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Donald Trump is toying with refusing to concede if he loses. That’s horrifying.

We’re a month away from the election, and Trump is already predicting Hillary Clinton will steal it.

Updated by Dara Lind @DLind [e-mail] Oct 4, 2016, 9:40a

The rest of the political world has spent the past several days dissecting a devastating report from the New York Times about Donald Trump’s 1995 tax returns. Trump has spent it, at least in part, warning his followers that Hillary Clinton is about to steal the election.

In two rallies over the weekend, Trump told his followers that Clinton is planning massive voter fraud in "certain areas" (and asked them to serve as vigilante election monitors on his behalf). It’s so clear that a Clinton victory is only possible if the vote is rigged in her favor, in fact, that Trump told the New York Times on Friday he may not concede after all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/us/politics/donald-trump-interview-bill-hillary-clinton.html?_r=2

This kind of thing has happened once too often to be a coincidence: Whenever things are looking especially dire for Trump’s hopes of winning the presidency, he starts telling his supporters that victory is about to be stolen from underneath their feet.

That a vote for Trump is the last chance his supporters will have to save the republic before Hillary Clinton distorts it into something absolutely unrecognizable.

That it may already be too late.

Related The apocalyptic argument for Donald Trump
http://www.vox.com/2016/9/12/12862434/flight-93-election

This is the darkest, most conspiratorial, and most potentially dangerous theme in Trump’s rhetoric. Over the weekend, after a terrible week for the Trump campaign ended with the New York Times’s revelations that Trump had lost more than $900 million in a single year, that theme came roaring back.

Of course, it’s no coincidence that Trump is encouraging paranoia in this atmosphere: Circumstances certainly seem to be conspiring against him (even if the government isn’t).

No matter his ultimate motivation for questioning a Clinton victory — whether he really believes that’s what will happen, or because he thinks it’s a good marketing strategy for securing fans' loyalty — he is (once again) idly jackhammering at the bedrock of democracy: the willingness to accept when your opponent has won.
"You will never ever have this chance again"

When the Times published pages from Trump’s 1995 tax returns on Saturday night, the candidate was delivering a speech at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

The campaign attempted to have Trump respond to the Times onstage at the rally by reading a short statement. Instead, they unleashed a torrent of Trumpian ad lib (captured by Jenna Johnson for the Washington Post) — culminating in a bit of hyperbole that would embarrass most self-respecting used car salesmen:

"You have 38 days to make every dream you ever dreamed for your country come true," Trump said. "Do not let this opportunity slip away or be wasted. You will never ever have this chance again. Not going to happen again. … You have one magnificent chance."

It sounds ridiculous and downright absurd.

It’s the sort of promise that most politicians are far too cautious and responsible to make. If voters write it off as an exaggeration, that’s bad, because it means the politician isn’t trusted.

If voters believe it, that’s arguably worse — because what if he’s asked to keep his word? Politicians have been driven from office for breaking promises much smaller than "every dream you ever dreamed of for your country [will] come true."

[...]

http://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13153832/donald-trump-refuse-to-concede