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Trump Just Told Us How He Intends to Steal the Midterms

The Alaska case is a red flag that Trump has no intention of accepting the results of an election that Republicans lose.

Donald Trump speaks at a rally for GOP candidates in Wasilla, Alaska.

The Democrats have a legitimate chance to retake the Senate next week. The Cook Political Report rates 13 of the open Senate seats as favoring Democrats, giving them a possible total of 47 seats. It rates seven additional races as “toss ups.” If Democrats win four of those races, they’ll control the chamber.

I don’t actually believe any polls, anywhere, anymore, because repeated polling failures during the Trump era have left me scarred for life. But for the sake of pre-election argument, we have to pretend that these pollsters have professional skills and aren’t engaged in a terroristic plot to weaponize hope. 

One of the toss-up states is Alaska, where Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan is facing a fierce challenge from former Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola. The race could be definitive in determining control of the Senate. The seven states rated as toss ups are: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas. Let’s say Democrats win in Michigan and Ohio. Let’s say they split Maine and Texas—Susan Collins hangs on but James Talarico pulls through, or vice versa. Alaska could easily be the fourth seat Democrats need to take control of the Senate. It’s that important. (If you’re going to tell me Democrat Adam Hamilton is going to beat incumbent Republican Roger Marshall in Kansas, then I’m going to tell you Democrats are gonna run the entire table and Trump will need nukes to maintain control.)

I don’t need the pollster-industrial complex to tell me that Alaska is close, because Republicans are doing what they always do when elections get close: they’re trying to steal it. Last week, the Department of Justice, at the personal order of Donald Trump, filed a lawsuit to try to prevent Alaska from certifying the result of the Senate election, but only if the Republican loses. 

Trump and the Republican Party have engaged in numerous forms of electoral skullduggery, including trying to gerrymander their way to one party rule, trying to purge the voter rolls of eligible citizens, and threatening to unleash an army of election thugs wearing ICE clothing to intimidate voters at the polls. In such a corrupted world, it’s tempting to think of this Alaska lawsuit as more of the same, just another attack on democracy from an administration willing to burn the whole system down to be king of the ashes. 

But the Alaska lawsuit is different from everything that’s come before, and a dangerous harbinger of what is to come. That’s because everything Trump has done up to this point has been aimed at preventing or suppressing the vote. He’s been trying to stop people from voting in the first place. This Alaska thing is trying to prevent votes that have already been cast and tabulated from counting. The lawsuit contemplates the Republican losing—it literally takes effect only if the GOP candidate........

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