Would Donald Trump Go Quietly? That's Not His Style
It is a sign of how poorly Donald J. Trump is doing in the polls that he already is working on his reasons to be a sore loser.
The system, he says, is "rigged" against him and his voters.
"I'm afraid the election's going to be rigged, I've got to be honest," he warned in a rally in Columbus, Ohio last Monday, a sentiment he echoed later that day on Sean Hannity's Fox News program.
"I'm telling you, November 8, we'd better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged," he told Hannity.
Trump's only evidence for fraud consisted of "precincts where there were practically nobody voting for the Republican" in the 2012 election. "If you don't have voter ID," he said, "you can just keep voting and voting and voting."
That's his own version of the standard Republican argument for mandatory voter ID cards. I have long found it suspicious that Republicans push for photo ID cards, which tend to reduce low-income and minority turnout, in face-to-face voting but not in absentee voting, which is more likely to be used by upper-income whites.
Recent court decisions in North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio, South Dakota and Kansas, among others, have overturned various voter ID restrictions as nice on paper but illegally discriminatory in practice. Voter fraud is far too rare to be worth the denial of voting rights that such laws have brought about, the courts have ruled.
But Trump's exaggerations are mild compared to some of his supporters, such as radio host Alex Jones, who warned that the Obama administration might "cancel the election." And Trump's occasional adviser Roger Stone raised eyebrows by telling Breitbart News that Trump should prepare for a "violent post-election contest."
"I mean civil disobedience, not violence," said Stone, "but it will be a bloodbath. The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in."
"Not violence" but a "bloodbath"? Stone's ominously colorful language reminds me of Trump's Twitter freakout in 2012 after he learned of President Obama's re-election victory. Trump condemned America's democratic process, said the Electoral College should be shut down and called for a revolution. Cooler heads prevailed -- that time.
...continued
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
