Democrats are expected to be good winners. After a Democratic win, the media will ask the Democrats just how bipartisan they will be going forward. Most Democrats fall for this. They will reach out to their opponent and talk about a “hard-fought race.” Even if their opponent lied about their past votes on health care and supported hateful and violent rhetoric from Trump. The Democrats will talk about being a representative for all the people in the district, not just the people who voted for them.
They will want to be a uniter, not a divider. I understand. They don’t want to be like Red Hats at a Trump rally mindlessly screaming ‘Lock him up!’ about their opponents. But what if their opponents actually committed crimes?
Red and Blue Good Sports, AP photo CBS News
Democrats are expected to be good losers. They aren’t supposed to demand investigations of voter suppression, hacking and campaign election fraud. There will be pressured to conceded rather than fight the results. The media, and the Republicans, will want concessions even when there isn’t an overwhelmingly clear winner. Brooks Brothers Riots will abound.
Howie Klein said the other day that many Democrats have to win by 6-8 points because of the gerrymandering and voter suppression. That’s insane.
But here’s the deal. I don’t want Democrats to be good losers. I want us to be suspicious about all results that weren’t projected blowouts for the Republicans. If the shoe is on the other foot, you KNOW the Republican will be demanding investigations.
I also don’t want Democrats to be “look forward not backward” winners. I want winners who don’t forget what happened and change things so the people who follow them have fair elections.
If there isn’t punishment for abuses of power and law breaking in our system the problems continue. If we don’t investigate and prosecute the problems never stop.
Also, some norms in politics–like disclosing taxes-need to be made into laws.
We need a chant that assumes innocent until proven guilty. Something that we can say about both real and false allegations of wrong doings. How about:
“A Full Investigation For Justice In the Nation!”
(Probably too many syllables, but at least it rhymes.)
Full investigations take time and our people won’t be in office until January. People have short attention spans. The good news, if you can call it that, is that Trump and the people will continue with their violent rhetoric, law breaking and lying every day, win or lose. The Trump fever won’t break if they lose. They don’t relax when they win. They will scream and cry like Trump, win or lose. We can also expect Mueller will push Trump into new levels of craziness post-election quiet period.
In The Squire of Gothos a powerful child-like being was punished by his parents who then apologized to the crew for the damage he had done. When his parents took him away he whined, “But why? I didn’t do anything wrong. I was winning, I was winning! You saw!” Sound like anyone you see on TV?
Post election we need to stay vigilant and keep track of people to investigate.
Newly elected Democrats will need to hold accountable various members of the GOP for their role in enabling this dangerous child with power. This includes holding accountable people who knew about various crimes, had the power to stop them, but didn’t. We also can’t let law-breaking resigning Republicans fly off onto Lobbying World free as a bird. Yes, I’m alleging law-breaking, but I’m not sure, that is why we need investigations.
Win or lose the GOP will do as much damage to the country as possible between now and January. We need to be prepared.
