Rep. John Lewis "I do not consider the president-elect to be legitimate"

[Fuzzy Bear]

The John Lewis of SNCC and the Civil Rights movement was a MASSIVE FF.  MASSIVE!  He put his life and limb on the line for REAL freedom for folks and REAL civil rights that everyone could agree were civil rights.  He persevered in the struggle for black folks to achieve legal equality in fact, even as, in the words of Mike Royko, the worst elements of Southern beer-belly manhood were allowed to provide the response.  He was described as "A Living Saint", and while that's pretty heady stuff, the John Lewis of the Civil Rights Movement years came close to justifying it. 

The John Lewis of the US House of Representatives is another matter.  He's been a backbencher, living off the accolades of his past, who makes speeches on the House floor that are often rambling and incoherent.  This isn't a new development.  I remember watching C-Span in the late 1980s and he was being announced as the next speaker during a debate.  I was a Democrat then, and a pretty partisan one at that, so I was excited at the idea of hearing this "Living Saint" whom I had always read about.  To may dismay, he was rambling, and somewhat incoherent, even then, and he wasn't even 50 years old then.  I remember feeling disappointed, and thinking how many folks in the middle this guy would turn off if he were on their TV everyday.

John Lewis is a guy who, because of his sufferings for the Civil Rights movement, came to believe the hype about himself.  He's come to believe that someone died and left him, if not boss, then the moral arbiter of every cause.  He's hardly been an outstanding Congressman, and if he weren't John Lewis, he'd probably have been primaried a while ago.  I suppose that our House of Representatives needs ONE John Lewis, and we've got him.  If we had 50 John Lewises, we'd have endless drama and even less would get done than does now.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Okay atlas lefties let's hear your excuses for why this is okay in any way.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/01/13/politics/john-lewis-donald-trump-legitimate/index.html?client=safari

Oh noes! 1 Democrat is doing to Trump what hundreds of prominent Republicans did to Obama! How dare those liberalz!

Exactly. I can't get over how easy it is for Republicans to conveniently overlook all the underhanded things that they did to Obama, and yet, when it comes to Trump....

I'll give John Lewis his freedom of speech. He's speaking from his heart that Trump is not legitimate in his eyes.

I don't approve of republicans who tried to delegitimize Obama either. He can disagree with Trump on policy and say he's a terrible person and vote against him in every issue. Saying the election doesn't count sets a very bad precedent though. I don't recall any republican members of congress saying Obama wasn't a real president, although I acknowledge there were some who fed into things like the birther crap, which is equally bad. The whole "republicans do it too!!!" Argument is bad logic whichever way it goes. Read some Kant. Things not okay in one situation are generally not iokaybin other situations either.

I will say that no one ever said "You lie!" to a President in the middle of a SOTU address like Rep. Joe Wilson.  There was no excuse for the lame response to that by Congressional Republicans. 

I will say that Obama was a gracious President, and I appreciated his "No Drama Obama" approach to matters.  Mr. Trump would do well to note this; he has always been well-received when he was being gracious. 

[Fuzzy Bear]

Trump certainly does lack the legitimacy steaming from the popular vote win, while still being legally elected per archaic but still existing stystem.

Comparing a number of pieces left with a number of votes casted by actual people is quite hyperbolic.

Trump got much less votes than his opponent. I don't think anybody can dispute this. There's something weird, at best, to call one country's democratic, and yet have a system under which a man with less support becomes President. Trump has no popular mandate.

Of course, as I've been saying in other threads, you don't get to change rules during the game and he's legally President-elect. Doesn't mean we have to approve the system.

We are not a "democracy".  We are a "republic".   A republic with democratic features, to be sure, but a republic where the people rule through elected representatives.

As an aside, the worst of "democracy" in America are the irresponsible ballot initiatives that voters approve, often without understanding what's in them, and which often require legislative supermajorities to fix.  Our Founders were not unwise in looking askance at too much "democracy".