Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe faces a tougher-than-expected race for his old job against GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin. So, he has resorted to a tactic Democrats love to lean on now: painting their opponents as election deniers. But McAuliffe, like many in the Democratic Party, can’t erase his own track record as an election truther.
McAuliffe has tried to tie Youngkin to former President Donald Trump’s denial of the results of the 2020 presidential election. But McAuliffe has spent nearly two decades claiming the 2000 presidential election was stolen from Democrat Al Gore, arguing the Supreme Court tampered with the results. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, McAuliffe delivered a quote indistinguishable from Trump: “We actually won the last presidential election, folks, they stole the last presidential election.”
Big liar @TerryMcAuliffe told a #BigLie in 2004:
“They STOLE the last presidential election!” pic.twitter.com/UImRxe0tEt
— Team Youngkin (@TeamYoungkin) September 27, 2021
McAuliffe, as recently as 2017, asserted Gore actually won the 2000 election. Yet, he wants to accuse Youngkin of the very thing he has been guilty of for the better part of the last two decades. And this has become a common trend for Democrats.
Stacey Abrams, to this day, has not conceded the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia. Abrams insisted, with no evidence, the race was stolen from her. Democratic politicians agreed, including Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris also claimed Andrew Gillum won Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election against Ron DeSantis — again, without evidence.
Another supporter of Abrams’s election trutherism is Hillary Clinton, the failed presidential candidate who conceded her 2016 loss to Trump on election night only to spend every year since then talking about how the election (allegedly) was stolen from her by many factors, including Russian collusion. Clinton also advised Joe Biden not to concede the 2020 election “under any circumstances,” though Biden went on to win.
Trump, regrettably and repulsively, mainstreamed this same kind of conspiratorial thinking and sore-loser mindset with his post-loss temper tantrum. It’s despicable. But Democrats do not get a pass for doing the same thing after George W. Bush beat them in 2000 and 2004, Trump won in 2016, and Republicans were elected governor in Georgia and Florida in 2018.
