The Left Will Not Go Quietly
Not since the heady days of George McGovern, whose capture of the Democratic Party in 1972 ended in utter ignominy with the Nixon landslide, have two political parties been as deeply and bitterly divided as they were in this latest election, which ended on a clear if unexpected note of triumph for Donald J. Trump. Breaching the Blue Wall by the early hours of November 6 and then smashing his way to a complete conquest of the popular vote, a free and fair election has thus catapulted him to become the next president of the United States.
What an astonishment it proved to be. My wife and I went to bed the night before glumly aware that only bad news would greet us the following day. But like the little boy in that magical movie who, thanks to a father’s sacrificial love, gets to take the tank home, we nearly died laughing for all the joy we felt on hearing the news.
But even with a clean sweep of the White House, including both Houses of Congress and a Supreme Court firmly committed to the rule of law, will a Trump victory make any real difference in the end if the Democrats refuse to go along with the results?
Won’t it instead confirm their worst fears regarding this most hateful man, who from the very beginning they have assiduously sought to vilify and destroy? Yes, they will certainly have to agree to a peaceful transfer of power, to which end both Kamala and her boss, Joe Biden, have already sent their brief congratulatory messages. But it is one thing to concede the outcome of a contest you failed to win—which Kamala managed, belatedly, to do—and something else again to lay down the weapons with which you have been waging an ongoing war. “I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” she added defiantly.
So, to actually hand over the keys to the Executive Office, to authorize the exercise of real power and authority to someone you’d been regularly referring to as another Hitler, how exactly is that going to work? Especially after having referred to millions of his supporters as no better than garbage.
Oh, yes, and let’s not forget the two failed assassination attempts, not to mention any number of lawfare attempts to lock him up for the rest of his life. “If Democrats and other zealous anti-Trumpers are sincere in their proclaimed conceit that Trump is a fierce, unprecedented threat to American democracy,” wrote Andrew McCarthy on the eve of the election, “then they are going to use every potential legal means at their disposal to deny him the presidency.” Including, he suggested, using the January 6 case alleging a conspiracy to cause an insurrection as grounds for the Congress to disqualify him from ever serving.
Even supposing Trump, fresh from his victory, were feeling magnanimous enough to offer Joe Biden a pardon for his own son, would such a gesture endear him to people determined to put him in a maximum-security prison cell?
The idea seems positively surreal.
So, what exactly can we expect in the wake of Trump’s winning the election? Would the current commander in chief, Joe Biden, be prepared to call out federal troops to ensure an orderly and peaceful transfer of power amid riots and protests aimed at preventing an alleged neo-Nazi from becoming the next president and leader of the Free World? Will that be the profile in courage we’ll be looking for in the weeks following a majority of voters having delivered their verdict declaring Donald Trump the next president? That thanks to Joe Biden’s resolute leadership in a time of national crisis, there will be peace in the land to allow his duly-elected replacement to occupy the office he will thereupon vacate?
Does anyone believe that will actually happen?
Such a long way we have come since 1972! The left wing of the Democratic Party may have gone completely bonkers back then, but at least enough of the rank and file remained sufficiently loyal to the Roosevelt-Kennedy legacy they grew up with and prospered under to prevent the McGovernites from running the entire show, much less the rest of the country, which delivered a 60 percent-plus popular vote majority to the Republicans.
My father, a diehard Democrat for years and years, did not hesitate for a moment to jump ship and cast his lot with Nixon, later becoming one of those numberless Reagan Democrats who never looked back. And to think that despite passage of the 26th amendment allowing 18-to-20-year-old Americans the right to vote, a measure McGovern himself helped midwife, it was simply not enough to get him elected.
Of course, what finally did poor George McGovern in, leaving aside the obvious advantage of Nixon being a successful incumbent, was the fact that, thanks to efforts led by his chief Democratic rival in the primary fight, Hubert Humphrey, he’d been tainted with the charge of being squishy on three hot-button issues most Americans were still very much opposed to: amnesty for draft dodgers; acid for all the dropouts and the druggies; and abortion for anyone who didn’t want to be pregnant.
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