It's not that this is genius or anything, but I think it's on-target and important. I wish I'd read it ten years ago.

   I had a conversation with one of my (smart, reasonable) progressive friends about nine months ago, in which he asked me whether I could honestly say that I knew (a) Trump would concede if beaten and (b) that some...any...Dem then-candidate posed a similar threat. After a bit of reflection, I conceded that there might be some chance that Trump wouldn't concede, and there was no similar threat from any Dem. After a few more moments of reflection, I modified my answer to: but wait a second...the Dems already refused to concede the last election, and ran a 2.5-year hoax as a result. That's to say, obviously: Russiagate. In which bureaucrats, news media, and an eager progressive public interacted to spin a wildly-implausible story out into an extended effort to overturn the election. And then, in a temper-tantrum when it failed, the Dems tried almost exactly the same story again in Ukrainegate / impeachment. If I'd have known what the next months would bring, I'd have added: riots and roving packs of Blackshirts are just the next phase in this effort.

   Swaim adds:

  The exchange brings to mind the 2016 campaign, when media personalities speculated that Mr. Trump would refuse to concede to Hillary Clinton. The hypothesis was never tested, Mr. Trump having had the bad manners to win, but it turned out to be they who refused to concede defeat—not by contesting the election results but by persuading themselves and half the country that Mr. Trump had won by illegal means and generally behaving like spoiled children for the next four years.
   I suspect Mr. Trump would have conceded the night of the election (which Mrs. Clinton did not do), for the simple reason that he neither expected nor particularly wanted to win. In the event that Mr. Trump fails to win re-election, he will depart willingly. Not graciously, perhaps, but willingly and at the appointed time.
   The more interesting question is: What will Democrats do if Mr. Biden loses? What idiotic conspiracy theory will they concoct to explain their defeat?
   I mean no disrespect to my liberal friends when I say, to borrow Mr. Biden’s phrase, that I am absolutely convinced that Democrats won’t accept the result if the Republican wins. I say this because, with only two exceptions, liberals have considered every GOP presidential victory in the last half-century more or less illegitimate. The two exceptions were Richard Nixon’s defeat of George McGovern in 1972 and Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Walter Mondale in 1984. Both were so lopsided as to make allegations of dirty-trickery a waste of effort. (Nixon’s re-election was tainted by crimes, but they didn’t contribute to his victory in any meaningful way.)
   After every other Republican presidential victory from 1968 forward, however, Democrats invented cockamamie theories that the GOP had won by illegitimate means.
   ...
   George H.W. Bush defeated Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988 by seven million popular votes and carried 40 states, but in the minds of liberals Bush won because a political-action committee that supported his campaign ran a “racially charged” television ad portraying Mr. Dukakis as soft on crime.
   The ad was accurate and fair. In 1976 Mr. Dukakis vetoed a bill that would have banned prison furloughs for first-degree murderers. Ten years later Willie Horton—who with two accomplices had fatally stabbed a 17-year-old gas-station attendant 19 times after he handed over the contents of the cash register—was let out on weekend furlough and didn’t return. Ten months after that, he pistol-whipped, knifed and tied up a man and raped his fiancée in Maryland. The ad recounted the facts straightforwardly and included a photo of Mr. Horton, who is black. Liberal authors and documentary filmmakers routinely imply that the ad was both racist and decisive in the election’s outcome. It was neither.

I elided other cases, though Swaim's characterization of them is also worth reading. I was so brainwashed by the blue team that in some cases I bought or semi-bought their implausible takes. Now they all seem at least a bit ridiculous to me--in some cases, utterly ridiculous. I leave in the Bush - Dukakis - Horton case because it seems particularly striking thus described. Lee Atwater may have had bad motives and later regretted his actions...but the ad was accurate in those important respects. 

   At any rate: Swaim is right that Dems won't accept the November result unless it's overwhelming. But I don't think Pubs will either. That's not just because of the bitter nature of our current disagreements, but also because of the Dems' crapification of voting procedures. This is a very bad time to make voting less-reliable, nor to radically reduce the public's confidence in it.