McManus: Trump feeds partisan divide

• Refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. “We’ll have to see,” he told reporters. “There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.”

This is, to put it mildly, not normal.

Previous presidents often warned of dire consequences if their opponents were elected, but they didn’t accuse their political foes of treason or of trying to end the American way of life.

During Watergate, President Richard Nixon pressed the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service to investigate his critics, but he made the demands in secret, presumably because he knew it was wrong.

No U.S. president has previously suggested that he might not accept the results of an election. Trump hasn’t succeeded in seizing the powers of an autocrat, but he often sounds like he’d like to. Even Barr, who believes in a broad definition of presidential powers, has pushed back against Trump’s attempts to dictate whom he prosecutes. But Trump’s style and strategy are still doing serious damage to American politics.

He deliberately feeds partisan polarization, the animosity that drives Americans in both parties to view those on the other side as enemies — instead of merely neighbors with mistaken ideas. In the worst case, it could even inspire violence — as it almost did, apparently, when a group of men allegedly plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a frequent target of criticism from Trump. Asked about the incident, the president said that he opposes violence from both right and left — and added that he thinks Whitmer “has done a terrible job.”

Previous presidents have used polarization as part of reelection strategies. But they treated polarization as a necessary evil, not a guiding principle. Trump has made it a centerpiece of his presidency.

He has frequently described the nation as divided between well-run Republican “red states” and poorly run Democratic “blue states” and has threatened to withhold federal aid from Democratic governors whose policies he dislikes.

“Outside of poorly run Democrat states and cities, you don’t have crime in this country,” he said Monday — an assertion that is wildly untrue. Last month, he even claimed that the coronavirus was mainly a Democratic problem.

“If you take the blue states out . . . we’re really at a very low level,” he said. That statement was also wildly untrue.

Trump doesn’t merely criticize Democrats for their policies. He has falsely charged that a Biden presidency would “destroy the American way of life.” He has falsely claimed that Biden, a practicing Catholic, is “against God.”

Political scholars normally see that kind of demonizing rhetoric in other countries.

“We’re seeing attitudes here that are familiar from places like Venezuela, Turkey or Hungary,” Jennifer McCoy, a professor at Georgia State University who has studied those countries, told me. “When more people are saying they see the other party as a threat to the nation, or that they are afraid of the other party, polarization has gotten pretty serious. When one group views the other as a threat, they’re much more willing to accept undemocratic moves by their side — because they want their guy to stay in power.”

Is there a way back? Yes, but it won’t be easy.

“A leader can choose depolarization as a strategy,” she said. “Don’t engage in retribution or vilification of the other side … Guarantee that you’ll govern for all.”

Sounds more like Biden than Trump. But first, he needs to get elected.