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The Democrats May Not Be Able to Concede (therefore, Republicans should vote for Biden to keep Democrats from rioting)
The Atlantic ^ | 09/14/2020 | Shadi Hamad

Posted on 09/14/2020 7:46:32 AM PDT by Drew68

This is the era of expecting the worst while hoping for the merely tolerable. Some might say that the worst is already happening—economic disaster and 190,000 dead from a pandemic—while the president and his surrogates insist, in a feat of self-delusion, that the “best is yet to come.” As someone who has argued against catastrophism—I don’t believe Donald Trump is a fascist or a dictator in the making, and I don’t believe America is a failed state—I find myself truly worried about only one scenario: that Trump will win reelection and Democrats and others on the left will be unwilling, even unable, to accept the result.

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. For this reason, strictly law-and-order Republicans who have responded in dismay to scenes of rioting and looting have an interest in Biden winning—even if they could never bring themselves to vote for him.

In presidential elections, once is a fluke; twice is a pattern. I struggle to imagine how, beyond utter shock, millions of Democrats will process a Trump victory. 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. If Democrats can’t beat a candidate as unpopular as Trump during a devastating pandemic and a massive economic contraction, then are they even capable of winning presidential elections anymore? Democracy, after all, is supposed to self-correct after mistakes, particularly mistakes as egregious as electing Donald Trump...

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...


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To: wildcard_redneck
If they don’t stop rioting then they will just have to be arrested, convicted, and put in prison.

On Election Night, I predict a law-enforcement crackdown on the rioters the likes we haven't seen since the 1960s. At that point, President Trump has nothing to lose as he's either been defeated or term-limited.

I wonder if the LARPers playing revolutionary in the streets understand that it's about to stop being a game. Cracked skulls and long prison sentences are coming.

61 posted on 09/14/2020 8:44:06 AM PDT by Drew68
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To: Drew68

Shadi Hamad is making terrorist threats and needs some quality GITMO time.


62 posted on 09/14/2020 8:46:00 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (They are openly stating that they intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live.)
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To: Drew68

Vote for Joementia “Hiden” Biden or we’ll shoot this Dog.


63 posted on 09/14/2020 8:46:42 AM PDT by Kickass Conservative (Kill a Commie for your Mommy.)
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To: hal ogen

Bah! Rioters need to be shot in the act. If they have killed someone, and manage to get captured alive, they need a fair, but quick, trial, one appeal, then the long drop.

They are making it them or us. So be it. I know which side I’m on.


64 posted on 09/14/2020 8:53:38 AM PDT by chesley (What is life but a long dialog with imbeciles? - Pierre Ryckmans)
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To: Buckeye McFrog
Well the average Democrat is emotionally arrested at age 13, so...

You rate them too highly. I'm thinking terrible twos, myself,

65 posted on 09/14/2020 8:55:51 AM PDT by chesley (What is life but a long dialog with imbeciles? - Pierre Ryckmans)
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To: Drew68
"Accepting the things that never should have happened is far more difficult. A certain kind of cognitive dissonance—the gap between what is and what should be—can fuel revolutionary sentiment, and not just in a fluffy, radical-chic kind of way. In such situations, acting outside the political process, including through nonpeaceful means, becomes more attractive, not necessarily out of hope but out of despair.

This distance between what a society should be and the tragedy of what it actually becomes is less of a problem in democracies, because democracies are supposed to be responsive to voters’ demands and grievances. But they aren’t always. The gap will grow larger under a Trump presidency than a Biden one, and this has implications for mass unrest and political violence across American cities. For democracy to work, the losers of elections need to believe that they can win the next time around. Otherwise their incentives to play the spoiler increase. A breakdown of democracy is always a possibility, but the country is more resilient than it may seem, and consolidated democracies seldom break down in any circumstance. That said, this is one of those propositions that is better left untested."

The first bolded part is what the foot soldiers on the Left have been suffering from for four years, and I'd almost say as far back as 2000.
Certain elements of the Left are under no such delusions--the ringleaders, much like the Fred Kinnan character from "Atlas Shrugged".
The other two bolded parts are wishful thinking, but I think a realization of the author that the reaction would be deadly, in the very concrete meaning of the term.

