons…
1. The vote in Florida truly was less than a 1,000 vote difference and at one point only 537 votes. There are more people in a Costco store around the holidays than decided the Presidency.
2. Jeb Bush was the Governor of Florida…do you think he might’ve had a conflict of interest? Katherine Harris (Florida Secretary of State) was George W. Bush’s campaign chair in Florida.
3. Florida was called for Gore on election night. Then Fox News said “no, Bush won it.” It changed the entire race and the fate of the Presidency…one call from Fox News.
4. The reason it took Al Gore 38 days to concede is because the recount was fought so vigorously. If they had just done a timely recount of the Florida votes (including literally tens of thousands of provisional ballots like the infamous hanging chads and dimpled chads), it wouldn’t have taken him that long.
5. Trump is not facing one recount in one state in an election where he’s also won the national popular vote, quite the opposite. He’s clearly lost the popular vote by millions, and he would have to find thousands of additional Trump ballots in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia to flip all three of them. [Nevada, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are not narrow enough to even qualify for recounts.]
6. Seeing all the challenges it would take to get a different result, I now see why Hillary conceded so quickly in 2016 rather than ask for recounts in three states she lost by similar margins to Trump.
7. The vast majority of Trump’s lawsuits have already been rejected, and he has until Friday to agree to pay the money for a Wisconsin recount. If he won’t, then I don’t see any Democratic path forward other than “I want the electoral college to throw away the will of the people, and choose me anyway.”
8. The Republican Georgia Secretary of State has said he was pressured by Lindsey Graham to disqualify Biden ballots. He’s also been demanded by Perdue and Loeffler to resign his post seemingly because they did not like the result of this race. Even though he took the highly unusual step of saying there would be a hand recount of all the votes even before the first vote was completed.
The longer this goes on, the more pressure is being put on people to mess with the numbers. This also sets a terrible example in the future when Secretaries of State may be tempted to break the rules to avoid the blowback the GA SoS has gotten.
9. It would be different if Trump weren’t a notorious frivolous lawsuit filer. The man has been involved in over 1200 lawsuits, many of them ones he filed for the wildest of reasons. Point being, he will keep this going until the Earth crashes into the Sun if he can get other people to pay for it. And there’s every reason to believe this is more about getting money from his base to pay off campaign debt than actually having a snowball’s chance to overturn this election.
10. It would also be different if he weren’t a notorious sore loser.
Trump said the 2016 Iowa Caucus was “rigged” against him. He said the 2016 Wisconsin primary was “rigged” against him. He said the 2012 election was “rigged” and that Obama didn’t really win. He said the 2016 election was “rigged” until he won…and then it wasn’t rigged anymore. He said he won all “legal votes” in 2016, and would’ve won the popular vote if illegals hadn’t voted. He said The Emmy’s were “rigged” against him when “The Apprentice” didn’t win. And—no surprise—he’s said this election was “rigged” months before it even took place.
When he is saying this election was “rigged” before it even happened, it’s very hard to see that same man then saying “welp, we had a good, clean race, and Biden clearly won.” In fact, it’s impossible to see him saying that no matter what the votes show.
11. Al Gore was merely asking for a recount in Florida, a race he narrowly lost.
Trump is saying the election was “rigged,” only votes cast for him were legal, and casting doubt on the entire system, absent any evidence or a coherent argument of why he thinks that other than “I lost, so it must be fraud.”
12. Because I do not think Trump will ever agree Biden won or ever concede, he’s trying to make Biden look like an illegitimate President before he even takes office—and many Trump voters will treat him that way.
Trump did the same thing to Barack Obama through a mixture of Birtherism and also baseless claims that he didn’t win in 2012.
13. Trump voters already believe far too many wild conspiracies (Sandy Hook hoax, CoVid hoax, “Pizzagate,” “Obamagate,” QAnon, Birtherism, and some even believe Biden had Seal Team 6 killed to hide the fact Bin Laden is still alive). Trump refusing to concede and saying the election is rigged will undoubtedly be a conspiracy that makes Biden seem illegitimate…without a shred of evidence to feel this way.
14. Unlike Bill Clinton in 2000, Trump has refused to allow Biden to have the daily security briefing. This is—obviously—a huge problem since Biden has won this race, and Trump’s legal options are dwindling other than outright asking the electoral college to pick him regardless of the vote. Biden not getting the daily security briefing AND his transition team being blocked from things like the CoVid task force is very different than Clinton agreeing to allow Bush to have access to the security briefing in 2000.
15. CoVid is raging. The economy is only getting worse. Pence and Pompeo and most Senate Republicans have refused to say Trump won’t be POTUS in two months. And while Trump has refused to attend CoVid briefings, he has fired the Secretary of Defense, installed incompetent loyalists at the Pentagon, is actively threatening to start a war with Iran, and asking if he can drop nuclear weapons there.
Meaning, by keeping up the delusion that Trump will continue to be President for a second term, Biden’s transition team is being actively blocked, and Biden will take office with sky-high CoVid deaths, unemployment, a possible war with Iran nobody wants, and possibly the first hostile transition of power in US history. By arguing against the reality that Trump has lost, it’s just making America’s life harder.
Bonus reason: What about the next aspiring tyrant who is actually competent and beloved within the Republican Party? If Trump can get this close to refusing to step down, will the next person actually be successful?
All great reasons and NO they are not at all alike. Republicans just need to bitch.