Hypothesis, proof (II)

Hypotheis: Trump's victory has permanently unhinged (unhinged further?) the Left

Proof: Using Clinton money, Jill Stein challenges Wisconsin election results, hoping to throw the election to a woman she claims poses an immediate threat of nuclear war. ("On the issue of war and nuclear weapons, it is actually Hillary's policies which are much scarier than Donald Trump who does not want to go to war with Russia.") 

As recently as October 23rd, The New York Times itself warned us about the danger these sort of claims pose to our republic:

Donald J. Trump’s suggestions that he might reject the results of the American election as illegitimate have unnerved scholars on democratic decline, who say his language echoes that of dictators who seize power by force and firebrand populists who weaken democracy for personal gain.

“To a political scientist who studies authoritarianism, it’s a shock,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor at Harvard. “This is the stuff that we see in Russia and Venezuela and Azerbaijan and Malawi and Bangladesh, and that we don’t see in stable democracies anywhere.”

Throughout October, Mr. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the vote will be “rigged” and “taken away from us.” At the final presidential debate, he refused to say he would accept the election’s outcome, and later joked at a rally that he would accept the results “if I win.”

In weak democracies around the world, scholars warned Friday, political leaders have used the same language to erode popular faith in democracy — often intending to incite violence that will serve their political aims, and sometimes to undo democracy entirely.

The United States is not at risk of such worst-case scenarios. American democratic norms and institutions are too strong for any one politician to destabilize. But Mr. Trump’s language, the scholars say, follows a similar playbook and could pose real, if less extreme, risks.

“Almost always, public faith, public trust in institutions is eroded when this happens,” Mr. Levitsky said of politicians who accuse their opponents of stealing an election and refuse to concede.

Asked whether his study of democratic decline abroad led him to worry about low-level violence in the United States should Mr. Trump lose and refuse to concede, he responded, “I think we should be very worried.”

The dictator’s playbook

Mr. Trump, whether he knows it or not, is following a playbook — one that scholars could not recall being used before in modern American politics.

By placing blame for his likely loss on electoral fraud, he is telling his supporters not only that the results are flawed, but also that the democratic process has been seized by shadowy forces who are wielding it as a tool of oppression.

In this view, “your opponents are not just somebody that you differ with on policy, it’s that they’re somehow trying to undermine the will of the people,” said Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College who studies Europe’s descent into fascism in the 1930s.

Rejecting elections as rigged, she said, sends the message that both the winner and democracy itself “fundamentally threaten what the people actually want.”

This strategy, she said, is twofold: first, to present the country’s democracy as so flawed that a strong leader is required to step in to restore order; and second, to generate unrest that the strongman can wield as leverage.

When this works, it starts with voters’ concluding that they can restore popular will only through rallies or violence, which happened when Kenyan opposition leaders disputed election results in 2007. This was followed by widespread violence.

The Times and its experts weren't the only ones alarmed by threats of recounts, naturally:

There's a history of this sort of behavior among Democrats, bless their hearts.