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by cassowary
3184 days ago
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That's not fair. If Trump didn't win a democratic election, then neither did Obama, Bush, Clinton or Washington. He apparently won according to the rules that are established. The only question is, did he really win according to the established rules, or did he take advantage of foreign power? If an electoral college upset is undemocratic, then there probably aren't any democracies around at all. For instance, there's the Bill of Rights which allows dead people to collude with about a dozen people appointed to lifelong roles to decide what laws you can't bring about. If we continue in this way, we reach the conclusion that "democracy" is a word with no useful significance. So do you propose some other way to describe countries like the US and Canada, and to distinguish them from countries like China and Saudi Arabia? |
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It's a simple fact that Trump won directly and solely due to anti-democratic features of the US Presidential election system.
> If Trump didn't win a democratic election, then neither did Obama, Bush, Clinton or Washington.
Three of those did not win solely and directly due to anti-democratic features of the then-current system, so while, yes, you could construct standards by which none of them won a “democratic” election, those aren't the standards at issue.
> He apparently won according to the rules that are established.
And, if so, he won a legal election. “Legal” and “democratic” are not the same thing. There are plenty of leaders who have won election under the rules established at the time who no one would argue won a democratic election (for a current and fairly non-controversial example, Pope Francis.)
> The only question is, did he really win according to the established rules, or did he take advantage of foreign power?
That's not only not the only question, but it's not even a question. Whether Trump (potentially illegally) collided with foreign actors in regard to the election is one of the questions that exists, but even if he did, he was unmistakably legally elected: there is no question that he was a Constitutionally-qualified candidate, that the majority of the state-level electors cast ballots for him, and that the Congress accepted, counted, and ratified that result, which is the entirety of what it takes to win by the established rules.
While there are legal questions around Trump and his campaign and administration, the Constitutional validity of his election is not among them.
The questions that concern legitimacy and potential impeachment, while they may be informed by investigation of the legal issues, are ultimately more nuanced and less prior-rule-bound issues of what people are willing to accept.