Can you think of anything to do about the upcoming election besides worrying and/or sitting on your hands, or are those the only two choices?
No, not the only two. And one choice is not worrying that there will be an attempt to steal it if one thinks it won’t happen. There are all kinds of things I could worry about, and do, such as voters staying home in the states where they are most needed to put Biden over the top. That’s what I worry about, despite the fact that Biden at this point is predicted by FiveThirtyEight.com to win in 70% of their simulations. Other polls suggest this is fairly accurate, but of course polls can some times be wrong…
538 is most likely right, but so is Trump. The President actually believes all of his bullshit. To Trump, his will is fact. He is the team. He is reality. Remember Sharpiegate. He was not being vindictive or petty. He actually believed he was right.
So, when Trump says that the only way he can loose is if the election is rigged, he means it and will act on it. He could refuse to accept results in some number of states and initiate legal action against them. Bogus as it may be it creates chaos. With sufficient chaos, and court cases pending, he could stop the process by preventing the Vice President from presenting the Electoral results to Congress. Again bogus but it creates chaos and destroys public confidence in our institutions.
Consider it in light of what he has done with his bogus claim about an income tax audit… He simply makes the claim and moves on. Consider also that he has his own HS police force.
Oh yeah, and what we used to call political theater is now reality TV.
On Sunday the Washington post put out a rather depressing opinion piece on the likelihood of chaos after the election. The opinion piece is possibly paywalled, but the report from the underlying study is also available here.
We explored the four scenarios experts consider most likely: a narrow Biden win; a big Biden win, with a decisive lead in both the electoral college and the popular vote; a Trump win with an electoral college lead but a large popular-vote loss, as in 2016; and finally, a period of extended uncertainty as we saw in the 2000 election.
With the exception of the “big Biden win” scenario, each of our exercises reached the brink of catastrophe, with massive disinformation campaigns, violence in the streets and a constitutional impasse.
But there are a few caveats to their study. The Republican side in the war games were played by anti-Trump Republicans Michael Steele, Bill Kristol and Trey Grayson who are more likely to believe that Trump will go to extremes, and the study was specifically designed to explore what was the worst that could happen (in order to prepare for it), but there are some pretty disturbing options available.
I do not agree. Trump just thinks lying is cool. He knows his supporters will believe anything he says, he’s a con man’s con man, and he is aware that he needs no majority to win an election. He is aware that he needs the support of those easily conned.
He believes his bullshit because knowing everything makes him intelligent. He has to defend it. If he were to be wrong then he would know that actually he is dull witted. He has to believe his own bullshit.
Trump will soon be a cornered animal. His bullshit is closing in on him and he has squandered, or pilfered, his campaign funds.
Meanwhile ‘no drama’ Joe is flush with cash.
Yeah, Trump is like George Costanza, who once said to Jerry Seinfeld, “remember, it’s not a lie, if you believe it.” 
But see, I just don’t believe Trump will “act on it”, as you say, in any meaningful way, because I believe he is at least smart enough to realize that once the voters have spoken, it would be pointless to try anything that’s being suggested. Smart enough, and also cowardly enough.
(HS police force?)
Indeed. Could you post a few quotes to give us a sense of what this is all about. Because from the little bit of info I can glean, it just sounds like a bunch of cable news entertainers sitting around bullshitting. That is not meant to be pejorative. But what could they possibly be basing this on? Popular presidents have been beaten and this hasn’t happened, and Trump’s overall approval rating has been tanking since he took office.
So, what makes you find their conclusions probable?
Because there is a large population of ‘rebels without a cause’ in the US. Folks who are armed to the teeth and ready to defend the cause as soon as someone tells them what the cause is.
That’s why they are doing their best to keep the voters from speaking.
And they are doing their best to make sure that the election results will be questionable as to what the voters actually said.
Can you tell me of any of these other popular presidents who said that they would not accept the election if they didn’t win. That said that they were deserving of an extra term?
People said Clinton wouldn’t leave office, people said that Bush wouldn’t leave office, people said that Obama wouldn’t leave office. This was said by people on the fringe, and they were wrong.
Did any of them ever say that they wouldn’t leave office, that they would question the election results?
Do you not see that there is a qualitative difference between other presidents and this one?
Whether or not he will be able to pull it off is a different story than whether or not he will try, and he will try, it is incomprehensibly naive to think otherwise, when he has told you directly to your face that he will.
Being the president, he does have a considerable power at his disposal to make it happen. There have been quite a number of things that I was assured he could not do that he ended up doing, so a simple assurance that he cannot do it does nothing, it goes into the pile of useless platitudes with the rest of them.
I already gave a basic synopsis in my original post, and linked to the primary source material, which isn’t pay walled.
I’m not sure what more you want from me.
