Who "spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the [2016] election"?

Question

Mitch McConnell, discussing the 2020 US presidential election, was quoted as follows:

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in Congress, said that Trump is "within his rights" to challenge the outcome, and criticized Democrats for expecting the president to concede.

“President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” McConnell said. “Let’s not have any lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.”

What was he referring to by "spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election"? e.g., has he, or other officials previously made statements to that effect in more detail?

Political opponents of President Trump (i.e., Democrats) obviously were displeased by the 2016 election, and some of that might have come from the fact that Trump "lost" the popular vote even while winning the Electoral College. However, displeasure doesn't automatically rise to the level of "refusing to accept" the election results, so I assume the senator is referring to something more specific?

Answer 1

I wondered the same thing as you on seeing the quote from Mitch McConnell. I don't think there's a way to know for certain who he might have been referring to, but I found this article from the Washington Post regarding a September 2019 CBS interview with Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday.

As you noted in the question, I don't know that this comes to the level of "refusing to accept the validity of the last election", but for political posturing this met my close enough litmus test to give the statement a pass.

I don't believe it runs to the same level as the current events in terms of non-acceptance, but it appears that for partisan purposes these two actions, declaring a presidency illegitimate (Clinton), and launching multiple lawsuits to overturn an election result(Trump) are a question of degree rather than kind.

Answer 2

A common complaint Republicans have had over the last four years is that Democrats did not give President Trump a chance to accomplish great things because they were still unhappy that Trump won/Hillary Clinton lost. This is not entirely false, but the Democrat claim itself isn't completely without merit.

“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton,” [Democratic Representative John] Lewis said.

Considering how close the 2016 election was, the FBI's report of Russian interference could not (and can not) be adequately gauged as to how many votes it swayed, and thus, whether or not the Russian interference would have made the difference in electing Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.

But as the Republican story goes, the mainstream media was so wrong at predicting the winner of the 2016 election that the Democrats felt that the election was somehow illegitimate or stolen. And that by constantly bringing up new scandals and investigating Trump for what Republicans perceive as either made-up or comparatively minor offenses, they effectively forced President Trump to spend his entire term on defense. This, in turn, was what kept President Trump from accomplishing many of the things he set out to do.

This is also the origin of the 'joke' that Trump deserves four more years because his first four were 'taken' by fake scandals.

Answer 3

There is a key difference between the claims involving the 2016 and 2020 elections.

In 2016 the claims centered around foreign interference to influence voters and there was not claims of voter fraud that would invalidate the election. The only claims from this election around voter fraud came from the Trump camp with claims that he would have won the popular vote without the voter fraud.

In 2020 the claims center around voter fraud with the Trump camp claiming that there was massive voter fraud similar to 2016 but in this case it caused him not only to lose the popular vote but also the electoral college.

Answer 4

It's not an official attempt by the Democratic Party or its members to overturn the results of the 2016 election or to deny them, but it is worth noting that the "Not My President" phrase has been repeated over the past 4 years by some supporters of the Democratic Party. They didn't invent the phrase, but this New York Times article characterizes it as a chorus "that’s been building among the left since the supposed free election of Donald J. Trump".

There were even a series of rallies for "Not My President's Day" in February 2017.

When I hear conversations about people refusing to accept the results of the last election, these are typically the people being referred to rather than official procedures to question the validity 2016 election.

Answer 5

I don't think McConnell is referring to anyone specifically.

Since Trump took office, there have been many calls for his impeachment and removal from office, and one successful impeachment. Trump often referred to anyone who advocated his impeachment as trying to use this method to overturn the 2016 election.

McConnell is simply referring to these all these people, parrotting Trump's bluster. It's pure rhetoric, and it's no more meaningful to ask who he's referring to than to ask who moon landing conspiracy theorists are referring to. He's just trying to justify Trump's challenges to the results of the 2020 election. Since there's little validity to Trump's challenges, the best he can do is vague equivalences like this.