Everyone loves a winner. But we expect our victors to win fair and square. We recoil when we learn that a player was taking steroids or corking their bat. We hated it when the Rams went to the Super Bowl over the Saints on a famous noncall in the 2019 NFC championship game. In all these cases, all but the least objective fans viewed this as winning by gaining an unfair advantage.
Yet when it comes to politics, too many just look away. We see all kinds of voter suppression schemes, outrageous gerrymandering, and spreading of false information. While the Mueller report was unable to string together enough facts to conclude that the president had clearly conspired with the Russians, Donald Trump clearly gained an unfair advantage from their efforts to spread misinformation through social media. While it can never be known for certain, it is highly likely that this campaign changed some minds—enough for Trump to win just enough key states to put him over the top. So it is not unreasonable to conclude that the 2016 election was stolen.
To me, a central missing argument in the Ukrainian affair is that the president was once again trying to gain an unfair advantage, to "steal” yet another election. Why are so many people willing to excuse this?
Gerry Katz
Brookline
Note from KBJ: Donald Trump won fair and square, Gerry. All the cheating was done by Hillary Clinton, which makes it just that she lost.