I made no assertions as to whether it is probable or not. As I said, this was gamed out to identify the worst case scenario where the both sides will do everything they can to win. That said, through 3 and a half years of Trump, there has never been any indication that moral boundaries or cultural norms have ever constrained any of their actions, so it’s not that faulty an assumption.
OK, you believe that Trump is delusional, yet genuine. Good. I believe that Trump is full of shit, and is well aware that he only needs to fool people. I believe that he is also aware of how easy it to fool enough people.
Yes, of course I see that, and thanks for replying. But, I simply meant to ask Buck_Godot for actual details of the WP story, so I could then comment on it. Thus, my reply wasn’t about other presidents specifically. I want to know exactly what Kristol and the rest actually said in that article.
With all due respect, your synopsis of the Washington Post story gave no details about what exactly was said by Kristol and the rest. That’s what I wanted to see. As for the primary source link, I admit I missed that. But that thing is fucking huge! 
And I just picked this at random from it:
“The four scenarios were developed after a consultative process involving outreach to experts on elections
and transitions, political violence and instability, governance, and scenario planning and game design.
Each of the four scenarios developed was different.”
…
“Sixty-seven people participated as active “players” in one or more of the scenario exercises, while dozens
more participated in the exercises as observers and offered feedback during debriefing sessions. Participants included members of both major political parties, former high-ranking government officials (including, for example, two former governors), senior political campaigners, nationally prominent journalists
and communications professionals, social movement leaders, and experts on politics, national security,
democratic reform, election law, and media.”
Etc, etc. For me, that is way too dense to decipher. Thanks for including it, but being completely honest, it’s just too much for me to go thru now.
On this specifically, I certainly agree that cultural norms have been violated in previously unfathomable ways, but that doesn’t mean no constraints existed necessarily. It may be true, but it may also be true that some constraints did exist, and things could have been much worse otherwise.
‘Delusional’ is putting it kindly. Trump appears to believe something is true BECAUSE he said it. He is completely unaware that he is indeed full of shit.
It’s not so much what Trump wants to do; what ultimately matters is whether he can get the rest of his party to go along with him. I think there’s a pretty good chance Trump loses and screams “Rigged!” on election night, but do other people around him join him or stand down? That’s the question.
To be clear, that is not at all certain at this point one way or another.
I think a lot of it will depend on public perceptions these last few weeks of the race. If the public really turns on Trump and the entire Republican party gets wiped out at the polls and even in other statewide races, it’s going to be really hard for Republicans to unify under the banner that reads “We have to find a way to save Trump’s ass” - parties and factions don’t typically unify under a banner of someone who’s costing the party its overall political standing. So on that point, I agree with Fiddle_Peghead and others who remain skeptical of Trump’s magical dictatorial powers, lol.
But if the race is close, and if the GOP doesn’t get wiped out at the polls, and if the base of the party rallies around Trump, then I think it’s ‘anything goes.’ And there’s no way to predict precisely where the roads will lead and what the outcomes will be, but it won’t be pretty. What’s more, I think that psychological foundation is being laid down right now as we speak. Trump can’t just tell supporters that everything’s fine and that they’re going to accept the election as legitimate and then, out of the, blue claim on Nov 3rd that the election is rigged because they lost. That foundation, that doubt has to be laid down beforehand, which I think we’ve been pointing out is something that’s happening now.
It appears Roger Stone is suggesting Trump impose martial law after Election Day. He’s suggesting this be done if DJT loses but I could see it happening if he wins as well. The President is already on record that he would do this if there are protests should he win.
Stone also suggests throwing Zuckerberg, the Clintons and Tim Cook in jail as well.
I doubt any of this would work out quite like Stone thinks. Still, disturbing considering this buffoon has Trump’s ear.
The fear that I have is that the president uses federal power to intimidate and disrupt voting. He could also use his ‘patriot poll watchers’ to do the same, regardless of whether he can coordinate anything or not.
I don’t fear Trump’s ability to become some mad political super genius and pull of some sort of brilliantly coordinated scheme to cheat and win; I fear his ability to cause chaos that starts about a week or two before election day and continues for weeks afterward. I fear his ability to sow confusion and cast doubt on the entire process, just enough to where he and his supporters can claim that the election process itself was so badly fucked up that we can’t take the outcome seriously.
Remember how Mike Tyson was losing badly to Evander Holyfield so he started nipping at his ear before being disqualified? Well think about the political equivalent. Fair-minded people know that Trump is losing this election, but he can still bite Biden’s ear and then claim that he didn’t really lose fairly.
The difference is, there’s a path to winning for Trump even if all the evidence indicates that he loses. And even if that path isn’t fully realized, he could inflict serious damage to faith in the system before finally being driven from office.