> The United States does not have a strong democracy. Half (more or less) of the population believes the election was rigged.
From various recent polls, it looks like somewhere between 30-40%, somewhere under 2/3 of Republicans and Republican-leaners and basically no one else.
30% is about par for the course when it comes to contemporary controversial POTUS elections [1][2].
It seems to ebb and flow: each side takes their turn being the aggrieved party and then alternate next go around (2000, 2016, 2020).
Consecutive cycles of animosity on one side could be worrying.
The tapestry of dysfunctional patchwork that make up the American Constitutional Republic, while tattered and frayed before, has found ways to persist.
> Consecutive cycles of animosity on one side could be worrying.
Is that not what we're experiencing now?
It's hard to 'both sides' this issue with a straight face, when the biggest election denier in America is a former president and current presidential candidate. When was the last time that happened?
> It’s hard to ‘both sides’ this issue with a straight face, when the biggest election denier in America is a former president and current presidential candidate. When was the last time that happened?
The closest parallel was probably Aaron Burr and his…whatever exactly he was trying to achieve in 1806-1807 in the Southwest after being dumped as VP in 1804 in part resulting from Jefferson’s suspicions that he was trying to pull electoral shenanigans in 1800. But that’s a long time ago, in very different circumstances, and not a particularly close parallel. So, never anything really similar.
For better or worse, I've found reading (deep dives) US history adequately anesthetizes one to modern day shenanigans.
But you raise a good point in that Al Gore was far more gracious when aggrieved. He comported himself with the norms established in the last 60 years during the modern mass media era.
For the most recent presidential election maybe. For the previous one a majority of Democrats including many high ranking Democrat politicians and officials were election deniers.
Clearly you aren't going to have a large contingent of deniers of elections that your favored party won.
When push came to shove, how many Democratic leaders (Reps and Senators) voted against or objected to the electoral college results in 2017? It was less than 10 Representatives and no Senators, meaning none of the objections were even put to a vote[1]. That is a far cry from what occurred in 2021.
Talk about clutching at straws and trying to find any possible metric to deflect from the dangerous 2016 election deniers and conspiracy theorist lunatics.
You can't just pick out some other thing and claim that is what is matters most. Just saying "when push comes to shove" doesn't mean anything. How many times did the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee lie about something like having evidence for the delusional conspiracy theory that "Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election", dangerously fueling election denial and undermining confidence in the democratic process, like Adam Schiff did? Aside from rhetoric and assertions by partisans and conspiracy theorists involved in the whole mess, where is the evidence to say what one side does is better or worse or more or less "damaging to democracy"? There isn't any.
If you in denial of the reality that both sides question elections and make up conspiracy theories when it suits them, you are incapable of anything approaching an objective understanding of the topic. Sorry.
> For the most recent presidential election maybe.
Yes, that’s generally what “believe the election was stolen” without further qualification means; its not a reference to the total sum of people who believe at least one election in the history of the US was stolen.
> For the previous one a majority of Democrats including high ranking Democrat politicians and officials were election deniers.
A large percentage of Democrats believe Russian interference and other improper interference influenced the election results, but that’s different than thinking the actual vote was rigged or invalid.
Yes they were a huge number of election deniers for the 2016 election and a vast amount of irresponsible rheotoric around it that was very dangerous to democracy. Don't try to gaslight on this one. A lot of uneducated morons and delusional conspiracy theorists thought "Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election", fueled by dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric from certain anti-democratic election denier politicians and media corporations.
They can bitch and whine as much as they like, letting people blow off steam is part of the process by which democracy keeps the peace. Aside from various small and short riots, there has been very little political violence in America since the 1860s.
Attempting to overturn the results of the election as the votes were being counted in the Capitol is quite an escalation, though. Sure, it's not up to 1860s standards, but it's still unprecedented in modern times.
While true, the law has also come down harshly on the participants. It should have a chilling effect for other would-be rioters. It was bad, I agree. But perhaps the silver lining is that its occurrence may help set a firm line on what behaviors are acceptable.
From various recent polls, it looks like somewhere between 30-40%, somewhere under 2/3 of Republicans and Republican-leaners and basically no one else.