More Trump attention-seeking shtick has happened. He’s threatened to refuse to transfer power. That could really happen because he’s nuts and even if he only represents an anti-democratic 25% of the US population. 26% if you include the plutocrats. It’s going to get worse until Election Day, what with Trump’s inner-child channeling fascist fantasies, blurting things for effect because he’s still losing.
don't really have the words to describe how broken our political and electoral institutions are. maybe the fact that the president can just threaten violence unless he wins the election will convince the doubters that something with the experiment has gone horribly wrong
He's losing so he needs to present a situation that makes him look strong.
He wants you to think state legislatures will do whatever he tells them to do, including overturning the will of their own constituents because Trump ordered it.
If we are lucky, this fraught and dysfunctional election cycle will reach a conventional stopping point in time to meet crucial deadlines in December and January. The contest will be decided with sufficient authority that the losing candidate will be forced to yield. Collectively we will have made our choice—a messy one, no doubt, but clear enough to arm the president-elect with a mandate to govern.
As a nation, we have never failed to clear that bar. But in this election year of plague and recession and catastrophized politics, the mechanisms of decision are at meaningful risk of breaking down. Close students of election law and procedure are warning that conditions are ripe for a constitutional crisis that would leave the nation without an authoritative result. We have no fail-safe against that calamity. Thus the blinking red lights.
[…]
Right now, the best we can do is an ad hoc defense of democracy. Begin by rejecting the temptation to think that this election will carry on as elections usually do. Something far out of the norm is likely to happen. Probably more than one thing. Expecting otherwise will dull our reflexes. It will lull us into spurious hope that Trump is tractable to forces that constrain normal incumbents.
The reason they so adamantly tell us to vote is because they don’t have a plan. Fatalistic are they are about the end of democracy as they know it, they don’t have any strategies beyond electoralism even in the face of the president literally flirting with not leaving office. https://t.co/ZAcRUByT8c
