https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/11/a-bit-more-divisiveness-if-you-please/
“The presidential election is being put to bed with the usual lullaby of stock phrases enjoining voters to set aside their election day differences and reunite in amity and good fellowship. That Democrats didn’t do that after 2016 isn’t mentioned, which further illustrates why Trump is such a despised oddity — a Republican who declined to play by the Left’s rules and gave as good as he got.”
I wonder how many supposedly conservative or right-wing commentators really understand what’s been going on in the US. Even after four years! At the time of writing it looks as though Biden will snatch, possibly steal, the Presidency. I have no doubt that fraud and cheating took place. As a general rule, we already know that political machines cheat and lie. We already know the Democrats have done this countless times during the past five years. Why would we think that party apparatchiks in swing states would suddenly recoil at the thought of doing something — anything! — underhand?
To say this, of course, marks you as a conspiracy theorist in the eyes of some, so, in order to defuse that criticism, some commentators take the line that ‘yes, probably some cheating went on but not on the scale to affect the overall outcome’. Well, if the perpetrators didn’t think they could affect the outcome, why would they bother? It would only take a few thousand votes in one swing state to turn the election. Do we think that is beyond the people who gave us the Russiagate hoax? That said, I doubt that the courts will overturn a Biden victory. So where to from here?
The suggestion from most commentators is that Trump should graciously concede, giving ‘loser’s consent’ to an administration fronted by a senile, arguably corrupt, time-server on the basis that this will heal divisions within the country. Those people clearly do not get the Trump phenomenon. They acknowledge– some of them, anyway — Trump’s impressive list of achievements but wonder why he can’t be more collegial, more empathetic, more ‘presidential’. Perhaps they are thinking of former Republican leaders who were attacked, ridiculed, maligned and misrepresented without uttering a peep of protest. George W. Bush springs immediately to mind.