 As the election gets closer, a lot of us are thinking about ways that things could go very, very wrong, even if Joe Biden wins. So, you know, there's the prospect of Donald Trump just refusing to concede and refusing to step down come Inauguration Day. We've talked about this before in the program, but there's also the red mirage scenario that could play out and cause sheer chaos throughout the country. On election night, it seems like Donald Trump is in the lead, but then that lead diminishes as mail-in ballots come in, because Democrats are more likely to vote by mail during a pandemic. So, it would tip the scales to Joe Biden, and then Trump could claim Biden's stealing this election. Democrats are stealing this, his supporters could take to the streets, and chaos could unfold. But aside from those two scenarios, the most frightening that I've heard of yet involves Donald Trump remaining in power even if Joe Biden beats him. Donald Trump could actually use the electoral college to steal this election, and we're not talking about, you know, the 2016 scenario where Hillary Clinton got more votes overall, but he still won because he won in the right places in the right states. No, we're talking about him staging what is effectively a coup. His team literally has a contingency plan to remain in power if Joe Biden wins and it's close. So, there's an article in The Atlantic by Barton Gelman that lays all of this out pretty clearly, calling this situation, if it in fact comes to fruition, the election that could break America. And he argues if the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him? And Gelman is pretty clear that the answer is nobody could stop him. Because our Constitution has a lot of mechanisms in place to stop a dictator from holding on to power. But here, if Trump's legal team actually does what they want to do here by using the electoral college to basically flip the result in his favor, even if Biden beats him, there really is no failsafe in our Constitution. There's no law that protects us from him using this method to steal the election. Now, this is a really long and comprehensive article. I'm going to link to it down below. When I read this, it was so terrifying, it sent chills down the back of my neck. That's how scary it is. But it's too long for the show, so instead we're going to go to a summary written up by Eric Lutz of Vanity Fair, because I think he does a fair job at concisely laying out Gelman's argument here. So he explains, Donald Trump has been throwing everything he's got at the 2020 election to ensure a favorable result or otherwise undermine the outcome, sowing doubt in the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, screwing with the Postal Service that will handle them, trying to recruit law enforcement as poll watchers, flirting with delaying the election and openly stating that he won't accept any results he doesn't like. Now, the Trump campaign is said to be considering another, even more outrageous approach in a thorough and deeply disconcerting piece about the constitutional crisis that may await us between November 3rd and the inauguration in January. The Atlantic's Barton Gelman reports that the Trump campaign has been discussing contingency plans to bypass the election results and appoint local electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. Citing the president's baseless claims of fraud, Team Trump could ask GOP-controlled state governments to choose electors, completely ignoring an unfavorable or uncertain popular vote, state and national Republican sources told Gelman. The state legislatures will say, alright, we've been given this constitutional power a Trump campaign legal advisor explained to the Atlantic. We don't think the results of our own state are accurate, so here's our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state. Does completely ignoring the will of voters seem anti-democratic, unconstitutional, impossible? One would think. But as Gelman points out, however authoritarian this kind of end-around may seem, the Constitution doesn't forbid such a move and it's something that Trump campaign could pull off. Indeed, state Republican leaders have already casually indicated that they'd be all too happy to enable this kind of power grab. I've mentioned it to them, and I hope they're thinking about it too. Lawrence Tabas, chairman of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, one of the swing states on which the 2020 race could hinge, told Gelman. It is one of the available legal options set forth in the Constitution. So I want to repeat, Trump could take these swing states, these battleground states that are controlled by Republicans. And if the result doesn't go the way that he likes, if he cries fraud, he can say, all right, I want to give the electoral college our own set of electors that my goons choose to vote in my favor, undermining the will of voters in that state. And the Constitution, as Gelman points out, does not protect us from this level of blatant ratfuckery. So if Trump chooses to do this, if it's close enough, he could literally steal the election from Biden and remain in power. Now Gelman talks about the possibility that Trump wouldn't do this. For those of us entertaining the likelihood of this, he already has the contingency plan being discussed and Republicans are talking about it. They would be willing to do this. But would Trump actually do something like this? Would he like refuse to concede? Well, you have to think about this. Gelman makes a phenomenal point about the fact that even in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton, he didn't accept the results. Because remember, Hillary Clinton beat him by almost 3 million votes. But he won the electoral college, which is how you win, but he wouldn't even accept that. He wanted people to think that he won the popular vote as well. So he said, well, you know what, if you take into account all of the illegal votes that took place, I would have won the electoral college and the popular vote. So after he already did this, after he set this precedent for himself, is it reasonable to assume he's going to reject the results and possibly do something like this? Yeah. Now, during a White House press briefing, Donald Trump was asked whether or not he would attempt to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. And his response should horrify you because he says he will not. When loser draw in this election, will you commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election? There has been rioting in Louisville. There's been rioting in many cities across this country, red and your so-called red and blue states. Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transfer of power after the election? Well, we're going to have to see what happens. You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster. I understand that, but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there's a peaceful transfer of power? We want to have get rid of the ballots and we'll have a very peaceful, there won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else. Go ahead. He was asked, will you commit to a peaceful transfer of power? His answer? Well, we're going to have to see what happens. This is very serious. I don't think there are the words to really describe how serious this is, but we could witness the most undemocratic thing in American history so much so that this could be the end of democracy. Trump is already saying, if he wins, he's going to see if he can negotiate a third term since Democrats were so mean to him. He is trying to make it so he stays in power, even if he loses. I don't think people really understand what's at stake here and what's possible. Even if Joe Biden wins, Trump could still remain in power. And this is what Republicans are planning to do. This is the contingency plan that they are disclosing publicly. They want people to know that this is what they're planning. Now, putting this aside, we hear Donald Trump at rallies basically encouraging his supporters to intimidate people at the polls. I don't know what to say about this. If you don't see what's happening and automatically know how serious it is, then you have to go beyond the United States and American electoral politics and look to dictatorships around the world to understand how democracy has broken down and it's things like this. I've said this once, I'll say it again, democracy is not something that will be with us forever. All democracies die at some point. Empirically speaking, all democracies come to an end. And just because we've been considered a democracy for so long doesn't mean it's going to be with us forever. Trump is possibly going to undermine democracy. And if he's willing to do this, if he clings to power using this method, do you honestly think he's going to stop there? Do you think he's going to stop consolidating power after he steals the election from Biden? No. So this is the most serious threat to democracy our country has ever had. And look, I'm willing to admit that I don't really consider America an actual democracy if we go by Robert Dahl's standards of polyarchy. Like, I don't think that you can consider a country a democracy if black people can't vote, if they are property, if women can't vote. But we have made progress over the years and it's a constant battle to fight to maintain what we got. Like, democracy is an ongoing fight. You know, you don't just arrive automatically at democracy. You start somewhere and you keep building upon that. And Trump is threatening here to just trash all of that. And I'll be honest with you, I live in a deep blue state. I'm not going to vote third party. I'm voting for Joe Biden. And that pains me to say it. It was actually, you know, if I was going to vote for Joe Biden, I wasn't going to admit that because I don't want the Democratic Party to know that they have my vote no matter what. But at this point, the situation is so serious that I feel inclined to send a message that this type of fuckery is not acceptable. I don't support it. I want the margin to be as big as possible. And I'm not going to vote shame anyone because I don't believe in vote shaming. I think it's immoral and it is incumbent on Biden to win those votes. But if you do live in a swing state, I would reconsider voting third party if you were planning to. I know a lot of people who are third party voters, you know, this time, according to polls, probably won't be voting third party. But this is my this is my thinking before I had this philosophy that I would never even tell them or broadcast my intent to vote for them because I don't want them to think that I'll fall in line every time. But this is just this is so different. Like, and I live in a deep blue state. So really, it's not that serious for me. But it's such a serious situation. The threat is so severe that Donald Trump poses that I have to vote against it, which, you know, coming to this realization makes me feel genuinely depressed, genuinely depressed. Like, I don't want to get out of bed. That's how bad the situation is. But, you know, there's there's not much else we can do about it as shitty as Joe Biden is. You know, I don't believe he would do something like this. He has a lot of, you know, quality is about him that I loathe. I think, you know, the Democratic Party when it comes to progressives are genuinely undemocratic. But if Trump is able to do this and actually kill our democracy, then we won't even have the ability to make our voices heard in the future. There's no there's no vote for a politician that supports Medicare for all if this can happen. Because even if Trump steals this election from Biden and then doesn't run for a third term, you know, this opens the door to other Republicans doing this and even Democrats doing this. So you have to you have to draw the line somewhere. And this is my line like I wasn't planning on voting for Joe Biden in a deep blue state of Oregon in a safe state. But now I've got to say fuck you to Donald Trump. He's pissed me off more than Joe Biden and there's just there's too much at stake to where I don't want to risk it. I'm not sure what else to say about this situation. It's just horrifying. And the fact that Donald Trump is broadcasting his intent to potentially steal the election and he's saying I'm not going to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. We'll have to wait and see. I just I want you to brace yourselves for the chaos that will likely unfold come November.