I’m not going to focus on Joe Biden in this column, as tempting as that is. Because I am a well-raised Midwesterner, and have been taught not to speak ill of the dead.
Instead, I’d like to address what seems like the Left’s main strategy for this election: issuing dire warnings about the impending doomsday that will surely befall the nation if Trump wins in November.
When I heard the first Democrat or MSM empty head say that – I can’t remember who it was, since there have been so many – I thought it was the most desperate and stupid thing I’d ever heard. Not just because it’s transparently false, but because it couldn’t possibly work.
During the 2016 campaign that was at least a plausible strategy. Because of Trump’s wild, undisciplined talk and lack of a political track record, people could rightly worry about how he’d perform in office. Would he really try to lock Hillary up? Who knew?
Many conservatives shared my concerns that Trump might actually be a RINO in a fighter’s disguise. He had been a lifelong Democrat, worked closely with and donated to Dems all over NY, was pro-choice, etc. (Of course I was thrilled when he turned out to be mostly conservative, especially during his first three years in office and before the covid/Fauci problem hurt him.)
But now, after he served four years with very good results (again, excepting the unprecedented pandemic year), it doesn’t make sense to try to scare the voters with a hypothetical. There’s a reason that he got 11 million more votes in 2020 than he had in 2016! People saw what he did, and they saw the results, and they liked most of it.
But the Dems can’t give it up. DeNiro’s hysterical comment is typical: “If he ever gets elected, he will never leave!”
He did get elected, you mook! And he left!
The example that has stuck in my mind came from Bill Maher, a reasonably smart, obnoxious lefty who has been at least intermittently sane this election cycle. He’s very well-informed about politics, but he still has giant blind spots which demonstrate that he only follows lefty “news” sources, and thus is actually badly misinformed about many issues.
For example, Maher apparently believes that the small group of unarmed January 6th protestors were a serious insurrectionist threat, and that all of the protestors were violent would-be usurpers, all evidence to the contrary!
When he did a show with Dave Rubin last year, he also insisted that Hillary never denied that Trump had won the election or called him an “illegitimate president” dozens and dozens of times. I don’t think he was lying about that: he really did not know.
He must have gotten trolled about that enough that he now knows that she did that, which means that she is as much of an “election denier” as Trump is. (And with much less justification!)
But just a few months ago, with Megyn Kelly, he was right back at it. This time, he drew a big distinction that hinged on the word “concede,” arguing that Hillary conceded her election loss while Trump never did. When Kelly brought up her dozens of “illegitimate prez” claims over the succeeding years, he dove right back in, insisting that the morning after the election Hillary conceded that Trump won. And he repeatedly charged that Trump has never done so.
I guess you can say that there’s two ways to “concede” an election: verbally, and through your actions. And I don’t understand anybody who values the former over the latter. Many politicians insist that they were cheated, and that they actually won. (I’m looking at you, Stacy Abrams.)
Some of them might even have a case. (I’m NOT looking at you, Stacy Abrams.) But who cares what they say, as long as they leave?
I don’t mind that Abrams has insisted for years that she won the GA governor’s race. In fact, it’s been pretty entertaining to watch. But on inauguration day, she was at home eating a gallon of ice cream with a comically over-sized ladle (I’m guessing), watching Kemp take the oath of office.
The same applies to 2016. Hillary verbally conceded one time, the morning after the election, and then she spent the last 8 years taking it back, and insisting that she won. Good. That makes me smile, every time.
Trump never said the words, “I lost,” because in his heart (and in many, many people’s opinion) it’s not true. But after telling people to peacefully protest and mounting a legal but ineffective court challenge, he left office.
That seems to mean nothing to Maher. When Kelly pointed out that Trump left office, he repeatedly returned to the mantra of “he never conceded!”
It’s a weird mental and verbal tic that I’ve noticed a lot of lefties have: insisting that people SAY what they demand, regardless of their actions. You see it in many contexts.
For example, when the left was pushing for gay marriage, conservatives and moderates offered a compromise: let’s grant gay people all the legal rights of marriage, but just call it a “civil union.”
Activists had pointed out the unfair treatment of gay partners – they sometimes couldn’t be admitted as “family” to hospitals when a partner was dying, they couldn’t automatically inherit or get the same tax benefits as a spouse did, etc. Establishing legal civil unions would remedy all of those concerns, but without applying the verbiage of “marriage,” which had for time immemorial been applied only to male/female relationships.
And that was unacceptable to the left.
The same is true of all of the insane battles over pronouns. You can be a hulking dude with a full beard and an erection, and call yourself Suzie Snowflake for all we care. But you can’t force people to call you a woman, and address you as “she.”
This isn’t just a trivial linguistic quirk, but a core distinguishing attribute of the quasi-totalitarian left, IMO. It’s not enough for them to be given equal rights or tolerance. We must be forced to submit and acknowledge the rightness of their position. Thus you get the giant guy in a dress in a convenience store, sounding like James Earl Jones, when a harried clerk called him “sir”: “It’s ma’am. It’s MA’AM!”
Maher’s position is essentially the same. It doesn’t matter that there’s a ton of evidence that the 2020 election was at the least rigged, or that Trump had good reason for believing so, or that he voluntarily left office. He must say the words. He must be FORCED to say the words!
And somehow Maher and many on the left feel like they are the put-upon victims, and Trump is the authoritarian bully and threat. What must it be like to live in that kind of distortion field every day of your life?
To sum up:
A man is not a woman, and you can’t make us say that.
“Ze” and “Zir” are not pronouns, and you can’t make us say them.
Trump was already president, and he wasn’t Orange Hitler, and the country did just fine, and you can’t scare us with your hysterical warnings about what didn’t happen before, and won’t happen again.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 