“The violence is not that different from what happened in 1876 when Democrats were demanding that year’s popular vote winner Samuel Tilden be president, as it seemed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes would likely ascend to the presidency.
Henry Watterson, publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal and a Democratic Congressman from Kentucky, on Jan. 8—which he called “St. Jackson’s Day” because it marked the Battle of New Orleans—called for “the presence of at least 10,000 unarmed Kentuckians in the city” to march on Washington to ensure Tilden was elected. His friend Joseph Pulitzer, still building a vast newspaper empire, went further, calling for 100,000 people “fully armed and ready for business,” to ensure that Tilden becomes president.”
. . . Angry Democratic mobs across the country would chant, “Tilden or blood,” and reportedly in a dozen states, club-wielding “Tilden Minute Men” had formed threatening to march into Washington to take the White House for their candidate. This came to Tilden’s chagrin, who sought to calm the rowdiness, as he didn’t want to be responsible for an insurrection, nor did he see it as a viable path to the presidency. Today’s angry Democratic mob perhaps aren’t yet chanting Hillary or Blood as they did in 1876. But some are getting violent.”
Certainly today the true believer Democrats are threatening electors with murder to get their way.
Meanwhile, in Michigan 22-year-old elector Michael Banerian* has been receiving death threats. From the Detroit News:
“You have people saying ‘you’re a hateful bigot, I hope you die,’ ” he said. “I’ve had people talk about shoving a gun in my mouth and blowing my brains out. And I’ve received dozens and dozens of those emails. Even the non-threatening-my-life emails are very aggressive.”
The Detroit News verified one message containing a death wish and another containing a death threat, in which the person told Banerian he would “put a bullet” in his mouth. Banerian said he deleted the rest of the emails and messages “because as you can imagine they’re clogging up my email.”
If there were one good way to start a civil war, it would be to steal the election from Trump in this fashion. It's one thing for a faithless elector to vote against his instruction on principle, it's quite another if he is bullied and threatened into doing it. It's Brown Shirt tactics that anyone who knows a bit of history should be familiar with.
The other scandal is that Democratic Party leaders are not condemning this, meaning that they cravenly support it. If in fact enough electors change their votes and put Hillary in, I'd be quite curious to see what they say - well, I know full well what they say.
At that point, it would be up to the generals and the people to stop it, and it would lead to violence and severe damage to the Republic. Bad, bad news, and the only reason this terrible behavior isn't getting more press is because no one in the electorate really believes it will work. We will see.
Where is our Samuel Tilden today?
* as an aside, how does a 22 year old get to be an elector?
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