Link , Link , Link , Link , Link , Link , Link , [What makes these scenarios particularly dangerous is that they might not set off the kind of alarms they should. If Trump tries to defy clear election results, the media and other institutional actors can be expected to call out his power grab in unequivocal terms. That should create enough pressure to deny Trump the support he’d need. But a Trump victory that came through misinformation spread during the campaign, and then pandemic-aided disenfranchisement — especially if it’s ultimately blessed by the courts — would be much less widely identified as illegitimate, at least by non-Democrats. There would likely be no single bright line crossed, just a series of anti-democratic moves compounding each other to deny voters a fair election. It would be the ultimate frog-in-boiling-water situation — and one that arguably already happened, more or less, not so long ago. It might not produce a constitutional crisis. Indeed, you’d likely hear the argument advanced by some that accepting the validity of this kind of result was the best way to prevent a crisis and maintain some fragile stability for a deeply divided country. But make no mistake: such an outcome would deal another major blow, perhaps the biggest yet, to our deeply troubled democracy. If we’re going to worry, that’s the scenario that should be at the front of our minds.]