...The President is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections."
By David Harsanyi
WASHINGTON D.C. (Texas Insider Report) Nancy Pelosi just stated that its dangerous to let the voters decide Trumps fate. In other words she thinks Im going to win & doesnt want to take a chance letting the voters decide. Like Al Green she wants to change our Voting System. Wow shes CRAZY!" tweeted Donald Trump Tuesday.
Well not exactly.
President Trumps tweet quotes a Fox News reporter summarizing Pelosis position not the speakers statement verbatim. But the Left-Wing Twitterverse was of course immediately able to jump all over the presidents clumsy wording and act as if the substance of his contention was wholly untrue.
It wasnt.
In her Dear Colleague letter pushing back against Republican anti-impeachment talking points Nancy Pelosi wrote this:
The weak response to these hearings has been Let the election decide. That dangerous position only adds to the urgency of our action because the President is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections."
Is he?
If a Republican had suggested that a presidential election was a dangerous" notion he would have triggered around-the-clock panic-stricken coverage on CNN and a series of other Mainstream Media deep dives lamenting the conservative turn against our sacred democratic ideals.
What Pelosi has done is even more cynical.
Shes arguing that if Democrats fail in their efforts to impeach Trump and I assume remove him from office then the very legitimacy of the 2020 election will be in question before any votes are cast.
Though most liberals have long declared the 2016 contest contaminated as far as we know absolutely nothing not even the most successful foreign efforts in interference" or meddling" damaged the integrity of the election results. Notwithstanding the belief of over 60 of Democrats precipitated by breathless and often misleading media coverage not one vote was altered by Putin nor was a single persons free will purloined by a Russian Twitter bot or Facebook ad.
And contra Pelosis implication whatever you make of Trumps request from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Bidens shady son not one voter will be restricted from casting a ballot for whomever they please in 2020.
In truth voters will know more about the inner workings of Trumps presidency than they have about any other administration in memory. Maybe they care maybe they dont but thats not up to Pelosi.
Rather than safeguarding the integrity of our elections Democrats have corroded trust in them.
- Post-2016 calls for increased control over speech on the Internet for instance pose a far greater danger to American freedoms than anything our enemies at the Kremlin could cook up.
- And if the contention is that the only truly legitimate election is one that is free of any attempts to mislead voters as seems to be the case then we might as well close up shop.
- The presence of unregulated political rhetoric is a feature of a free and open society.
- We will never be able to nor should we aspire to limit discourse.
It shouldnt be forgotten either that this habit of injecting doubt into the electoral process is nothing new.
For the past 20 years (at least) Democrats have shown a destructive inability to accept the fact that a bunch of voters simply disagree with them. If its not dark money" boring into their souls its gerrymandering special interests confusing ballots voter suppression crafty Ruskies or the Electoral College. Democrats cant lose on the merits. Someone somewhere has fooled the Proles into making bad decisions.
All that said it is Pelosis constitutional prerogative to try to impeach Trump for any reasons she sees fit even if her goal is only to weaken the political prospects of her opponent.
No it isnt a coup" but its certainly not a constitutional imperative either.
Its a political choice.
In the end the presidency happens to be one of the things we do decide via elections. That will almost surely be the case when it comes Trump and Pelosi knows it.
And when Trump isnt removed by the Senate and if the results dont go the way Pelosi hopes shes preemptively given Democrats a reason to question the legitimacy of yet another election.
David Harsanyi is a senior writer for National Review and the author of First Freedom: A Ride through Americas Enduring History with the Gun.
