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Donald Trump lost the election. Decisively. Across the country, in dozens of cases, courts have examined and rejected the claims of election fraud being brought by Trump and his supporters. They can’t even make it out of the gate because this was “the most secure [election] in American history,” according to Chris Krebs – the lifelong Republican who was appointed to oversee the election but fired when he refused to embrace Trump’s lies. The supposed “fraud” that Trump sycophants like Tom McClintock continue to trumpet was occasional human error, but more often simply Republicans who didn’t understand how the election would work, or after-the-fact complaints about the system of review and counting adopted by election officials, because that system didn’t give them the win they coveted. Trump and his supporters are 1-58 in election cases and that single win was a meaningless procedural decision that did not embrace the fraud lie – and it is a lie – that Trump continues to bellow to his followers. This despite the fact that his own Attorney General, William Barr, has continued to maintain that the DOJ has “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
And then Texas filed its petition with the Supreme Court. And reasonable people – people who care about truth and facts and the law – were stunned that the Attorney General of one of the largest states in the Nation would embrace such lunacy, and that 17 other states and 126 members of Congress would support it. That case was an utterly baseless and cynical attempt by one state to impose its will on other states because its citizens had chosen a different presidential candidate. It had no chance but if it had, it would have subverted democracy in this country. As this article explains, Texas demanded the right to tell other states how to run their elections – and for the victor in those states to be rejected, and the states’ legislators to impose their will instead – because Texas didn’t like the results. Texas, in effect, wanted to replace the democracy in this Nation with an oligarchy – rule by a few – with Donald Trump as its leader.
Tom McClintock joined in that seditious quest. Although Trump and his cult have not been able to establish a single case of election fraud anywhere in the Nation and it now is evident to anyone willing to open their eyes and see that Joe Biden won in a free and fair election, Tom McClintock joined his colleagues in asking the Supreme Court to reject those election results, throw out the votes of millions of Americans (the vast majority of them African American), and hand the win to the loser, Donald Trump. It’s an egregious abuse of his office and rejection of the constitutional principles that he has sworn to serve.
Maybe he’s delusional. Maybe Tom McClintock has lost his connection to reality – forgotten the difference between right and wrong, and true and false. Maybe he actually believes the lies that have been rejected by every court to consider them. We doubt it. We’ve been watching Tom McClintock for a lot of years. We think it’s more likely that he’s a seditious liar.
In July 2016 McClintock wrote that “[t]he arrangement the Founders devised depends on dividing the powers of government in a manner that assures the ambitions of one group constantly check and contain the ambitions of another. But this can only work so long as the powers are evenly divided; this, in turn can only work as long as those to whom we loan these powers are obedient to that Constitution; and this, in turn can only work as long as ‘We, the People,’ insist on it. And the moment we cease to insist on it, we will forfeit that Constitution and the liberty it protects.”
Lofty words, that McClintock used – as he did during the Obama Administration – as a bludgeon to try to assert his will over a president he didn’t like. He hasn’t written anything like this since because he likes the autocrat his party chose to lead this country. Tom McClintock has shown us that his words always have been as empty as his deeds.
Tom McClintock has chosen his side – the side that would “forfeit that Constitution and the liberty it protects.” He’s rejected democracy. It’s long past time for us to reject him. We, the members of Sierra Forward, declare now that we will never forgive him for this act of sedition. We will never let him live it down. It is a betrayal of everything he claims to believe – of the country he is sworn to serve – and he should pay for it in 2022. We don’t know who will challenge him. But we know we will be there to fight for that person’s victory, and finally send Tom McClintock back to his own District. Once and for all. Please consider a donation to our on-going efforts to hold Tom McClintock accountable.
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