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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

Both the 2016 and 2020 elections were widely disputed by Democrats and Republicans respectively. Recall that the Democrats broadly alleged that the 2016 election was a Russian conspiracy, and "not my president" was a Democratic slogan that endured throughout Trump's presidency.

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Not my president did not mean he was falsely elected, it was that they found him repulsive.

Kind of hard to believe when the same people are muttering about Russian collusion. Same deal when Republicans were saying "not my president" in 2020 while also muttering about election fraud.

It's actually very easy to believe. Because you can talk to people and have them explain their views.

Right, and many of them (on both sides) argue that they believe the election was illegitimate. This isn't complicated. :)

False equivalence

Nope

Hillary literally conceded the day after the election.

Has Trump ever admitted that he lost?

Sorta by accident:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJvQHVlkpPI

About 11 or 12 seconds in.

The original claim was that only one party has issues accepting election results, thus arguing about Hillary versus Trump's individual behavior is moving the goalposts. Moreover, while Hillary conceded the election officially, she still occasionally claims the election "was stolen from her". "But Hillary's election denial is better than Trump's!" <- I quite agree, but the original claim was that one party accepts election results and the other doesn't which is clearly not true.

I don't think it's moving the goalposts to look at the direct leadership of the political parties and their actions. Hillary and Trump aren't just random individuals.

> But Hillary's election denial is better than Trump's!

But Hillary isn't engaging in election denial, or really any denial. It's a verified fact that Russia leaked hacked material in order to hurt Hillary's campaign and portions of the Trump campaign colluded with that Russian effort.

You can call it bad behavior to bring up old complaints (due to effects on partisanship, etc), but Hillary isn't engaging in any denial.

IMHO the real people who are in denial about 2016 are the ones who still don't think Russia worked to sink Hillary with hacked material even after the criminal convictions and bipartisan Senate report.

> I don't think it's moving the goalposts to look at the direct leadership of the political parties and their actions. Hillary and Trump aren't just random individuals.

They aren't random individuals, but just because Hillary conceded the election on one occasion doesn't refute the many documented instances in which she and others in her party (at all levels of leadership) alleged or heavily implied the election was stolen.

> But Hillary isn't engaging in election denial, or really any denial. It's a verified fact that Russia leaked hacked material in order to hurt Hillary's campaign and portions of the Trump campaign colluded with that Russian effort.

It absolutely is election denial to allege or imply that the election was stolen, as Hillary has done many times over the intervening years, even if you believe there is good reason to deny the election results. Specifically, the original claim was that one party accepts election results and the other party does not--if you agree that some significant number of Democrats believed in Russian collusion even if there was collusion and that some significant number of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen even if it was stolen then you necessarily agree that the original claim (that one party accepts election results and the other does not) is false. You perhaps agree that the Democrats' election denial is better than the Republicans', but there is no room for disagreement that neither party accepts election results.

I think there's a big difference between grumbling about the results of an election being unfair due to your opponent engaging with a foreign government that hacked your campaign, and unprecedented moves from the FBI days before the election; and working earnestly to actually overturn the results of an election by knowingly lying about the existence of fraud, using multiple levers of government including DOJ and state legislatures to advance that lie, and to top it all off directing an armed mob to literally violently assault a joint session of Congress. If you call both of these things "election denial" that's the false equivalence others were referencing elsewhere in the conversation.

They are both election denial, and it’s not a false equivalence because recognizing that both are under the rubric of “election denial” doesn’t imply an equivalence.

When you compare two things that are significantly different in scale and scope without recognizing or addressing those important differences, yet proceed to call them the same without any qualification regardless, that’s exactly a false equivalence.

Let me be clear about what the difference is: the way that Democrats and Clinton behaved in 2016 was legal and constitutionally within their rights. The way Republicans and Trump behaved in 2020 was not only illegal, it was seditious bordering on treasonous. Putting those two reactions into the same bucket in any capacity is an act of historical whitewashing and indeed, false equivalence.

I wasn’t the one who made the original comparison bruv, and I have only been explicit about saying I thought Trump’s behavior was worse. I very clearly made no equivalences whatsoever.

> there is no room for disagreement that neither party accepts election results.

Seems to me like you’re very clearly making an equivalence right there.

One party responded within the bounds of the law and exercised their rights, whereas the other broke the law and tried to overthrow democracy, yet you equate these two responses as “not accepting results”. This is very clearly a false equivalence. If these two responses are equivalent in your mind under the umbrella of election denial, it would seem to mean that no American has ever accepted an election, because one side is always sore about the outcome. You’ve effectively rendered the term election denial meaningless (which is the reason false equivalence is a logical fallacy), so what exactly is your point then?

>Hillary literally conceded the day after the election.

Clinton withdrew her acceptance of the 2016 election results <https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-electi...>.

For context, when Clinton said this in 2020 it was known that:

- The FBI was investigating Trump at the same time they were investigating Clinton, but kept silent about it while making her investigation widely known. Trump later committed criminal obstruction of justice into that investigation and was let off the hook due to his immunity as President.

- Trump's campaign manager was handing internal campaign data to Russian operatives, the very same ones who hacked her campaign, and lied about it.

- Trump committed criminal campaign finance violations in the run up to the 2016 election for which his attorney was convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison, but for which Trump himself wasn't due to his immunity as President.

So yeah, maybe she has a right to say "There was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level".

and the election of 2002

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