Electoral denialism did not start with Trump. In the U.S., this chicanery dates back to the early days of the republic. In [2016], Clinton and the DNC machine borrowed from the Republican playbook, and rationalized with speculations and outright falsehoods to cover for her loss in order to delegitimize the Trump presidency. Unlike the Democrats who rightly rejected the results in 2000, Clinton and her DNC supporters spent four years spreading false and baseless reasons for their defeat. If past is prologue, each party may well continue to escalate their electoral denial to a level where election results will simply not matter at all. In 2016, Clinton officially conceded, but publicly denied the election results. In 2020, Trump exploited the electoral cynicism that was decades in the making and refused to officially concede. This inspired his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol and reject the election results. Granted, Democrats didn't do the same in 2016, but who knows the degree to which continued hyper-partisanship will escalate electoral denialism in the future? Nonetheless, the point remains that denial and lack of acceptance of election outcomes was very much part of the Democrats' narrative from 2016, parroted by MSNBC and CNN in particular. It's not just Fox News and Trump that are the problem here. It's civic decay. Bottom line: it is simply unsustainable for a country to have half of the voters, not to mention the candidates or party leaders, refuse to accept election results.
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