November 3rd May Be Just The Beginning: Many Predict Trump Supporters Will Rise Up If He Doesn’t Win

 

By Andrew Feinberg
The Independent (7/8/20)

As both national and state-level polling reveal growing support for Joe Biden’s bid to make Donald Trump a one-term president, Trump and his allies have begun framing the stakes of November’s election in increasingly apocalyptic terms — and rejecting the idea that a Democrat could legitimately win.

“They will engage in violence, they will engage in trying to stop the machinery of government from even working. I can see them in states and even in DC, not even participating — walking out. A lot of it will depend on what Trump does, because I still think Trump’s gonna be around, and he’ll be calling a lot of shots.” — Joe Walsh, former Tea party congressman.

Thirty-six of the 45 men who have shouldered the burden of the American presidency have done so by way of a peaceful transfer of power from a living predecessor. Of those 36, nine have done so after failing to secure a second four-year term.

But even by the hardball standards of American presidential politics, Trump’s reelection bid stands out in history as the sole example of an incumbent president who is pushing his supporters to view a loss as the end of the republic, rather than the end of his political career.

This unprecedented strategy is raising concerns among experts on extremism and authoritarianism, and even veterans of Republican politics who say it is likely to result in violence should Trump lose in November. …

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(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )