While thankfully the polls suggest that Donald Trump - and, if we are lucky, many others in the GOP - is headed toward electoral disaster in November (a poll has Hillary up 4 points in GEORGIA), Trump seemingly remains set on trying to destroy American democracy. If he fails to win and cannot take the country down the road to fascism and open racism, then he appears to want to fan the flames of resentment or even violent confrontation among his increasingly ugly base which the New York Times effectively revealed with video clips from his rallies. It is as if we are reliving a 2016 version of 1933 Germany. A column in the New York Times looks at how Trump, but more importantly, his mindless, hate-filled followers pose a grave threat to America. Here are excerpts:
After a week in which Donald Trump insulted babies and their mothers and war heroes and their families, and threw in fire marshals for good measure, the scariest thing to come out of his team of thugs and political mercenaries is this: the suggestion that civil unrest could follow if he’s denied the presidency.
When the Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the White House in 2000 even though he lost the popular vote, Al Gore graciously conceded and faded away. When Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama four years ago although his internal polls showed a Republican triumph, he congratulated the winner and went off to rediscover his many grandchildren.
But this year, facing a likely trouncing in November, Trump has signaled that he will try to bring down our democracy with him. His overlooked comment — “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged” — is the opening move in a scheme to delegitimize the outcome.
Because Trump is consistently barbaric and such a prolific liar, it’s hard to sustain outrage over any one of his serial scandals. But his pre-emptive attack on the electoral process is very troubling.
To understand what Trump is up to, listen to his doppelgänger, the veteran political operative Roger Stone. He will say things that even Trump will not say, usually as a way to allow Trump to later repeat some variant of them.
It was Stone who called a CNN commentator a “stupid Negro” and accused the Gold Star parents of Capt. Humayun Khan of being Muslim Brotherhood agents. And it was Stone who threatened to give out the hotel room numbers of unsupportive Republicans at the party convention, the better for the Trumpian mob to find them.
Picking up on Trump’s rigged-election meme, Stone told a right-wing news outlet that the electoral fix was already in: “The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in.” The outcome is fair only if Trump wins.
“If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience,” he said.
It would be laughable if the campaign were simply laying down the grand excuse for the label that will follow the tyrant from Trump Tower after Nov. 8 — loser. But Trump has crossed all barriers of precedent and civility, from waging an openly racist campaign to loose talk about nuclear weapons. He has challenged the independence of the judiciary system, and called for a religious test for entry into this nation. With this latest tactic, he’s trying to destabilize the country itself after he’s crushed.
Let’s talk about the basis for his sore loser uprising — the gaming of the system. . . . there is virtually no evidence of modern American elections being fixed. Studying national elections from 2000 to 2014, and looking at 834 million ballots cast, Justin Levitt of Loyola Law School found a total of 31 instances of credible voter fraud. Yes, 31.
Trump’s evidence? “I just hear things and I just feel it.” Yeah, he hears things. Like Russia not actually taking over Crimea. Like President Obama not being an American citizen. Like the N.F.L. writing him an imaginary letter. “The voter ID situation has turned out to be a very unfair development,” he said this week. “We may have people vote 10 times.”
Nationwide rigging, though difficult to do in a system with more than 9,000 voting jurisdictions, is more likely to come from Russian efforts at hacking voting machines, given Vladimir Putin’s apparent attempt to tip things in favor of his fellow authoritarian, the unstable Donald Trump.
With his inability to process basic information, Trump has gone down this road before. After the 2012 contest, which Romney lost by nearly five million votes, Trump said: “This election is a total sham and travesty. We are not a democracy.” The last statement, judging by the groundwork he’s doing for this November, looks more like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Be afraid - very afraid. If you care about America, get out and vote AGAINST Trump come November. The future depends on it.
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