Trump can't lose ... he can only be cheated out of a win

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This is what all that fraud over voter fraud has been building to.

Aug 02, 2016 8:57am PDT by Mark Sumner, Daily Kos Staff

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Of all the unbelievable statements that were issued from Team Trump on Monday, there was one that wasn’t just jaw-dropping in its bugged out fruitcakiness, but actually, seriously frightening. In between attacking CNN, the New York Times, fire marshals, and Gold Star families were statements that should make everyone not just roll their eyes, but worry. Because in statements from Trump himself and several Trump surrogates, the campaign on Monday began to lay down the idea that the election is not the finish line.

At a Monday campaign event in Columbus, Ohio, Donald Trump teed up for a potential challenge to the integrity of the fall general election, an escalation of his rhetoric about the "rigged" primary system.

"I'm afraid the election's gonna be rigged, I have to be honest," Trump told the crowd.

It’s not coincidental that the “rigged election” meme is getting rolled out at the same time as it’s becoming clear that Trump’s hellscape America speech got the worst reviews since polling began and the RNC Fear-O-Rama for the first time in history made people who viewed a convention less likely to vote for the candidate at the top of the ticket. Now that Hillary Clinton has demonstrated what a real convention bounce looks like and is steadily climbing away from Trump, Plan B is in action.

Republicans to date have almost always used bogus claims of 'voter fraud' to rev up their troops and build support for restrictive voting laws, largely focused on minority voters. ...

What Republicans politicians have virtually never done was use this canard to lay the groundwork for rejecting the result of a national election. This is Donald Trump, not a normal politician. You should not be surprised if he refuses to accept the result of an electoral defeat or calls on his supporters to resist it.

And from Trump surrogates like Roger Stone are coming ideas that the election isn’t just going to be invalid, but what happens after that.

"I think we have widespread voter fraud, but the first thing that Trump needs to do is begin talking about it constantly," Stone said. "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.'"

Trump was already one of those who screamed that 2012 was a stolen election, and he had an immediate reaction.

About 20 minutes after polls closed on the West Coast, television networks called the election for President Obama. Like Karl Rove, who'd just been told that Fox News had called Ohio against the Republican, Trump was incredulous. "He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election," he tweeted. "We should have a revolution in this country!" …

“The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one! We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!”

Several tweets about a “revolution” were deleted later that night. But most of Trump’s tirade is still visible. But Trump was on the sidelines in 2012. This time, he’s front and center.

In 2000, when the nation hit not only a genuine conflict between the candidate who had garnered the popular vote and the electoral results, but also a situation where the Supreme Court intervened in a way that ultimately proved to thwart the will of the voters, America was fortunate that the person most invested in the results was even more invested in the nation.

In 2000, Al Gore declined to continue fighting the results of the general election, despite having actually won the popular vote.

"I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country," Gore said on Dec. 13, more than a month after the day of the election and after the Supreme Court had halted the ballot count in Florida. …

He later continued: "I say to our fellow members of the world community, let no one see this contest as a sign of American weakness. The strength of American democracy is shown most clearly through the difficulties it can overcome."

We don’t have Al Gore in this election. And whether Trump loses by 1 percent or 31 percent, the results are likely to be the same—claims of fraud and calls for “revolution.”

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