All over the media, there’s speculation about what will happen if President Trump loses the election. Unsurprisingly, many think Trump will refuse to leave office and will use whatever power he can muster to resist any effort to remove him.

I say “unsurprising” not because I think Trump will refuse to go, but because I’ve heard this rhetoric before. People said it about Clinton. They said it about Bush. They said it about Obama. And yet, all left office peacefully. Granted, they all got second terms, but if they were resistant to leaving office, I don’t see how that would matter.

Now, though, they’re saying it about Trump.

However, there’s little talk of what would happen if Biden loses. While the polls seem to point in that being unlikely, they said the same thing four years ago and we all know how that turned out.

So, if Biden loses, what happens? Well, some top Democrats are pondering that possibility.

Far more interesting, and totally unnoticed, is the behavior of former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Podesta also took part in the simulations, and unlike the anti-Trump Republicans, he wasn’t pretending to be someone he hates. Instead, organizers did the sensible thing: they had an anti-Trump Democrat portray an anti-Trump Democrat. Because the simulation designers apparently wanted to torment him as much as possible, Podesta had to endure an exact 2016 repeat: he played Joe Biden in a simulation where Trump loses the popular vote but wins a close but convincing victory in the Electoral College.

Buried at the bottom of a New York Times article, the paper describes what Podesta did:

‘Mr Podesta, playing Mr Biden, shocked the organizers by saying he felt his party wouldn’t let him concede. Alleging voter suppression, he persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College.

‘In that scenario, California, Oregon, and Washington then threatened to secede from the United States if Mr Trump took office as planned.’

This was so astonishing that Cockburn’s monocle nearly popped off reading it — and he doesn’t even wear one. The actual text of the final report is even more jarring. According to a summary of the game, while acting as Biden — rather than accept defeat — Podesta actively instigated secession, and then issued an ultimatum: Trump could only begin his second term if Puerto Rico and DC became states, California was cut into five pieces, and the Electoral College was abolished. When the ultimatum was refused, Podesta got the Democratic House (played by other Democrats) to declare Biden the president, and then watched to see how the military would react. If you think Cockburn exaggerates, here’s what the document says about ‘Game 3: Clear Trump win’ (a scenario in which Trump wins the Electoral College and the popular vote)

I’d recommend reading the original link for more details, but yeah, it goes on to note the push for secession for the West Coast.

Refresh my memory. What happened the last time states tried to secede from the union? As a born and bred Southerner, my memory on this one is a little hazy?

Might that have something to do with why there aren’t buildings from before the 1860’s still standing in Atlanta?

However, that’s not the only issue being foreseen.

‘One of the most consequential moves was that Team Biden on January 6 provoked a breakdown in the joint session of Congress by getting the House of Representatives to agree to award  the presidency to Biden (based on the alternative pro-Biden submissions sent by pro-Biden governors.) Pence and the GOP refused to accept this, declaring instead that Trump was re-elected under the Constitution because of his Electoral College victory. This partisan division remained unresolved because neither side backed down, and January 20 arrived without a single president-elect entitled to be Commander-in-Chief after noon that day. It was unclear what the military would do in this situation.’

In other words, there’s a real chance we could see some serious ugliness in this mess.

After all, it’s not like Democrats haven’t made something of a habit of not accepting election results of late, now have they? Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams are just two such examples, the latter becoming an outright punchline over it. It’s not a stretch to imagine Joe Biden being among those who might contest the results as well.

Now, all this said, don’t think I can’t foresee a possibility of civil war if Trump loses, either. Many won’t accept the election results in that case, citing mail-in voting and other things as being used for voter fraud.

In other words, if we’re not very careful, we might start seeing things get even uglier than they have in recent months.