Rita Panahi: Democrats calling for unity and healing in post-Trump era is fanciful
To expect more than 70 million Trump voters to forgive and forget would be a tall order at the best of times, but it’s frankly impossible when many of them believe the “election was stolen”, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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The Democrats’ call for unity and healing in the post-Trump era is fanciful bordering on the absurd.
There has never been less appetite from Republicans to back the presumptive president and for good reason. To demand the centre-right forget what the Democrats and their allies did over the past four years is gaslighting on a massive scale.
It won’t work and already Joe Biden’s message of unity is being undermined by prominent Democrats, including former first lady Michelle Obama who dismissed tens of millions of Republicans as people who voted for “lies, hate, chaos, and division” and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who wants to cancel people who worked for the president.
Since 2016, Donald Trump’s supporters have been maligned as unrepentant racist, sexist and homophobic miscreants by the Democrats and their powerful allies from Hollywood to academia to corporate America. They made supporting the president a faux pas that could lead to being unfriended on Facebook, harassed at work and abused by crazy cousin Karen at family gatherings.
Trump supporters have been bashed and murdered in acts of political violence that did not receive a fraction of the coverage reserved for Jussie Smollett and Bubba Wallace’s fake “hate crimes”.
Such was the visceral hatred for the president social media was full of accounts by mainly young people who had disowned their parents or other family members for voting Republican.
The Fourth Estate’s deranged attacks against the Trump administration, whether pushing Russian conspiracy theories, anonymously sourced lies or burying positive news, has seen trust in the media plummet to historic lows. Often the vitriol aimed at Trump was a thinly veiled attack against those who put him in power.
Two incidents Republicans won’t soon forget is the treatment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and teenager Nick Sandmann, both dishonestly and viciously smeared to push politically expedient anti-Trump narratives.
To expect more than 70 million Trump voters, the highest vote ever achieved by a Republican, to forgive and forget would be a tall order at the best of times, but it’s frankly impossible at a time when many of them believe the “election was stolen”.
Polling released this week shows that seven out of 10 Republican voters say “the 2020 election was not free or fair.”
The main reason for the lack of trust in the electoral process among Republicans is the potential for fraud with mass mail-in voting, according to the survey by Politico/Morning Consult.
Only one in five Republicans believe the Pennsylvanian result is reliable while 30 per cent don’t trust results from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin.
The lack of trust even extends to vote counts from Texas and Florida, which Trump won comfortably, but where incidence of alleged fraudulent conduct have come to light.
The poll also revealed only 34 per cent of Republicans have “at least some trust in the US election system,” down dramatically from 68 per cent before the election.
The results are markedly different from previous elections where Democrats triumphed; most Republican voters believed the two elections Barack Obama won were free and fair.
However, despite the overwhelming majority of Republican voters believing the election was not fair, most voters, including a plurality of Republicans, don’t expect the results to be overturned — 38 per cent of Republicans say it’s very likely or somewhat likely that election result will be overturned while 45 per cent say it’s somewhat unlikely or very unlikely.
The results of the Politico/Morning Consult poll are mirrored by another released this week from Rasmussen showing 77 per cent of Republicans and 25 per cent of independents think Trump is the “legitimate winner” of the election.
All that makes Biden’s words about “lowering the temperature” seem like a self-serving fantasy.
Biden said: “It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric … and to make progress, we’ve to stop treating our opponents as our enemies.”
Fine words, except Biden has been guilty of pouring fuel on the fires of division and hate. He has repeatedly advanced dangerous lies including the thoroughly debunked “fine people on both sides” fib.
For the thousandth time, Trump said groups protecting statues had “fine people” among their ranks but all “Nazis/white nationalists should be condemned totally”. It’s all on video but like so many other lies it has been repeated so often it’s become gospel.
You reap what you sow and for four years the Democrats and their allies sowed nothing but hate and hysteria for Trump and his supporters.
Asking for unity now is pure chutzpah.
IN SHORT
So the ABC is now doing ACA-style reporting on the salacious love lives of politicians, but only if they’re from the Coalition. Obviously. What’s next? Its crack investigative team goes through Scott Morrison’s bins to see if he’s separating his recyclables?
MORE PANAHI:
WHY ‘RACIST’ TRUMP’S SUPPORT HAS GROWN AMONG MINORITIES
SLOW LEARNERS: FAMOUS DEMOCRATS JUST DON’T GET IT
RITA PANAHI IS IN THE US WITH SKY NEWS