By Dana Milbank
October 21 at 10:52 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-cant-just-be-defeated-he-must-be-humiliated/2016/10/21/d03ed0e0-9792-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3_story.html?utm_term=.48974128d69aPHOENIX
Donald Trump is running against democracy itself.
Here, in the land of Barry Goldwater, democracy is fighting back.
Only once since 1948 has Arizona gone Democratic in a presidential election, and that was the Ross Perot-skewed 1996 contest. But Trump’s manifold charms — most recently his threat to ignore the results of the election — have given Hillary Clinton a five-point lead in this red state, according to a new Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News poll. Disgust with Trump sent thousands of white, black and brown Arizonans on Thursday afternoon into the Phoenix Convention Center (where Trump weeks ago pledged mass deportation of illegal immigrants) to hear Michelle Obama denounce Trump’s assault on the democratic process.
“We are fortunate to live in a country where the voters decide our elections,” the first lady said. “The voters decide who wins and loses. Period. End of story. And when a presidential candidate threatens to ignore our voices and reject the outcome of this election, he is threatening the very idea of America itself, and we cannot stand for that. We do not keep American democracy ‘in suspense.’ ”
The crowd roared its approval.Obama’s speech (she crossed the country to give the remarks, then immediately flew back to Washington) is part of a push by the Clinton campaign to expand the electoral battleground into reliably Republican states such as Texas, Georgia, Utah, Alaska and, particularly, Arizona, that have been put into play by Trump’s outrages. The Clinton campaign, which already has 32 offices and 160 staffers in Arizona, announced this week that it is spending another $2 million here and dispatched Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chelsea Clinton and the first lady to campaign in the state. The campaign is considering sending the candidate herself.
As a matter of math, Arizona is irrelevant: If Clinton is doing well enough to win here, she will already have locked up the election elsewhere. But if Trump is to be denied in his bid to subvert democratic institutions by claiming a rigged election, he needs to be defeated resoundingly, removing all doubt. Clinton needs to run up the score.
The need to deal Trump a humiliating defeat has a sociological basis in the “degradation ceremony” in which the perpetrator (Trump) is held by denouncers (officeholders and others in positions of influence) to be morally unacceptable, and witnesses (the public) agree that the perpetrator is no longer held in good standing.(more at link)
