Over the weekend, Hillary Clinton said that she may challenge the 2016 election in court should Mueller’s investigation show that there’s good reason to do so.
Let’s all take a moment to personally reflect on what this turn in rhetoric could mean. By now it’s clear, given all that we know, that there are likely very good reasons to challenge the election, given the Trump administration’s apparent (and brazen) collaboration with Vlad Putin and his spies. And given what we know about Mueller’s investigation, I think it’s actually quite safe to say that Clinton would have some legal grounds to contest the election in court. Whether she’d win that battle, who can say at this point… but it seems somewhat clear to me at least that a case should be possible… unless of course the concepts of law and justice in America really are just a sham.
This a big deal. The 2016 Democratic nominee, who won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, is expressly leaving open the possibility that she would pursue legal action to invalidate the last presidential election.
I've paid close attention to what Clinton's been saying since she lost the election and I have never heard her broach the possibility of a formal challenge of the results.
Knowing what we know of Clinton, it seems unlikely to me that she simply spoke off the cuff here, that this was just an unconsidered remark. She doesn't really do that sort of thing.
To be honest, this wasn’t on my radar. I haven’t heard it mentioned by any liberal activists or bloggers. And yet here we are, with one of the most careful, over-calculating politicians in American history floating the idea that she might contest what appears to be a stolen election.
And I hope she does. When we don’t fight back against Trump/Putin’s brand of fascism with everything we have, like a ratchet we lose more and more over time. We normalize it, irregardless of whether we eventually root out particular problems like Trump. What needs to be established is that yes, in America our election was stolen. It was stolen. It was stolen. The courts agree, it was stolen.
Once Mueller releases his report, I honestly believe Trump may be impeached and imprisoned but that the idea would be to spare Pence in order to smooth the transition to a new President, even if that means overlooking his involvement. I believe Mueller and the establishment would do that to remove Trump.
But I don’t think that would be justice. A fair amount of evidence suggests that Pence and other Republicans stole the election, with the help of Russian spies.
The only real justice would be Hillary Clinton as president of the United States.
She has nothing to lose. She has no political standing to speak of that’s worth protecting at this point by “moving on” past the election. Going to court in my view has zero downside for Hillary Clinton or the country. Republicans would do it in a nanosecond. We should be fighting the GOP’s fascism with every single last weapon in our arsenal.
Anything less isn’t good enough.