Conservative apologist and moral equivalency guy Erick Erickson thinks the Democrats are annoyed that President Trump, much like President Clinton liked to do with issues, has stolen one of their favorite tactics:
Stacey Abrams says she was not entitled to become the governor of Georgia. Stacey Abrams has, long before Donald Trump … Stacey Abrams peddled “the big lie”, as the media likes to call it. Stacey Abrams peddled the lie, a lie that the 2018 election was stolen from her. She was not entitled to become governor. You know what? I wasn’t entitled to become governor either. I’m sorry. Apparently, this is fairly common. The Democrats and the media have allowed Stacey Abrams to peddle a mythology to explain to them the way the world works, that Republicans stole the election. She said that ironically campaigning for Terry McAuliffe in Virginia. Terry McAuliffe himself still to this day claims that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen. In fact, when confronted, Terry McAuliffe in the last few weeks has continued to deny that they were legitimate elections, just that we have to move on from those elections, but he doesn’t believe they were legitimate elections. He still believes that these elections were stolen from the Democrats.
This is Democratic mythology that is pervasive. When the Democrats lose, it is because Republicans stole the election. What is so ironic about this is here comes Donald Trump in 2020 and he doubles down claiming the election was stolen. The Democrats, mainstream media, and major companies are like, “You can’t say that. That’s the big lie,” equating it to Nazism and Hitler.
While, on the surface, it may appear to be an equivalency, it’s not. The Democrats can easily point at various tactics used by Republicans to discourage voters, while Republican screaming about the stolen election have exactly … nothing.
Oh, I’m sure a few cases can be made for poor sportsmanship by the Democrats. After all, they were accused of gerrymandering Maryland. Where there’s temptation there’s often weakness.
But I think what catches my attention here is how these two sides, bereft of an existential foreign opponent, have settled in for victmhood, fantasies, and trench warfare. Is Professor Turchin going to be proven right (OK, he’s made no such prediction of which I’m aware, and he was talking about agrarian societies, but the parallels are a little frightening), and the internecine elite warfare will remove a large number of elite from standing, and in the process decrease community wealth, power, and prestige?
Or can we find a way out of this morass?
Or is Erickson really all about his endless campaign to make the Democrats and Republicans moral equivalents so that Independents – the true power holders these days – will forget that the Republicans are now chiefly fantasists who do not see the world in a realistic fashion?
