TRUMP PROBABLY WON'T TRY TO POSTPONE ANY ELECTIONS, BUT HE'D HAVE SOME BACKING IF HE DID

I'm fairly certain we don't have to worry about this:

... how far would Republicans be willing to follow the president to stop what they perceive as rampant [voter] fraud? Our recent survey suggests that the answer is quite far: About half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 presidential election until the country can fix this problem....

We focus on the 650 respondents who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.

... respondents were asked whether Trump won the popular vote, whether millions of illegal immigrants voted, and how often voter fraud occurs....

Then the survey asked ... about postponing the 2020 election.

... 52 percent said that they would support postponing the 2020 election [if Trump supported the postponement], and 56 percent said they would do so if both Trump and Republicans in Congress were behind this.

My first thought: I'm amazed the numbers are as low as they are. I would have thought they'd be in the 70s or 80s.

Republicans are about a third of the electorate. If Trump were to call for an election postponement, this poll suggests that only one-sixth of the country would back him up (plus, in all likelihood, a tiny fraction of Democrats and independents). That's fairly reassuring.

Moreover, I don't expect Trump to make this recommendation, because he regularly reassures himself that bad poll numbers are "fake news," while good poll numbers are the truth, however dubious they are. Just today he retweeted a completely untrustworthy Twitter poll created by an account that also dabbles in right-wing memes and follows mostly right-wing partisans, alt-rightist, and various Trumps:



I'm hoping that Trump will refrain from urging the suspension of democratic elections just because he'll believe he can win even if he's losing. (After 2016, I suppose you can't blame him for thinking that way.)

On the other hand, we don't know what the numbers would be like if there were a concerted push in the right-wing media for a postponement. Would Fox et al. go that far? That seems to be a line that hasn't been crossed yet. Let's hope it stays that way.

I don't think the line will be crossed -- but if Democrats do well in 2018 and/or 2020, let's not forget that the right will work very hard to delegitimize the results along these lines. If only half of Republicans buy the voter-fraud line, I'd say we're safe. But there'll still be a disturbing number of election truthers, even if they can't really discredit the results.