Greg Sargent: “So is this really how it’s going to be? Will it now become a fact of our political life that Democrats will be required to win future presidential elections by steal-proof margins in order to prevail? With President Trump’s attempts to overturn the election continuing in Michigan and Wisconsin, more Republicans are distancing themselves. They are ‘subtly urging’ Trump to accept reality and are ‘losing patience’ with his antics, we are told. But in the very formulation that some of these Republicans have adopted – and in the sheer numbers who have refrained from going even this far – there is grounds for serious pessimism about what all this portends.”

“What happens if the last-ditch tactic Trump’s team has adopted – trying to get rogue GOP-controlled state legislatures to appoint pro-Trump electors to the electoral college in defiance of their state’s voters – becomes seen as a conventional tool of political warfare, akin to more typical voter suppression efforts? The responses from Republicans hint at ways this could become a ticking electoral time bomb. Many of them are merely suggesting that Trump should allow the transition to proceed. But they are also carefully stressing that he is absolutely within his rights to continue legal challenges. And, tellingly, far fewer Republicans are denouncing the endgame that those legal challenges are all converging toward.”