President Joe Biden on Wednesday decided to begin delegitimizing the 2022 midterm elections, as it looks like Democrats are headed toward big losses. But this isn’t a surprise: Democrats, including Biden, have been doing this for years.
Biden said that the 2022 midterm elections “could easily be illegitimate” and that “the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us being able to get these reforms passed,” referring to the partisan Democratic voting bills that would result in a federal takeover of elections. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer brought the bills to a vote even though he knew the Senate didn’t have the support to pass them, helping set up a convenient excuse for if Democrats lose in 2022.
This second attempt from Biden on whether the election will be legit is even worse.
“Oh, yeah, I think it could easily be illegitimate … The increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in proportion to not being able to get these reforms passed.” pic.twitter.com/nCyuAWSMXm
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 19, 2022
None of this is a surprise. Biden and Democrats have already been pushing baseless voter suppression claims against Texas and Georgia about voting bills passed in those states. And, though establishment media like to pretend that former President Donald Trump and his supporters are the only ones who have ever delegitimized elections, the Democratic Party made a habit of it well before the 2020 election.
The presidential elections of 2000 and 2016 have plenty of examples that extend into present-day politics. Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who lost the election for his old position last November, maintained for years that the 2000 election was stolen from Democrat Al Gore, explicitly saying so as recently as 2017. Several House Democrats objected to the certification of the 2016 election and are still in office today.
The Stacey Abrams saga of 2018 was a major turning point, as prominent Democrats outright claimed that Georgia’s gubernatorial election was stolen. Former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren put it in the simplest terms: “They know that if all the votes are counted, we’ll win every time.”
Sen. Warren, 2018 truther: “Massive voter suppression prevented Stacy Abrams from becoming the rightful governor of Georgia.”
“They know that a durable majority of Americans believe in the promise of America & they know that if all the votes are counted, we’ll win every time.” pic.twitter.com/3RY7pPfAhE
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 5, 2019
And then there is Biden himself. It was ignored during the campaign, but Biden himself said a month before the election that “the only way we lose this is by the chicanery going on relative to polling places.” As with most things he says publicly, Biden tried to walk it back, but it is clear what he meant and clear that congressional Democrats were looking for excuses when they breathed life into a conspiracy theory about Trump tampering with the U.S. Postal Service.
Democrats complain about gerrymandering while engaging in it themselves, want to make Washington, D.C., a state so they can get two free senators, and haven’t accepted a presidential election that they lost since 1988. Democrats have only intensified their claims of stolen elections over the last few years, and it is no surprise that a serial liar like Biden is now feeding that narrative ahead of likely election losses.
