I think our Republic is in danger due to how this election is conducted. I don't trust the results. their are events which statistically don't add up at all. The data doesn't follow patterns . in Philly Biden getting 100% of these votes while Trump gets 0? that doesn't happen. The mockery of poll workers kicking out partisan observers is behavior of people wanting to do sketchy things. Taping up windows and on and on...what are you hiding? it's not transparent at all.
What I think is fascinating - you and I both think the Republic is in legitimate danger, but for completely different reasons. I'm curious if we peel the onion back a layer or two if we can agree on one thing - The biggest "threat" is internal division. There will always be blips - but the only way we fail to uphold our core values over the long term is if we fight a Civil Cold War of escalating norm-breaking. Once you've convinced yourself the other guy will do anything to win, you become more convinced it's necessary to take equally unethical, anti-democratic, or illegal steps to stop them.
From your perspective, if you believe significant evidence exists that the election was stolen from Trump, then it's easy to support an effort to reverse the results via state legislatures stepping in to make things right.
Conversely, if I do not believe that same evidence exists or is valid, then I see that legal effort as an un-democratic attempt at a soft-coup, weaponizing disinformation to create public pressure to over-turn a valid result.
Only one can be right, but the damage is asymmetric. There's been PLENTY of fraudulent elections in our history. Plenty of big-city political machines that rigged local elections. Plenty of small-town ballot stuffing. Kennedy may have only won the Presidency thanks to fraud in Chicago.
Yet despite all that history, we move on. We harden election security. Improve transparency. Investigate and send people to jail. Democracy can *easily* survive fraud and move on.
It is much harder to survive a false narrative of "fraud" that overturns a result. Why? Trust. Republicans will have zero trust in the system since apparently the Democrats can rig elections at the national level. Democrats will have no trust in the system, because Republicans will be willing to overturn elections by raw power, without facts or courts on their side. Constitutional safeguards will be meaningless, and a race to the bottom becomes inevitable.
Trump conceding was (and is) the right thing to do if you *truly* believe in the long term project of self government. It's like the Churchill line "
Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried."
Weaponizing the weak points in democratic-elections is the stuff of demagogues and wannabe tyrants. Not a single democratic election has ever existed, nor will one ever exist, where the loser can't blame his loss on fraud. Trump blamed his 2016 Iowa loss to Cruz on fraud. He blamed his popular vote loss in 2016 on fraud. He told us - in advance - that if he loses, it will be because of fraud.
Call a duck a duck.
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