Public perception of previous controversial outcomes show us that early concession only sows mistrust among the electorate that only serves to fuel suspicions of illegitimacy for the winner. By contesting each and every disputed contest, Trump is actually helping Biden cement legitimacy should he end up being inaugurated.

Gore made a huge error by conceding early and then retracting. Although it turned out the concession was legally valid and confirmed by SCOTUS, Gore’s misstatements engendered animosity among his supporters, with many questioning the legitimacy of W’s presidency decades later.

But the actions of Hillary and her partisan supporters (media, politicians, Resistance Twitter) show us even more clearly that an ill-timed concession can hang a cloud over the presidency of the eventual winner.  Clinton learned her lesson and advised her friend VP Biden to “Never concede”. The truth of the matter is that this advice applies to all candidates in an election so fraught with allegations of impropriety.

Specifically, Clinton did not contest her close losses, and for four years people doubted that Trump had won.  Supporters in Michigan briefed her campaign that there were indications of vote tampering, but Team Clinton decided not to contest it. Instead, Clinton and her supporters went the passive route and allowed salacious rumors of the election’s legitimacy to fester for four years.

Contrast this to our President Trump, who is insisting that every questionable vote be inspected BEFORE the Inauguration.  When all is said and done, we will know that the winner was determined based on the tally of LEGAL votes.  This will give Biden MORE legitimacy going forward, as having seen all the evidence examined, only a narrow sliver of conspiracy theorists will doubt Biden’s legitimacy.

At the end of the day, let’s not forget that Trump’s “unprecedented” actions are only being carried out because we live in unprecedented times.  When all is said and done, we will know Biden is a legitimate president because he won the legal vote count in the majority of the EC states. Tempers are high now, and liberals are too upset to see things clearly. But history show that his actions to verify the vote were an astute move that will help this country unify behind Biden.

First of all, the concerns about illegitimacy re Trump had ZERO to do with Hillary's concession. They had to do with evidence of Russian attempts to sway the election to Trump, even though no serious Dem questioned the legitimacy of the electoral results.
Second, your attempt to validate Trump's post-election behavior as altruistic and serving the purpose of simply validating actual results is utter hogwash. If you think he's doing it for that reason and not for his own petty purposes you are either hopelessly naive, stupid or are a complete dupe.
You are hopelessly naive if you think at the end of this process Biden's legitimate victory will be accepted by a majority of Republicans. Already more than 70% of them think Biden won by fraud. Because that's exactly what Trump has been telling them.
You are also simply WRONG to say Gore's "concession was legally valid and confirmed by SCOTUS." First of all, a concession has no legal or electoral standing. Second SCOTUS did NOT confirm that. They simply overturned the FL court's ruling about a recount. Which had nothing to do with Gore's concession.
In sum, virtually everything you just wrote is WRONG. It makes one wonder if you aren't writing this drivel from a troll farm outside Moscow.

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I expect it to be published in the WaPo Letters to the Editor section in the coming days. Thank me in advance for the preview!

- spreading right wing wacko writing from where you get your talking points.

If there was a way to “inspect every questionable vote… before the inauguration,”
you might have a point that this would cement the legitimacy of the Biden victory.  
But there is not, it would be extremely expensive to try, it would take years, and it is not going to happen.

           If you watched the Rudy/Sidney clown show, you would note that they (or at least Sidney) claims that that the software in some of the vote counting machines was able to change Trump votes to Biden votes, that a truck pulled up at 4:30 in the morning with a hundred thousand ballots with no down ballot markings but only Biden markings (the “one truck” expanded to “three or four trucks” when Rudy went on Hannity a few hours later) and that dozens of election workers committed various pro-Biden election fraud offenses.

         No swing state is going to investigate these comical allegations beyond the recounts in a few states, nor will the media, and no court case is going to reach the discovery/fact finding stage where this would have to be done. So your notion that Trump is taking “action to verify the vote” is really misplaced. Even he knows that will not happen.  

 All we will be left with on January 20 is a string of dismissed lawsuits, a few appeals affirming the dismissals, cert soon to be denied, wild allegations repeated on pro-Trump media, and sadly some number of Trump believers who really think the election was rigged.

          I just hope that Rudy and Sidney never get paid, that when Trump pardons Flynn there will be an investigation of whether there was a quid pro quo (talk about a conflict of interest), and that Sidney  and Rudy spend the next few years fighting bar complaints in Texas and New York.  

But “verify the vote?” Not going to happen.

