The ‘Stolen Election’ Narrative Is Already Welling Up From the Left

It used to be that incoming presidents had to worry about Congress getting in the way of their affecting change in Washington, D.C.

Slapped in the face by the cold, hard reality that Donald Trump—not Hillary Clinton—will be the 45th president of the United States, a number of leftist groups are pledging to disrupt the political process in an effort to stop the president-elect’s agenda. Others are trying to convince the rest of the country that the way we elect presidents needs to change.

In a Washington Times report, Democracy for America, a liberal PAC with longstanding ties to the Democratic Party, is calling for a “progressive political revolution.” According to the report:

“So let’s be absolutely clear: Democracy for America will do everything in our power to obstruct, delay and halt the attacks on people of color, women and working families that will emerge from a Trump administration,” said Charles Chamberlain, the group’s executive director.

“We are more convinced than ever that our country needs a massive, multiracial, multigenerational progressive political revolution led by women and people of color that is not beholden to the broken political establishment that brought us to this moment,” he said. “And that’s precisely what we’ll work with our members and our allies to build in the days, weeks and months ahead.”

Democrats, particularly those on the progressive left, for years accused Republicans of blindly obstructing virtually anything put forward by President Obama and his allies in Congress. But now, with Mr. Trump’s unexpected defeat of Hillary Clinton, and with Republicans retaining control on Capitol Hill, Democrats must decide whether to pursue their own obstructionist strategy.

Obstructionism isn’t anything new in American politics. In fact, it’s been the modus operandi of “divided government” in our nation’s capital since the 2000 election. That election also triggered the Democratic Party’s narrative that the presidential election was “stolen” by President George W. Bush, and the Electoral College should be abolished to prevent it from happening ever again.

Votes are still being counted, and the final tallies won’t be officially certified until next week, but it appears Clinton will eke out a very narrow popular vote victory, despite losing the electoral vote. Daily Kos, an extreme leftwing political activist news outlet, is now circulating a petition calling for the end of the Electoral College as a result of Tuesday’s election.

In an email sent to supporters, Executive Campaign Director Chris Bowers wrote:

On Nov. 8, the American people spoke clearly, and chose Hillary Clinton for president.

As of this writing, Clinton leads the popular vote by roughly 20,000 votes, with 92 percent counted. Further, her lead will likely to grow, with most of the remaining votes coming from blue states California, Oregon and Washington.

However, because Clinton’s support was geographically concentrated, Donald Trump will win the Electoral College and become president of the United States.

This comes only 16 years after Al Gore won the popular vote but did not become president of the United States, in a similar affront to democracy.

It is long past time that we stopped using the Electoral College to choose our presidents, and started using the national popular vote instead. Every vote should count equally. Every state should be a swing state.

There is a realistic path to making an end-run around the Electoral College in time for the 2020 election. This is because we don’t need a constitutional amendment to stop using the Electoral College. We only need the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

As has been noted by The Heritage Foundation and others, the Electoral College was meant to ensure all 50 states played a role in the election of the president. But the NPVIC, which is already moving forward in a number of states, would drastically alter the way presidential elections are conducted by awarding a member state’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.

As a result, voters in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago would determine the winner of the electoral votes in rural states like Iowa, Kansas or Wyoming. It would effectively disenfranchise the voters of those states by putting the interests of more heavily populated states ahead of those in the rest of the country.

But that’s not how Bowers and fellow leftists portray the legislation:

The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who wins the most popular votes is elected president, and it will come into effect only when it will guarantee that outcome. As of 2016, it has been joined by 10 states and the District of Columbia; their 165 combined electoral votes amount to 30.7 percent of the total Electoral College vote, and 61.1 percent of the 270 votes needed for it to have legal force.

If states and territories totaling at least 270 electoral votes pass laws joining the National Popular Vote Compact, then the next presidential election will be determined by the winner of the national popular vote. We are already up to 165.

If we can make eliminating the Electoral College a national issue broadly adopted by elected Democrats, and if Democrats can do well at the state level in the 2018 midterm elections–which is realistic in the event of an unpopular President Trump–then in 2019 we can pass laws that would make the 2020 presidential election determined by the popular vote …

So this is something we can actually pull off. It starts by telling all elected Democrats that you have had enough of the Electoral College, and that whenever possible they must pass laws to have their states join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

As President Ronald Reagan once noted:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”