THE DEMOCRACY CRISIS MIGHT ARRIVE NEXT MONTH, AS WE SHOULD HAVE FORESEEN

I warned you six months ago:

What happens if election truthers lose in ... purple states -- Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin?

I think there'll be demands for legislative intervention in any purple state where Democrats manage a statewide victory. There could be deomnstrations and violence. We could be looking at January 6-style insurrections all over the country, if the expected GOP wave doesn't happen.

When the media talks about threats to democracy, it focuses only on presidential elections. But democracy happens in the states, too. And that's where it might break down this year.

And now this is news:

Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake repeatedly declined to say Sunday whether she would accept the results of the election if she loses.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Lake dodged when she was asked multiple times whether she would accept the results if she loses.

.. She ... said twice, "I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result" ...

And now it's suddenly dawned on pundits such as New York magazine's Ed Kilgore that democracy is in danger this year, not jsut in 2024.

The Washington Post calculates that over half the GOP candidates for the House, Senate, and major statewide officers are 2020 election deniers. This phenomenon has unsurprisingly led to concerns about the 2024 presidential election....

But there’s a more immediate problem this unholy host of fabulists might cause: Isn’t it likely some of them will deny their own elections if they lose?

Well, duh. Of course they will.

We're especially at risk if optimistic Democratic advisers such as Tom Bonier and Simon Rosenberg are right about a surge in Roe-driven voting that isn't being picked up by pollsters' assessments of who will be a "likely voter." As I said last month, Republicans are expected to exceed their polling numbers in every election cycle -- even the "liberal media" thinks polls have a Democratic bias -- but if the polls have underestimated Democratic turnout this year and the Dems win a lot of the close contests, heads will explode. Republicans will absolutely cry "Fraud!" and claim victory.

Of course, it's quite possible that high gas prices and ooga-booga messaging from the GOP about immigration and crime will result in GOP victories in the majority of the close contests. But we don't know, so we shouldn't be surprised if Republicans who lose close races refuse to concede and if Republican-led states refuse to certify many Democratic victories. We should be preparing for a constitutional crisis in the next month, not just in the next presidential cycle.