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Scaros: Stop Saying Democrats 'Stole' the 2020 Election and Be Specific

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What do the words “cheated,” “rigged” and “stole” really mean?

Those words, just like “good,” “bad,” “moral,” “overweight,” “amazing,” “liberal,” “conservative,” “progressive” and “racist” — among countless others — mean different things to different people.

Those who are outraged — and I’m one of them — about all the unfair advantages Democrats have in election after election must be careful how we describe such injustices, lest we appear to be petty and delusional sore losers to those whose votes we need to reclaim both houses of Congress and the White House.

To those who think “Democrats are going to steal every election from now on, so what’s the point of voting?,” please take note that former President Donald Trump recently said, “We need a landslide so big that the radical left just cannot rig it. The more we win by, it gets harder. … They can cheat a lot, but once you get to a certain level, it gets very hard.” Giving up and not voting, therefore, is clearly what not to do.

But let’s get back to the “rigging” and “stealing” that the Democrats do, because some of the allegations are far more plausible, and provable, than others.

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One point that is extremely difficult if not impossible to deny is that those in the media, academia and Hollywood are, by overwhelming margins, left of center. That means most of what Americans read, learn in school, and watch on television and in theaters is created by Trump-loathing Democrats.

That point alone demonstrates how election after election is bound to favor the Democrats, simply because more and more Democrats are being harvested through these three fountains of misinformation.

Next, think of Republicans as the party of broccoli and Democrats as the party of candy. As people grow older, they usually eat healthier. It’s mostly kids who eat candy with little if any self-control.

When it comes to politics, most voters are like kids. They haven’t really studied how things work in detail. They’re used to one-sentence bursts on their smartphones, often delivered to them by their media comfort food feeding trough of choice.

When Democrats promise free everything, more voters will gladly hold out their hands for candy, ignoring the risks of weight gain and tooth decay. When Republicans preach fiscal responsibility, gullible social media addicts will perceive them as the evil stepmother who forces the children to eat broccoli.

Do Democrats have unfair advantages in elections?

Therefore, because candy is more popular than broccoli to the uncomplicated mind, there are inevitably more Democratic voters.

Moreover, the GOP’s longstanding advantage of donors with deeper pockets has been neutralized in the era of billionaire leftists who now have enough cash to compete and even outspend their Republican counterparts.

How, then, do Republicans ever win elections at all anymore? Because of one main factor where we’ve got them beat: We have better ideas.

Oh, it’s not as if Republicans haven’t made fools of themselves time and again, and it’s not as if they’re inherently morally superior. But, by comparison, good political ideas more often stem from the brain of a Republican, not a Democrat.

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Yet better ideas don’t always win elections, as we learned the hard way in 2020. So, why is Joe Biden president now instead of Trump? Because of all of the aforementioned Democratic Party advantages, and others.

Using the pandemic as justification, Democrats proceeded to radically change election processes and policies, from installing unguarded dropoff boxes in disproportionately Democratic neighborhoods to relaxing the rules on postmark dates and expanding vote-by-mail options in general. Those maneuvers disproportionately favored Democrats, who utilize non-traditional voting methods the most.

And major media outlets even admitted to suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story shortly before the election.

These are strong, solid arguments. But here’s where things get sticky.

The official vote count had Biden winning by more than 7 million votes, yet some people point to “boxes under the table” that barely amounted to a few hundred. They insist that calibrated voting machines, boxes thrown into the river, Republicans banned from poll-watching, and vote count numbers magically reversing themselves on CNN are the reason Biden won.

They’ll point to a county or two where voting irregularities are being investigated, or refer to someone’s sworn testimony about Democratic wrongdoing, and insist that in the rest of the country everyone’s too corrupt to do anything about it. And all of this presumes that the Democrats are nothing but a bunch of crooked liars, whereas Republicans would never even dream of cheating.

Hopefully, you can see how that’s a tough sell to make to swing voters, of which there are very large numbers.

In my 2020 book “Trumped-Up Charges!” I debunked 10 of the left-leaning establishment media’s most common falsehoods about Trump. Conversely, now many Biden-loathing Trump supporters have no problem buying into some myths about the 2020 election if it suits their purpose, letting emotion override critical analysis.

I had many doubts too, early on. How does a dull, rapidly declining candidate like Biden, who was barely average even in his prime, gain more votes among Democrats than Barack Obama, who was their shining star and remains their favorite living president? Easy. Look at the number of total voters.

In 2016, many Democrats, certain that Hillary Clinton was going to win and that Trump’s candidacy was a joke, saw no reason to travel to busy polling places to vote. By 2020, though, their worst nightmare — a Trump presidency — was a reality, and they showed up in droves to stop it from happening again. Meanwhile, Trump impressed a lot of Republicans who were skeptical in 2016 and stayed home, which is why he got a lot more votes in 2020, too.

To put things in perspective, Walter Mondale only won one state in 1984. Ronald Reagan beat him 49 states to 1. Yet the unremarkable Mondale received more votes than George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and FDR combined.

For the sake of 2022 and 2024, let’s not spread objectively unverifiable conspiracy theories or think that gluing a few twigs together will make a bridge. Instead, let’s stick to the valid, unmistakable arguments outlined above. It’s the way to sway swing voters who strayed, and win in the landslides Trump envisions.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

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Constantinos E. (“Dino”) Scaros, JD, Ph.D., is a presidential historian, educator, attorney, newspaper editor and columnist, and political analyst. He is also the author of several books covering many contemporary issues, most recently "How to Talk Politics Without Arguing," "Trumped-Up Charges!" and "Stop Calling Them 'Immigrants.'" Follow him on his Facebook page: Listen to Dino.




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