66 posted on 09/14/2020 8:56:29 AM PDT by Tench_Coxe
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To: Drew68

Demicomms still don’t believe Americans will shoot back.


67 posted on 09/14/2020 9:07:51 AM PDT by clearcarbon
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To: poinq
Wow, this is how Hitler came to power. They convinced Hindenburg to make Hitler the Premier in order to appease his people. We are reenacting 1930 Germany. This is why we need to teach real history.

Teaching history doesn't work with these people. You can go to most places with comments on the internet and find people talking about how they will need to reeducate us and put us into camps, but they are not introspective enough to see that they are the totalitarians. They scream about the evil Trump while they contemplate exterminating us.

68 posted on 09/14/2020 9:13:22 AM PDT by EvilOverlord (Socialism makes workers into slaves and couch potatoes into kings)
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To: Drew68

If they, the Dims, are truly concerned about The Orange Man stealing the election, they why are the not demanding in person voting with ID’s only?


69 posted on 09/14/2020 9:13:22 AM PDT by CodeJockey (Dum Spiro, Pugno)
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To: Drew68

This is what desperation looks like!


70 posted on 09/14/2020 9:15:13 AM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you care! Guilting you is how they control you.)
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To: Drew68

They are consumed by their fear of us.

It’s a good thing.


71 posted on 09/14/2020 9:15:16 AM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: Drew68

The article is based on a false assumption which is that the polling data are accurate.

Starting with that false assumption the writer races down a blind alley.

His fear is enjoyable.


72 posted on 09/14/2020 9:24:14 AM PDT by Balding_Eagle ( The Great Wall of Trump ---- 100% sealing of the border. Coming soon.)
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To: Bookshelf

Also...

“Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow in the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy and the author of “Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World” (St. Martin’s Press), which was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize. He is also co-editor with Will McCants of “Rethinking Political Islam”


73 posted on 09/14/2020 9:27:20 AM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you care! Guilting you is how they control you.)
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To: Drew68

That is the funniest liberal article I’ve read so far… The left will simply never understand. How can you possibly be that blind?

The Word of God says that “if the light within you was darkness, how great is that darkness”.

.... Clearly it is incomprehensible the dark.


74 posted on 09/14/2020 9:27:58 AM PDT by RevelationDavid (Don't just 'know about God'...... KNOW GOD....!)
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To: Drew68

Maybe on Nov 04, the gloves come off and we start stacking bodies?


75 posted on 09/14/2020 9:34:53 AM PDT by Little Ray (Freedom Before Security! (Ironic, huh?))
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To: Drew68

Boiled down, this argument is “We can’t accept the results so you have to let us win anyway in order to Protect Our Democracy. Also we’ll burn the town down.” What happens to that “Democracy” or its host society under those rules apparently does not occur to the writer, and it’s useless to try to explain that we don’t live in a democracy because the answer is inevitably “We do now. Or else.” There can be only one answer to that sort of ultimatum, and it isn’t pretty.


76 posted on 09/14/2020 9:55:09 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Drew68

Then why are articles from The Guardian routinely deleted? And the Texas Tribune?


77 posted on 09/14/2020 9:55:34 AM PDT by fwdude (Pass up too many hills to die on, and you will eventually fall off the edge of the world.)
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To: fwdude
Then why are articles from The Guardian routinely deleted? And the Texas Tribune?

I dunno.

Maybe you should just avoid articles that you don't want to read.

That's what I do.

78 posted on 09/14/2020 10:00:00 AM PDT by Drew68
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To: Drew68
A loss for Biden, after having been the clear favorite all summer, would provoke mass disillusion with electoral politics as a means of change

The "mass delusion" was the polling.

-PJ

79 posted on 09/14/2020 10:01:39 AM PDT by Political Junkie Too (Freedom of the press is the People's right to publish, not CNN's right to the 1st question.)
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To: Drew68

*may not be able to* my foot.

It’s that they WON’T.

Besides, if Trump clearly wins, he’s the winner whether the other side concedes or not. Their not conceding does not negate a clear win.


80 posted on 09/14/2020 10:07:08 AM PDT by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
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