As the election careens to a close, Donald Trump is clinging tightly to denial, surrounding himself with worshipful crowds and blasting out e-mails about how his victory is imminent. But in quieter moments, it seems even he’s getting a glimmer of the truth that he’s headed for a landslide loss.
We can tell that he knows this, because to salve his ego, he’s been making a preemptive excuse: the election is going to be stolen from him through mass voter fraud. On the campaign trail in recent weeks, he’s been warning repeatedly that polling places are “rigged” and that Democrats will steal the election by voting repeatedly. Yet at the same time, he continues to campaign as if the outcome is meaningful. It’s can’t-miss logic: If he wins, it’s fair; if he loses, it’s rigged.
This is an ugly, irresponsible conspiracy theory that tears at the foundation of democracy. But rather than repudiate it, Trump’s surrogates have jumped on the bandwagon. Rudy Giuliani has asserted that Democrats “control the inner cities” and use them to commit voter fraud – a scarcely veiled racist dog-whistle. Alabama senator Jeff Sessions also insists that “they are attempting to rig this election“. And many RNC committee members voice the same sentiment.
Trump’s devotees have enthusiastically taken up this banner. According to a Politico poll, an astounding 73% of Republicans think the election could be stolen. It appears that, as they head for defeat, a large number of conservatives are responding with denial, preferring to believe that the election was rigged than that their candidate is unpopular.
And they’re not taking the possibility lying down. A disturbing number are preparing, or at least say they’re preparing, for a violent response. On the campaign trail, Mike Pence was taken aback by a supporter who claimed she was “ready for a revolution” if Hillary Clinton wins. A Trump supporter in Cincinnati said that if Clinton wins, “I hope we can start a coup“. And in an echo of the 1990s, “militia” groups are thriving on social media.
Most of this is macho playacting. Just like with the Malheur occupation, there are legions of keyboard warriors who threaten and bluster, but only a tiny handful who are actually willing to break the law. But out of millions of Trump voters, even a tiny handful could be a very big deal.
That’s especially true when insurrectionary talk is being bandied about by other high-ranking Republicans. Kentucky’s governor Matt Bevin threatened that bloodshed might be necessary if Hillary Clinton is elected. In the past few years, we’ve also seen Ken Cuccinelli, who at the time was Virginia’s chief law enforcement official, urging people to break the law, and Rick Perry hinting at secession. And then there’s Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke – technically a Democrat, but he spoke at the Republican convention – who posted this tweet calling for mob violence:
It's incredible that our institutions of gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time pic.twitter.com/8G5G0daGVN
— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) October 15, 2016
Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. He’s the demon that arose from the flames these conservatives have spent years stoking. And belligerent rhetoric has real consequences. It may well make unstable people feel that they have permission to commit violence.
You can draw a direct line from this reckless language to the terrorist plot that the FBI thwarted in Kansas, where three men who styled themselves “The Crusaders” allegedly plotted to bomb an apartment complex and mosque used by a community of Muslim Somali immigrants. It’s the same idea of violence as a tool to prop up white male superiority, playing out on a smaller scale.
And while the far-right wing of the party is inciting rebellion, more conventional Republicans are no help. Just as we’ve seen this whole campaign season, they’re too fearful of their own voters to take a stand. The most they can bring themselves to do is put out mushy, passive-aggressive “Well, I don’t see it that way” statements.
One of them is Paul Ryan, whose office said he was “fully confident” that the election would be fair – but without mentioning or directly rebutting Trump’s claims to the contrary. It’s as if he’s reluctant to acknowledge the man’s existence.
There’s also Mike Pence, who seems to have been transported from a parallel universe where he’s running with a more normal Republican candidate. This past week, he said that their ticket would “absolutely accept” the results of the election. Again, he’s fighting with his own running mate, yet without pointing out that this is what he’s doing.
We might speculate that this election will fracture the GOP, but I’m starting to doubt it. There doesn’t seem to be a faction of reasonable conservatives big enough to constitute a party of their own. (Again, recall that 73% of Republicans agree about the election being rigged.) The Republican party is the Trumpists: bigoted, resentful, and suspicious of everyone outside their bubble. The few conservatives who reject this ideology are a rump faction at best. And while the Trumpist demographic is shrinking, they still have the potential to do immense damage, as they lash out at a world that’s turning away from them.