This might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. Donald Trump is not just a boorish, racist, misogynist demagogue; he’s an individual with no apparent understanding of, and appreciation for, both basic political norms and America’s democratic institutions. Last week he threatened, at a presidential debate, to throw Clinton in jail — a shockingly authoritarian statement that is more reminiscent of banana republics than the world’s oldest democracy.

The reason has little to do with who will appoint the next Supreme Court justice, who will fix the economy, or who has the best plan for defeating ISIS. Rather, this year — unlike any other election in modern political history — democracy is on the ballot.

Every four years, it seems, politicians and pundits claim that year’s presidential election is the “Most Important Election of Our Lifetime.” This year, it’s actually true.


Over the past week he’s begun a new and even more pernicious line of argument — namely, that the vote will be rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. He’s spoken of a vast conspiracy — aided and abetted by shadowy global and media forces — that is working on her behalf. He’s claimed that illegal immigrants will be voting in November and that voter fraud is rampant. Perhaps most ominously, he is encouraging his supporters to show up at minority polling stations to protect the vote.

For reasons that should be obvious, none of Trump’s accusations are true. But increasing numbers of Trump supporters are accepting his claims. As the Globe reported over the weekend, these views are quite familiar among Trump voters.

“If Hillary wins, it’s rigged,” one woman said. “If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup,” said another. “We’re going to have a revolution. . . . There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take.”


To be sure, Republican voters have not just stumbled upon these theories — dishonest GOP politicians and pundits have been pushing these false claims for years. Even though voter fraud is largely nonexistent in America, it hasn’t stopped Republican politicians from pushing voter ID laws, restricting early voting, and, overall, making it harder for people to vote. They do this, of course, for narrowly partisan reasons; they want to keep Democratic voters (predominantly African-American) away from the polls.

Yet, as has so often been the case this year, Trump and his supporters take these arguments a step further. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed that Democrats “leave dead people on the rolls, and then they pay people to vote those dead people four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times.” Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said that the “best description” of this election would be a coup d’etat.

This rhetoric is not just a recipe for encouraging violence among a few, but also for delegitimizing the entire presidential election for many. Even if Hillary Clinton wins in a landslide (an increasingly likely possibility), Trump’s claims of a rigged ballot — and the possibility that he won’t concede defeat — will ensure that she will take office under a cloud of illegitimacy from his legions of followers

Never before has a losing presidential candidate refused to accept the outcome of an election. The peaceful transfer of power is one of the cornerstones of American democracy. Trump is threatening to upend that.


And what if Trump were to win? There’s no reason to believe that he would govern in any manner different from the way he’s campaigned. Indeed, as dozens of conservative lawyers wrote in a letter this week, “Trump’s long record of statements and conduct, in his campaign and in his business career, have shown him indifferent or hostile to the Constitution’s basic features — including a government of limited powers, an independent judiciary, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and due process of law.”

Again, these are conservatives — none of whom are fans of Hillary Clinton or liberalism. Even they recognize what gutless and cowardly Republican politicians like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senator majority leader Mitch McConnell, who continue to support Trump, refuse to acknowledge — that Trump represents an existential danger to America.

One doesn’t have to like to Hillary Clinton or even agree with her political views to appreciate what’s at stake this year. Indeed, this election is no longer about her, but rather the fact that she is the only person standing in the way of a Trump presidency.

There are so many reasons not to vote for Donald Trump as president: his dishonesty, his lack of qualifications for the job, his basic ignorance about public policy, and his lack of impulse control. But even putting those objections aside, a man who would so casually undermine our democratic institutions shouldn’t be allowed within a country mile of the Oval Office. In what has become the most important election ever, there is no more important issue than that.


Michael A. Cohen’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @speechboy71.