Never, in the history of this country, has a presidential candidate refused to accept the outcome of the election. Whoever wins, wins. Voters are sad for a couple of days, but come January, everyone’s moved on. The following four years might not be ideal in terms of governance, but they are nonetheless legitimate through and through.
Donald Trump doesn’t care.
On Wednesday night, Chris Wallace asked him, once and for all, if he would concede to Clinton if she were to win. It was a chance for Trump to redeem himself, for down-ballot Republicans to salvage their house seats and for this country, founded on stable, peaceful transitions of power, to breathe. But he doesn’t care about any of those things.
The truth is that Trump is going to lose. Everyone, whether they wanna admit it or not, knows this. Clinton’s going to turn a ton of solid red states blue and she’s going to do that with significant margins.
Losing, though, isn’t Trump’s main concern. He is now a world-class, international idiot, his whole life sprawled out for everyone to pick at and analyze. When he was a businessman, doing deals in the dark, he could get away with lewd behavior, sexual assault, fraud, tax evasion and scamming. But once you run for president, you’re ceding the right to live a private life by entering the very open, very public domain that is civil service.
You subject yourself, all pieces of yourself, to the media, to the people, to the world. You have to release your private tax returns, or at least you should. Your health is under a magnifying glass. You can’t cough, sniff or sneeze without someone saying something. You can’t dress a certain way without attracting attention. You can’t say anything you want because you never know when a mic is hot or someone important is listening. That’s a politician’s life.
No one is going to do business with The Donald after this. His name brand, the brand he is so, so proud of building up with just a small loan of $1 million, will wither away into nothing. Think about it. Univision already terminated their contract with him after his campaign announcement speech. High-profile chefs are refusing to work for the restaurants in his real estate. Women, after the tapes and accusations, won’t go near him with a 10-foot pole. What does this man have left?
His terribly bruised yet still massively sized ego?
And to cushion it, to save it from imploding into itself like his campaign and his business, he’s got to blame our electoral process. How can he, the great Donald Trump, lose? The process has to be unfair — the classic “it’s not me, it’s you” excuse to wriggle out of a tough and sticky situation. And, as Hillary Clinton said during the debate, he has an extensive history of being the sorest loser ever.
There is certainly an argument to make that our electoral process is flawed. Although the electoral college is intellectually legitimate, at least when referencing Federalist Paper No. 68, it’s unclear if that applies to the larger literate and educated populace today. Unfortunately, we all know that wide-scale voter repression occurs with antiquated voter ID laws.
Mr. Trump, however, wags his finger at dead people, minorities and undocumented immigrants who “vote illegally” in elections they have no business voting in. But little does he know that an in-depth investigation conducted by the Washington Post in 2014 found only 31 credible cases of voter fraud since 2000. Thirty-one votes cannot and will not change the outcome of the presidential election.
Honestly, no amount of Trump “rigging” will explain Hillary Clinton’s triumphant and massive victory on Nov. 8. Her camp has advised her not to be too confident, but I’m pretty damn confident for her.
“It isn’t over until it’s over”
-Yogi Berra
Hoping for a landslide but as a sports buff, everything in life can be related to sports. I’ve seen some incredible come from behind victories in my time.
Keep calm and don’t let over confidence kill your aggression.
Keep fighting to the very end!