No candidate for ANY office is obliged to accept an election outcome if there's evidence
that it was somehow rigged. Al Gore was right to contest Bush/Cheney's 2000 "victory"
for 36 days, John Kerry was wrong to give up overnight four years later, Bernie betrayed
those voting for him by swallowing his primary "defeats" in 2016 and this year, without
a peep of protest, or any effort to investigate; and so on. (Jill Stein did the right thing four
years ago.)
Although Republicans have, especially since 2000, stolen many more elections than the
Democrats (who tend to steal elections from their more progressive fellow-Democrats),
the fact is that both Trump AND Biden SHOULD refuse to cave if there's sufficient grounds
for questioning the official numbers.
Like every other urgent public issue, this one has been totally politicized, with Democrats
attacking Trump for doing what they think Biden only ought to do. Here's Hilary saying
that he should not concede the election "under any circumstances"—including, evidently,
his actual defeat:
So where's the outrage over that? And do Hilary et al. believe that Biden, should he really
lose to Trump, be carried into office by the military? And that would not be just the sort of
coup that they, and "our free press," are bellowing that Trump intends?
Who's standing up for radical—and, necessarily, nonpartisan—reform of our abysmal voting
system? Not many activists, as far as I can see. I note with great sadness, but no surprise,
that the Election Integrity movement, in which I worked for years, has morphed into a one-
eyed dump-Trump operation.
I say all this in full awareness of the likelihood that this is all pro wrestling, that the whole
conflict is a propaganda show intended to divide/distract the people even more, so that we
don't notice, and then make any effort to avert, the looming nightfall of totalitarian control,
which will descend regardless of which figurehead sits in the Oval Office, masked or not.
Still, regardless of that urgent fact, we need at some point to throw out our rotten voting
system, replacing it with one befitting a democratic republic, since, if we had faced the
problem long ago (that is, if "our free press" had not consistently pooh-poohed it as
"conspiracy theory"), we wouldn't be in such grave jeopardy today. Here's hoping we
survive what's coming, and with the civic spirit, solidarity and stamina to build American
democracy for real.
MCM