Thread by @asymmetricinfo

So Democrats are going to be tempted to be quiet about the prior antics of Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams, on the (absolutely true) grounds that what Trump is doing is so much worse, and how dare you take the focus off him?

Understandable instinct, but a disastrous mistake.

The correct move here, both politically and ethically, is to utterly repudiate those earlier, dangerous flirtations with refusing to accept the legitimacy of a democratic election, and do your best to force the perpetrators to do so as well.

Undercut the best rejoinder Republicans have, which is that Democrats don't care about the norms of democratic legitimacy, and will hypocritically tolerate abuses from their own side.

Not because those earlier, egregious violations of democratic norms were as bad as the present, even grosser and infinitely more dangerous violations by the Republican Party. But because you can't control Trump by yelling at him. You can control what you do.

If you actually want to uphold the norm that losers never ...

ever ...

ever ...

EVER refuse to concede that they lost once the votes are counted, then start with your own side, then tell Republicans, "Now you." Don't offer them any excuse, no matter how stupid.