Opinion | Democrats Dare to Believe

The following lines come from speeches Trump has delivered in just the past few days:

“If he wins, the radical left will be running the country and they’re addicted to power and God help us if they ever got it, because we would never have the same country again.”

“If he wins, there will be nothing but bedlam all over the place.”

“If Biden wins, China wins, all these other countries win.”

“If he wins, the radical left will be running the country. He won’t be running the country. The radical left will take over.”

“If Biden wins, your borders are gone, which means your health care is gone, the middle class is gone, and your safety is gone.”

“If Sleepy Joe Biden and the Democrat Socialists are elected, every citizen in America will be subjected to their extreme ideology, possessed by this Marxist madness.”

It is a sign to me that he fully expects his re-election bid to fail. It means that Democrats’ optimism about the election outcome is well placed. This man is panicking. He made it clear when he said at a campaign rally in Michigan on Saturday:

“And you know then they say, they’re taking away … Me, I’m taking away their freedom. Then they say, ‘If you lose, will you have a friendly transition?’ I say, ‘I want a fair election.’ Then they say, ‘Will you have a fair … We want a fair and friendly transition.’ I said, ‘Really? Well, when I won, you spied on my campaign, we caught you trying to overthrow the president of the United States. You’re crooked as hell. And we caught you and let’s see what happens to them. But you’re crooked as hell.’ And to me, that didn’t exactly look like a friendly transition.”

The postelection drama threatens to be a disaster that could truly test America’s institutions and indeed our democracy itself. But, we’ll just have to deal with that when we get to it.