Scoop: Dems pull a Trump
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House Democrats righteously railed against Mike Johnson for hedging on whether a GOP-controlled House would certify a Kamala Harris victory. But some of their senior members are playing a similar game.
Why it matters: Senior Democratic lawmakers are trapped between their deep distrust of Donald Trump and their vigorous denunciations of any election challenges in the years since the Jan. 6 attack.
- Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former Jan. 6 committee member, told us that if Trump "won a free, fair and honest election, then we would obviously accept it." Asked if he assumes a Trump victory would be free, fair and honest, Raskin said: "I definitely don't assume that."
- Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the ranking member on House Rules, said Democrats would certify a Trump victory "assuming everything goes the way we expect it to."
- Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a senior chief deputy whip, said of Trump: "I don't know what kind of shenanigans he is planning." She later said in a statement she looks forward to certifying the election in 2025.
🥶 Hakeem Jeffries isn't on board with the hedges: "House Democrats are going to do everything necessary to ... ensure that the winner of the presidential election is certified on January 6th without drama or consequences," the House minority leader said last month.
- Jeffries' top deputy on election administration issues, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), has made similar statements.
Zoom out: The parties have very different histories on election objections.
- In 2005, Democrats' objection to George W. Bush's win in Ohio failed 31-267 in the House and 1-74 in the Senate.
- In 2017, a half dozen House Democrats filed objections to Trump electors but failed to get the backing of a senator and were unable to force any votes.
- In 2021, a majority of House Republicans voted to object to President Biden's wins in Arizona and Pennsylvania. It was part of a sprawling effort to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in the deadly attack on Jan. 6.
Argued Raskin: "Democrats don't engage in election fraud and election fabrication."
- Trump "is doing whatever he can to try to interfere with the process, whether we're talking about manipulating electoral college counts in Nebraska or manipulating the vote count in Georgia," Raskin alleged.
Trump and his loyalists are laying the groundwork to deny a Harris victory, as former Sneak Peek author Zachary Basu reported.
- Democrats may challenge a Trump win in court but likely wouldn't take that fight all the way to Congress, former Jan. 6 Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told us.
- Thompson argued there are "enough provisions in law ... so that losers who feel aggrieved in their loss can take it to court."
The bottom line: "I expect we would do as we did in 2016," Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), a member of Jeffries' leadership team, told us.
- "While disappointed with the outcome of the election and despite a handful of outliers making a 'statement,' we did not object then [nor] would we now object to the result of a democratic election."
— Andrew Solender
