We are certainly not indifferent to the possibility that Russian hackers infiltrated our recent presidential election and therefore we support congressional investigations into the mater – even if we are somewhat skeptical that they could or did improperly influence the election’s outcome.
What intrigues us, though, is the sanctimony oozing from President Obama, many Democrats, the Clinton campaign, and Green Party types.
After all, it was rather recently – in March 2015, to be precise – that President Obama, enraged by elements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection message, acted directly to defeat him, with the State Department doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Israeli groups like One Voice to organize anti-Netanyahu efforts.
One Voice was supposed to use the money to back Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations but with a wink and a nod from the State Department, the money was spent on building a voter data base, training campaign activists, and hiring a political consulting firm with connections to President Obama.
Indeed, a congressional subcommittee said One Voice even told the State Department’s top diplomat in Jerusalem of its plans in an e-mail, though he claims never to have seen it.
And it was another Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who in the 1990s twice sent top political aides to Israel to work against Mr. Netanyahu – unsuccessfully in 1996 when Mr. Netanyahu defeated Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and successfully in 1999 when Labor’s Ehud Barak unseated Prime Minister Netanyahu.
So when we hear Democrats wail over alleged outsider attempts to influence the presidential election, it’s important to maintain some perspective and recognize it as their latest attempt to chip away at the president-elect’s legitimacy. As we’ve noted, the Clinton camp, unwilling to accept the election results, supported efforts to delegitimize the Trump victory – not by getting a reversal of the final tallies, which was virtually impossible, but to delay matters past the deadline for a vote in the Electoral College and thus force the decision into the House of Representatives. Even though the Republican majority in the House would doubtless have chosen Mr. Trump, the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote would have made Mr. Trump the “double asterisk” president – no popular vote mandate and no Electoral College one either.
When that gambit failed, the target became the Electoral College itself with importunings to electors to become so-called faithless electors and vote for Mrs. Clinton even if their states had voted for Mr. Trump. Those machinations have failed as well, with Mr. Trump’s electoral victory having been certified earlier this week.
But we can expect the delegitimizing campaign to continue. Indeed, several prominent Democrats – including the increasingly erratic incoming Senate minority leader, Charles Schumer – have virtually declared across-the-board war against Mr. Trump’s nominees for cabinet level posts.
With their reluctance – refusal, in many cases – to accept the outcome of the election, and their hysterical fears of an impending apocalypse, Democrats are making Mr. Trump appear steady and statesmanlike in comparison, which should be as clear an indication as any that they are proceeding on a politically suicidal course.