Blaming the Victim?

Pedro Gonzalez should have done some of his own research on the 2020 election instead of simply repeating (in his September 2023 Chronicles column, “Vivek Ramaswamy and Conservative Victimhood”) what others have said about it, including the notoriously undisciplined former President Trump.

Even a cursory review (with rounding of numbers) of the Georgian results from two key counties suggests some level of fraud. Remember Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes.

In Fulton County in 2016 there were about 439,000 votes cast, in 2020 about 523,000, a 19 percent increase. Although the population of the county grew by 16 percent from 2010 to 2020, this voting increase is possible with higher turnout. In 2016 Trump got 118,000 votes to Clinton’s 297,000. But in 2020 Trump got 137,000 to Biden’s 380,000. So that means that there was an increase of 84,000 votes and Biden got 83,000 of them. This is possible because the third party votes decreased by 18,000. Even so, this is a low-probability event. In 2020, Biden got 73 percent of the vote but the best Obama did was 67 percent. This is a county where blacks are the largest racial group.

In Dekalb County, the population increased by about 11 percent from 2010 to 2020 and the total vote from 2016 to 2020 increased by 17 percent, from 317,000 to 370,000. In 2016 Trump got 51,000 votes and Clinton got 251,000, but in 2020 Trump got 58,000 to Biden’s 308,000. The total votes in the county increased by 53,000 from 2016 to 2020, but Biden got 57,000 more votes than Clinton. This is possible because third party votes decreased by 11,000. Dekalb, like Fulton, is a county where blacks make up the largest racial group. Yet somehow Obama’s high water mark was 79 percent of the vote, but Biden’s was 83 percent.

The question is not whether the final numbers are accurate; let’s assume they are. The real question is who cast those extra ballots and how were they cast; before the election, and perhaps by mail. We will never know all of the answers, but a statistical analysis of every precinct in key counties in contested states that compared the 2016 results to the 2020 results would likely lead to a very low probability that the final outcome was not affected by some level of fraud.

—Fred Birnbaum 

Ivins, Utah

Pedro Gonzalez Replies:

Where to begin? There is no shortage of elaborate theories aimed at attempting to explain the seemingly inexplicable decision by Americans to cast more votes for Joe Biden than Donald Trump in 2020. Trump was bad. But Biden? Come on—“81 million votes my ass,” as Kari Lake’s god-awful protest song goes. 

Unless, of course, Americans didn’t vote for Biden. They voted against Trump, a uniquely detestable figure who barely beat the most repulsive candidate in modern memory: Hillary Clinton.

Trump was a populist so unpopular that he lost the popular vote to Clinton. He could only brag that the voters who cost her the election in 2016 were few enough to fill a small football stadium.

That’s not to say there was no fraud, which is something baked into democracy. The only question is how much and whether it’s truly consequential. The fact is that Trump’s team determined well ahead of election night that they were on track to lose before any ballots had been cast or any shenanigans had occurred. You wrote that I was merely “repeating what others have said about it, including the notoriously undisciplined former President Trump.” But one of the key figures I cited was the Trump campaign’s lead data expert, Matt Oczkowski. 

Oczkowski correctly predicted Trump’s victory in multiple swing states in 2016. That was something a lot of people got wrong, but not him. That’s why Trump made Oczkowski his data guru for the 2020 campaign. And in the spring of 2020, Oczkowski was one of the key figures who warned Trump that he was running a losing race against Biden in multiple swing states.  

But let’s say there was an alarming amount of fraud in 2020. What did Trump do to shore up Republican defenses against Democrat fraud? Surely, there would have been warning signs. I was told about proposals to implement preventative measures just in case. But the Trump administration never thought they were necessary. People who put election fraud measures forward were laughed at, because the Trump Team thought Trump would win in a landslide despite any fraud. They thought Trump’s “Platinum Plan” promising handouts to black voters,  and talk of amnesty for illegal aliens, would sap minority votes away from the Democrats. Strategic thinking was shunned in favor of racial pandering.

It was only when it became painfully obvious that Trump would lose that a plan was hatched by his advisors to declare the election stolen in a deliberate effort to confuse Republicans.

On the one hand, the Trump administration’s apparent lack of concern regarding fraud leading up to the 2020 election should tell you something. On the other hand, that sort of hubris or incompetence is utterly disqualifying. 

While we don’t agree on whether the election was stolen, I think we might agree that Trump gave it away.

—Pedro Gonzalez