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Comment by threatofrain | Hacker News Reader

In the US, a majority of GOP voters believe that Democrats stole the election, and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Here is a pollster that is respected by US conservatives:

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ele...

Many also believe that patriotic violence is acceptable to protect the legitimacy of democracy. What kind of conversation do you have when people believe their democracy was stolen from them?

There is no way at this point for the GOP to safely retreat from the position that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. To do so would be political death.

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> What kind of conversation do you have when people believe their democracy was stolen from them?

Same kind we had after Trump was elected. Your account is from before 2016 so I guess you remember those threads.

Seriously nasty they were, but in between all the reflexive downvoting some good answers existed.

Let's try to do better this time around.

PS: I dislike both parties. I just dislike hate and division even more, and I mostly don't dislike individual republicans or democrats.

Claims about electoral fraud are a regular occurrence in American politics.

Democrats made similar claims about at least the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections.

Trump's claims about election fraud and the sheer number of lawsuits are an escalation but it isn't a difference in kind.

Edited to add the following.

The child post correctly points out that I should have mentioned Trump's inciting a violent attempt to overthrow the government. This wasn't a deliberate omission.

No, stop spreading misinformation. I never saw in my life before Trump an American president that refused to concede and that pushed an angry mob armed with guns, handmade bombs and restraints to invade the Capitol to try to kidnap and kill the politicians, with the Vice President being the first target.

How about inciting his supporters to attempt to halt the transition of power? It seems like you conveniently forgot about that while drawing your false equivalence.

That's just Hanlon's razor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor) in action. I have edited my post to correct this omission.

What were the fraud claims of 2004 and 2016? 2000 was a unique case, and both sides were upset with the process (rightfully so.)

On the left I see claims of disenfranchisement done through legal means, which whether you agree with or not is at least something real and concrete.

The 2000 election was a mess. (https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa...) makes what I consider a credible argument that Gore was in the wrong.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_vo...) has a pretty good summary of the issues. The voting machine claims were a big deal at the time; I remember a lot of news coverage about that the voting machine companies were owned by Republicans.

I think the 2016 fraud claims were about Russian hacking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...). (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2018/09/11/many-democrats-...) claims that many Democrats questioned the 2016 election.

> On the left I see claims of disenfranchisement done through legal means, which whether you agree with or not is at least something real and concrete.

I agree that disenfranchisement is an issue and am in favor of federal voting standards and protecting the voting rights of convicted felons.

I remember 2004 well, and the concerns around electronic voting machines. But there were no allegations of impropriety once the count took place. The rest of that Wikipedia article is the usual list of enfranchisement issues.

I haven’t seen anyone claiming Russian hacking changed the vote tallies of 2016. I remember the hacking “questions” being quite clear that the results of the election were not in question.

> What kind of conversation do you have when some people believe you condone the cheating of democracy?

A conversation with my friends on the left about how important gun ownership is when the right is armed to the teeth, and last summer showed the police won’t protect the left from right-wing violence. We have to do it ourselves, which means acquiring firearms and training with them.

The US is headed towards a civil war. Pretty sure it’s unavoidable at this point, though it’ll take some years to play out. Biden pushing strong gun control could be enough to do it.

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