{"id":23791,"date":"2022-10-17T11:46:45","date_gmt":"2022-10-17T18:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=23791"},"modified":"2022-10-18T12:46:22","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T19:46:22","slug":"among-the-291-election-deniers-is-san-franciscos-john-dennis-and-shahid-buttar-could-have-been-pelosis-challenger-if-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/10\/17\/among-the-291-election-deniers-is-san-franciscos-john-dennis-and-shahid-buttar-could-have-been-pelosis-challenger-if-only\/","title":{"rendered":"Among the 291 election &#8216;deniers&#8217; is San Francisco\u2019s John Dennis [and Shahid Buttar could have been Pelosi&#8217;s challenger if only the left had supported him]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul><li>By Marc Sandalow | Special to The Examiner |<\/li><li>Oct 14, 2022&nbsp;Updated&nbsp;4 hrs ago (SFExaminer.com)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/sfexaminer.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/8\/c1\/8c1a7ca4-4c11-11ed-8f1d-1f4327e92530\/6349e652132fa.image.jpg?resize=400%2C290\" alt=\"John Dennis\"\/><figcaption>John Dennis walked down Castro street with campaign staff in tow in October 2010. Dennis is fighting to unseat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, something he has failed to do four previous times.Jim Wilson\/The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The front page of last week\u2019s Washington Post screamed out a warning about the future of American democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/2022\/10\/06\/nation\/majority-gop-nominees-299-all-deny-2020-election-results\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A majority of GOP nominees deny or question the 2020 election results<\/a>\u2018\u2019 read the headline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The analysis that followed claimed 291 Republicans \u2014 a majority of those running in November for a House, Senate or key statewide seat \u2014 are \u201celection deniers.\u2019\u2019 The story quoted experts cautioning that Republicans have \u201cinstitutionalized\u2019\u2019 the practice of rejecting election results they don\u2019t like, posing a grave threat to the country\u2019s democratic principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the 291 is San Francisco\u2019s own John Dennis, a Republican who is fighting a quixotic battle to unseat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, something he has done four previous times and failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I reached out to Dennis to find out what autocratic madness he was up to. Did he really believe that Congress should have overturned the will of the people on Jan. 6, 2021, heeding President Donald Trump\u2019s insistence that members refuse to certify the election results?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The short answer is no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like many Republicans, he questions the outcome. Dennis says he has spoken to \u201clawyers on the ground\u2019\u2019 who lead him to believe that there were enough \u201cshenanigans\u2019\u2019 to have changed the election\u2019s outcome, a suspicion multiple investigations have failed to validate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI find it really hard to believe that this guy (Biden), who didn\u2019t campaign, who was clearly not at his best \u2014 and his best wasn\u2019t great \u2014 and is now in serious cognitive decline &#8230; had the attraction to get people to go out in vote in enough numbers to beat Trump,\u2019\u2019 Dennis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However \u2014 and it\u2019s a big however \u2014 Dennis doesn\u2019t deny the outcome. He does not believe Congress had reason or the authority to deny Biden the presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey had no choice,\u2019\u2019 Dennis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cRead the rules. Congress has no choice in that they cannot go back and (undo) what the states sent them. They have a procedure.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Doesn\u2019t that put Dennis in the same camp as Vice President Mike Pence who was ridiculed by Trump as a coward, I asked? What would he say to the mob of Trump supporters who stalked the vice president and built gallows bearing his name on the Capitol mall?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere are dopes out there,\u2019\u2019 Dennis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is important to distinguish between the willfully ignorant fringe of the Republican Party, who, stoked by Trump, are willing to abandon democratic norms, and disappointed conservatives such as Dennis who can\u2019t believe that Biden could legitimately win an election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The former are a genuine threat to a republic that rejects mob rule and the arbitrary enforcement of law. The latter are in the same camp as Democrats who complain that Trump could never have been elected in 2016 without the help of Vladimir Putin or perhaps James Comey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What makes Trump and his closest supports so dangerous is their refusal to accept an election they\u2019ve lost no matter the facts nor the outcome of multiple appeals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They demanded recounts after Biden was declared the winner, and the recounts showed Trump lost. They demanded voter fraud investigations, and the investigations found nothing that would change the results. They appealed the outcome in court, and 61 judges ruled against them. They made their case to Congress, and Congress certified Biden as winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nevertheless, Trump refused to concede, did not assist in the transition, refused to attend his successor\u2019s inauguration and continues to praise as \u201cpatriots\u2019\u2019 the mob that stormed the Capitol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are legitimate concerns, as the Washington Post story suggests, that election deniers will once again try to overturn results in 2024 if they do not triumph. But they do a disservice when they fail to distinguish between those who deny and those who merely question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dennis acknowledges he is skeptical of the 2020 vote, but that doesn\u2019t make him the sort of zealot who threatens the future of the Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou didn\u2019t see me in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6,\u2019\u2019 he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dennis presumes he is labeled a denier because he tweeted out praise for the movie \u201c2000 Mules,\u2019\u2019 a documentary made by conservative author Dinesh D\u2019Souza, which used questionable cell-phone data to assert that \u201cmules\u2019\u2019 were used to drop off potentially stolen ballots in key battleground states. The data has been widely disputed and the movie\u2019s findings debunked by multiple nonpartisan fact checkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is in some ways the mirror image of Democrats who parrot dubious claims made by liberal filmmaker Michael Moore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The body of the Washington Post story was carefully worded, noting that the 291 Republicans \u201chave denied or questioned,\u2019\u2019 the elections outcome. There is a big distinction between the two. I question every referee\u2019s call that goes against my team. That doesn\u2019t mean I deny the defeat when they lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is a distinction not only lost on most readers, but even the Post\u2019s own headline writers who labeled a chart showing all 291 candidates as \u201cRepublican election deniers.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dennis took no umbrage to the characterization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the candidate, who has lost by an average of 66 percentage points to Pelosi in his previous four efforts, said he took exception to the Post\u2019s characterization of his race as uncompetitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t they know,\u2019\u2019 he said with a knowing laugh, \u201cThat the fifth time\u2019s a charm.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Marc Sandalow is associate director of the University of California\u2019s Washington Program. He has written about California politics from Washington for nearly 30 years.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Marc Sandalow | Special to The Examiner | Oct 14, 2022&nbsp;Updated&nbsp;4 hrs ago (SFExaminer.com) The front page of last week\u2019s Washington Post screamed out a warning about the future of American democracy. \u201cA majority of GOP nominees deny or question the 2020 election results\u2018\u2019 read the headline. The analysis&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/10\/17\/among-the-291-election-deniers-is-san-franciscos-john-dennis-and-shahid-buttar-could-have-been-pelosis-challenger-if-only\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23791"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23803,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23791\/revisions\/23803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}