It’s virtually impossible to parse the botched grammar in that sentence.

It might be time to call upon our resident internet sleuth, BP, and see if he can find a copy of my essay. (Hint: He Won’t)

Good analysis.  While there’s no way to verify every legal vote before Inauguration Day, the Trump campaign has made efforts to question every vote that impacts the outcome (close votes in swing states).

The end result of this effort, IMHO, will be that there will be less people doubting the official outcome, not more. For example, Trump could have won the election and the QAnon crowd would still insist Trump won all 50 states.

Another consequence of the post-election chaos will hopefully be a relook at vote counting procedures in the states where we saw inordinate delays.  Had all states counted and reported as quickly mega state Florida did, the country would be a lot better off.

So I think we’ll have more to show for on Jan 20th than the string of dismissed appeals and chagrined conspiracy theorists. We’ll have all Dems and most GOP acknowledging that Biden won despite a poorly executed vote count, and a national commitment to do better going forward.  This will put our country on the path to being even a brighter “shining light on the hill”

You need to read my one liners as grammar free more like a caption ... but I think you know exactly what I meant.

Now, you’re still hiding your source - which reinforces my suspicion that it came straight from a righty talking points.

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You wrote a very simple declarative sentence that was easy to understand but his reading comprehension skills failed him so he blamed you.
Poor Chickenshit.

GentleGuy.. your one liners are as predictable as they are understandable.  We’ve all become used to you inserting a negative into a statement, or merely replacing “the Democrat did x” with “the Republican did x”. Pretty lame, but at least we understand that your point is you don’t agree with the previous post, and you think you’re expressing it in a cute way. The problem with you’re garbled statement  above is that you went off template, and it appears you lack the ability to properly express yourself on this forum outside that template.

You also are apparently the only one who believes proving a negative is a logical argument. Most people recognize “when did you stop beating your wife?” questions as intellectually lazy, and they are rarely used in good faith. It’s says more about your sub-average intelligence than anything else that you actually believe “prove it’s not fake” is a valid debate point.

Bottom line, if you honestly believe something is inauthentic, it’s on you to prove it. It’s unlikely you’ve got the ability to do that yourself, which is why I suggested you enlist a proven researcher like BigPapasan to do it for you.

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Even a botched pic post is no comparison to GentleGuy’s stunted writing skills.

See a nice example of a sentence that teaches YOU the difference between Your and You’re ... that Nick has been trying to teach you ... and of course, it is difficult for you to grasp!

Btw, the last paragraph of your post - is ridiculous and so lame. You’re basically saying, you can throw any shit on the board and it is others’ job to prove it shit? So if you say the world is flat - it is for us to prove you wrong, and if we won’t we should accept it as true? I knew you’re morally corrupt but I didn’t know you’re so bankrupt in the intelligence department!!!  

One last thing: it doesn’t take a genius to see how i smartly and simply flip a trumpanzee post - I do that to mock the posts that are pitiful and clearly came out Rush Limbaugh’s ass. And, it is not meant to be subtle by design- so even a dumb ass like you can ‘see’ it ....

Trump is challenging votes selectively, ie only in counties or cities in which there’s a lot of voters who traditionally vote for Democrats. That’s not questioning “every vote that impacts the outcome.”  He’s attempting to disenfranchise large numbers of voters only because they probably didn’t vote for him.

 
Your comment about the speed of counting votes is hilarious. It’s hard to count (and certify) votes quickly when Trump demands it be done twice or even three times.

 
But I agree that we’ll have a commitment to do better going forward: by not allowing a sociopath like Donald J. Trump to get into the White House ever again.

because we live in unprecedented times in which a sociopath whose every action is based on what’s good for himself, not the country, is POTUS.

 
Most of the country and the world knew Biden was the legitimate President Elect two weeks ago.  We don’t need Trump’s self-serving antics to know what’s been known for a long time.  We just need him to get out of Biden’s way so he can give the country something we haven’t had in nearly 4 years:  a President who’s capable of doing the job.

Well this happens when a fifth grader tries to read Shakespeare ... he cries in vain!

-- Modified on 11/22/2020 2:13:33 PM

1. “Genius” and your attempts to put thought to paper never belong in the same sentence.
2. What it does take is delusion to “see how smartly” you do anything.
3. You should stick to using “simply” in its root form, and only in reference to your mind.

It will take him a few years to get to do that - his tortoise iq brain just figured out how to cut and paste other people’s writing without giving any attribution!