Rigged?

           

           Now, I’m scared.

           I don’t have any doubt that Hillary Clinton, faults and all, will win the presidential election.  Even after Clinton’s worst two weeks ever, when public opinion turned against her in the wake of  FBI Director James Comey’s stinging rebuke about her email server and the week of Hillary Hate sponsored by the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, I’ve continued to say privately that she holds a strong demographic advantage that would be difficult for even a strong Republican candidate to overcome.  For now, the polls are showing I’m right.

            And I’ve also said that the Democratic National Convention should serve as a warning to the Trump campaign.  Winning elections requires more than rallies, television commercials and strategically launched tweets.  Winning requires a solid and disciplined organization that can both communicate an attractive message and get supporters to the polls on Election Day.  Clinton’s obviously got both.  Trump’s obviously got neither.

            What worries me is that Donald Trump has begun to lay the groundwork for an extralegal challenge to her legitimacy as the next president.  That challenge could lead to national disaster.

            Yesterday, at a rally in Columbus, Ohio, Trump said, “I’m afraid the election’s going to be rigged.  I have to be honest.”  He added that he’d heard “more and more” that the election would be stolen from him.  Though he provided no evidence supporting his worry, he doubled down on the claim later that night on Sean Hannity’s show.

            “November 8^th, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged.  And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it’s going to be taken away from us,” he said.

            Donald Trump likes to claim that when democratic processes don’t bow to his whim, there is something corrupt about them.  He did it in the primaries when Ted Cruz’s campaign had out-organized him by trying to use the Republican Party’s rules to accumulate delegates in states Trump won.  He’s also making a big deal about the apparent favoritism people at the Democratic National Committee had for Hillary Clinton’s candidacy to attract disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporters to his side.

           The suggestion that the general election may be rigged is apparently coming from his close associate and confidante Roger Stone.  As a guest on the Milo Yiannopoulos Show, Stone said:

the first thing that Trump needs to do is begin talking about [voter fraud] constantly.  He needs to say for example, today would be a perfect example: ‘I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it. If I lose Florida, we will know that there’s voter fraud. 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, and the government will no longer be the government. . .

If you can’t have an honest election, nothing else counts. I think he’s gotta put them on notice that their inauguration will be a rhetorical, and when I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath. The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in. No, we will not stand for it. We will not stand for it.

            God forbid that Donald Trump should be taking advice from this man.

            We all understand that Trump’s “yuuuge” ego won’t be able to comprehend the fair and square defeat the polls, for most of the last year, have been indicating he will suffer in November.  Since kindergarten, we’ve all had to endure the poor sports who always blame others for their losses.

            But this kind of stuff is unprecedented in our democracy.  In our country, we transfer power peacefully.  Elections produce clear winners and clear losers. Democracy requires a degree of good sportsmanship.  Those who lose must, for the greater good, acknowledge that they lost, fair and square.  The final responsibility of any presidential nominee who loses an election, as leader of their party is to set an example for his or her followers by recognizing the legitimacy of the other party’s victory.  Democracy cannot work if elections do not become the final word of the people at some point.  We should expect no less from Donald Trump than we got from Al Gore in 2000.

            Does Donald Trump understand what this little ploy, no doubt intended preemptively to provide balm for his own ego, could do to the country he and his Republican colleagues profess to love?  I’ll spell it out.

            That hard core group of supporters who hate Hillary Clinton will declare that the federal government is illegitimate, and as such, they have no obligation to obey it.  Judging from the “lock her up” chants we heard at the Republican National Convention, they’ll believe that “their” government has been commandeered by a criminal.

            Under those circumstances, logic dictates that government be resisted wherever and however possible.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that civil disobedience can be an effective method of protest in this country, and so we might expect to see peaceful sit-ins, land and building occupations, boycotts, and tax resistance. 

            But I do not see how civil disobedience can result in “a bloodbath.”  I do not believe that Donald Trump’s supporters are schooled in the ways of Ghandi and King. I have no confidence that they would bypass actual bloodbaths to use the slow, steady methods of peaceful resistance that could lead to arrests and jail time. Particularly when many of them are armed. 

            A large faction of Trump’s supporters are fond of repeating Thomas Jefferson’s idea that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  I do not see anyone associated with Donald Trump and his supporters with the moral stature of Dr. King who can redirect the hate and anger displayed at the Republican National Convention toward methods of resistance based on self-discipline and love.

            I have not called on Republican politicians to do anything during this election cycle.  Politicians have political imperatives that the logic of politics compels them to pursue. I get that.  But this is a step too far.  Trump’s unsupportable contention that the election will be stolen is a challenge to our constitution, our democracy, our safety and even the continuation the country Abraham Lincoln fought the Civil War to preserve.  He cannot be the “law and order” candidate at the same time he is preparing his supporters to resist constitutional order.  Republican politicians must immediately assure their followers that steps will be taken to guarantee the integrity of the election.  They must see to it that those steps are taken.  And, they must demand that their supporters respect the legitimacy of the election’s result. 

            We must not allow Donald Trump of his surrogates to insinuate that the only way he can lose the election is through voter fraud.