“Rigged”: Stop Whining and Make Your Case

Photo Credit: KEVIN LAMARQUE / REUTERS

Donald Trump is tumbling in the polls because it has (finally!) become clear to a wide swath of voters in the weeks since the first debate who he really is and many folks are rightly repelled.  But he is incapable of facing his own failures and so he has ramped up his talk of a “rigged” election, inciting his remaining followers to acts of violence and intimidation.

Much has been written about the irresponsibility of this tack and the early evidence of the fallout it is generating (some links below).  Josh Marshall quotes President Obama in a concise expression of just one of the problems with Trump’s behavior:

“It doesn’t really show the kind of leadership and toughness that you would want out of a president. If you start whining before the game is even over, if whenever things are going badly for you and you lose you start blaming somebody else. Then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job because there are a lot of things — times that things don’t go our way, or my way. That’s okay. You fight through it. You work through it. You try to accomplish your goals … And so I would advise Mr. Trump to stop whining and make his case to get votes .”

Here are just a few of the many, many valuable pieces I’ve seen on Trump’s incendiary irresponsibility in this:

• (Literally) Waking Up to the Danger of Trump’s Vote Rigging Comments to Democracy | Election Law Blog
• The Damage Done by Trump’s ‘Rigged’ Rhetoric – The Atlantic
• Washington Monthly | The Right is a Hoax
• Trump’s supporters talk rebellion, assassination at his rallies – The Boston Globe
• Open-Carry and Election Law
• Dispense with notion election rigged (with image, tweets) · PhyllisASears · Storify