Instead, Americans, in states where it counted, discounted those statements and voted to roll the dice to knock the country out of the patterns and doctrines that both parties have promoted over the last four administrations.
Sadly, I think the enduring result of 2016 is an almost universal level of battle fatigue. Everyone is emotionally charged on the election, there's a level of animosity that's not healthy, and, of course, given that Mr. Trump is a wild card, an almost historic degree of uncertainty.
But, hey, as I've said before, sometimes sitting behind the Resolute desk has a powerful impact and leaders we've discounted become great. We'll know more in a few years, won't we?
Former Secretary of State Clinton at the Ted Women Conference
(Image by U.S. Department of State) Details DMCA
JB: The recent recount efforts by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein were generally pooh-poohed by the corporate media. And the fact that "nothing changed" strengthened that view. What are your thoughts about the matter?
DG: Well, as you know, I wrote about this at some length. I did find it odd that Ms. Stein was the leader of this recount movement because no recount would have resulted in a positive result for her candidacy. That said, it's any citizen's right to push for an issue that he or she feels is important.
In the context of looking at the recount as a way to change the results of the election for those who were disappointed by Hillary Clinton's loss, I recall doing the math in my column showing how it was a statistical improbability that a recount would move the needle in Mrs. Clinton's favor. But I didn't view question of the validity of doing a recount as a partisan issue at all.
My view of the recount, or actually, any recount is that our election security must be paramount. While we've been generally fortunate in our elections, in that they've mostly been resilient when faced with outside efforts at corruption, there are flaws and weaknesses in any complex mechanism, our balloting process included.
The reason I supported a recount was because I believe America needs to demonstrate both to its citizens and, especially, to its allies and rivals, that we will be unyieldingly diligent in making sure the choice of our citizens is the choice of OUR citizens. Given the (frankly, very minimal threat) of outside agency hacking of voting machines, it's a best practice to take the extra effort and the expense to be sure the election results were not tampered with at any level.
JB: And what did you conclude about the way the recounts were run? Did they, in fact, demonstrate that our elections are free from any tampering, whatever the source?
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