Gellman: The Nov. 3 intelligence lights are flashing

Barton Gellman says, a la the run-up to 9/11, that warning lights are all blinking red — only this time, it's about Trump being willing to do anything and everything to sabotage election results. The question is, will Biden lawyer up more than Al Gore? Given the way Senate Dems are already folding their tents on the "packing the Supreme Court" strawman, I wouldn't be surprised if Sleepy Joe folded his, too, to be honest.

Gellman then links to a piece by Edward Isaac-Dovere about the 1887 Electoral College Act, which could give Trump additional reason and legal loopholes to monkey-wrench.

That said, even though a variety of GOP operatives have been skunks-working things to do on Election Day and afterward, how much of this will actually happen? And, again, if some of the worst of it DOES happen, and the likes of Black Lives Matter and/or the renamed Black Bloc resists, what will Biden do?

I suspect most of this is unlikely.

I suspect that, should Biden win, even with some degree of Trump shenanigans, the Dems' half of American exceptionalism, including full-on Constitution fellation, will break out next.

Beyond that, this presumes that all of these contemplated actions by Trump are either new, new outside of Trump and Bush-Gore, or maybe new outside of them plus 1876. Not true. Jerry Ford, for example, had some plans on the shelf ready to launch if the right opening arose. (Ohio and Hawaii both went to Carter by just a few thousand votes. Had Ford flipped one, and been a bit closer in the other, his campaign would have surely seen an emergency and "broken the glass.") Also of note, in infamous 2000, the Florida Legislature, GOP-controlled, had plans to select its own electors if all else. And yes, the Constitution still reserves that power to state legislatures even if a popular-vote model is on the books.