A writer for the liberal website The Atlantic claims Democrats and other leftists might not be able to accept a victory and another term by Donald Trump as president and could continue to riot in cities across the country.
After declaring he does not "believe Donald Trump is a fascist or a dictator in the making," nor that "America is a failed state," Shadi Hamid wrote Sunday, if the president wins reelection, he worries there will be those unwilling and unable to accept it.
"A loss by Joe Biden under these circumstances is the worst case, not because Trump will destroy America [he can't], but because it is the outcome most likely to undermine faith in democracy, resulting in more of the social unrest and street battles that cities including Portland, Oregon, and Seattle have seen in recent months," Hamid wrote.
Because of that, he added, Republicans have "an interest in Biden winning."
The piece, in the same publication that claimed anonymous sources said Trump denigrated veterans and American war dead, drew an immediate reaction from the deputy communications director of the Trump 2020 campaign Matt Wolking, who likened it to extortion.
"They're not even hiding it anymore," Wolking wrote in a Twitter post. "If you don't let us Democrats win our rioters will burn down cities."
It is a similar point that was made by former Navy SEAL and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, to Newsmax TV six weeks ago: The rioters' message was "we'll hold America hostage until you give us power."
Hamid justified the reaction by pointing to national polls that have had Biden ahead most of the summer, as they did in 2016 – when Hillary Clinton led and some predicted a 10 percentage point victory – and liberals, he said, "never really came to terms with it."
"I struggle to imagine how, beyond utter shock, millions of Democrats will process a Trump victory," he wrote. "A loss for Biden, after having been the clear favorite all summer, would provoke mass disillusion with electoral politics as a means of change — at a time when disillusion is already dangerously high.
"How could so many of their fellow Americans side with a racist and a fabulist, someone so callous and seemingly without empathy?"
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