Uh, Oh: New York Times, Washington Post Signal Post-Election Crackdown

Elite anxiety is bleeding into public commentary, suggesting we have more than an election to worry about in the coming weeks.

In Wednesday’s Washington Post, author Matt Bai (definitely not a relation) worried about “Our Deepening Cold War.” While there might be an unspecified “Resistance” reaction from Democrats if Kamala Harris fails, extreme means might be necessary to protect the public if Donald Trump “narrowly loses”:

Republicans in Congress seem cowed enough not only to halt the counting of votes, but also to reject electoral college certification altogether. Restoring order might fall not just to the courts, but to the military as well.

Bai describes the dilemma of the rectitude-filled, democracy-defending Post reader, for whom losing this election would mean opting “out of the shared American project altogether” to “wait for redemption.” But can one afford to wait? Trump, called a fascist in “truly astounding” quotes by former generals, is of course a threat, but is he survivable? In other words: “Can the country bend without breaking?”

It’s always interesting when the same phrases pop up at the same time in similar editorials. The “bend” question appeared a day later in a New York Times editorial, “There Are Four Anti-Trump Pathways We Failed to Take. There Is a Fifth.” Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt answered Bai’s question in the negative. Trump, they say, has promised to prosecute political rivals, “deploy the army to suppress protest,” and deport as many as 20 million people. Through such comments, “Mr. Trump is forthrightly telling Americans that if he wins, he plans to bend, if not break, our democracy.”

But we can’t afford to take that risk, suggest Levitsky and Ziblatt, whose screed is furious, pessimistic, and paranoid. It walks readers through four failed options for stopping a “clear threat to American democracy” in Trump, then proposes a more extreme fifth.

What about just letting voters choose? No go, explain the Harvard men: