Between 1948 and 2012, there were 16 losing candidates in presidential elections. Half were Democrats, half Republicans. Not one whined about losing the election. Not one cast doubt on the results and claimed they won when they obviously lost. Each accepted the results with grace. None attempted to subvert our democracy by taking their losses to court, hoping the courts, including
the Supreme Court, would violate the Constitution and overthrow the duly elected victor, as has Trump. Even Al Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000 by 250,000 votes, bowed out with grace when the Supreme Court intervened in Florida and gave the election to George W. Bush.
Not one hopped up their bases and encouraged lawlessness among them. Not one directed their followers’ animosity against the “elites,” as did Trump, who pulled the wool over his followers’ eyes by claiming the Democrats were “coastal elites.” I guess being a failed New York millionaire, with millionaires in his cabinet, doesn’t seem to resonate as being elite. Trump’s millionaire cabinet members were Trump’s elite cronies. And the last time I looked, New York was on the East Coast.
None of the aforementioned losers brought the country to a constitutional crisis, as did the 126 obsequious Republican representatives (including Gianforte) who were afraid of bucking the whiner-in-chief and who joined the Texas lawsuit to overthrow Biden’s victory? Wasn’t this another attempt to subvert our 230 year-old Constitution? How many of Trump’s groupies- -without any evidence of fraud to the contrary–have sloganized that the election was stolen? And what kind of adolescent person Tweets that he won the election when he lost the popular vote by seven million and the Electoral College as well by a good margin.
Much work remains to regain our democracy.
Jack Kligerman
Bozeman
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letter to the Editor 12/20/20