​Despite the fact that only 31 credible cases of voter fraud were identified in the 1 billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014 (thus averaging just over 4 cases per election year), voter fraud has been highlighted by Mr. Trump as a source of grave concern and the impetus for characterizing the election as “rigged.”
 
This is dangerous, for reasons that I and many others have articulated. Now I thought I’d provide some perspective on just how rare voter fraud is, by highlighting some strange events that, strange though they are, happen more often than does voter fraud.
 

• Coconuts falling on peoples’ heads cause approximately 150 deaths annually.
• 12 high school and college football players die annually.
• Nearly two dozen people die each year from flying champagne corks (over a third of which are at weddings).
• Bee stings cause approximately 100 deaths each year.
• Burns from scalding tap water cause approximately 100 deaths each year.
• More than 2,500 left-handed people are killed annually around the world using equipment designed for right-handed people.
• 22 people are killed each year from apparently sub-optimal encounters with cows.
• And because I can’t resist a West Wing reference, there is a slightly higher rate of death trying to get snacks out of vending machines, averaging 2.18 deaths per year.

 
We still get our caffeine or munchies fixes with the office vending machine. We don’t necessarily preclude our children from playing football. We certainly don’t stop using tap water and champagne is consumed frequently on holidays and other celebrations. And as a lefty myself, I certainly brave the right-handed world on a daily basis.
 
And these are all things with potentially fatal consequences. Voter fraud involves someone opting to break a law to be in all likelihood a not-remotely-pivotal actor in an election. Thus, we are almost assured not to feel the effect of these incredibly rare instances. The next time you’re concerned about voter fraud impacting American elections, consider the far greater – but still very obscure – threats that we face daily.

Among other oddities of the 2016 presidential election is that it will be the first presidential election following the invalidation of key aspects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
 
In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court of the United States notably struck down the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, holding that the coverage formula determining preclearance was no longer needed given contemporary progress. This section of the Voting Rights Act applied to those states with histories of discrimination, requiring that they obtain approval from the federal government before making changes to their election laws. The states to which it applied were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, along with parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, and South Dakota. This November will be the first presidential election in the aftermath of this controversial holding.
 
In the immediate aftermath of Shelby County v. Holder, many states took action on their state election laws. Indeed, shortly after the Court’s holding, having waited for the preclearance provision to be invalidated, the North Carolina state legislature passed legislation that imposed strict photo ID requirements, significantly cut back on early voting, and reduced the window for voter registration. Alabama likewise imposed a new strict photo ID requirement that would have required preclearance, and Mississippi moved to enforce its photo ID law which it had not been permitted to implement under the preclearance provisions of the VRA due at least in part to the difficulty of obtaining an acceptable form of ID. Moreover, the very day of the holding, Texas officials announced that they would implement the state’s strict photo ID law, a law that previously had not passed constitutional muster because of Section 5 of the VRA. While it would later be declared so strict as to be unconstitutional, many strict photo ID laws remain intact. Indeed, 34 states have laws requesting or requiring that voters show some form of identification at the polls, a requirement that disadvantages minorities and the poor.  
 
It should come as no surprise that the states to which preclearance applied were largely concentrated in the South given the prevalence of Jim Crow policies ultimately struck down by Congress and the courts. Such states traditionally have tended to be strongly Republican (e.g., Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama), with strongly Republican (Democratic) states typically not the locus of massive campaigning compared with battleground states such as Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
 
There are, of course, some states to which Shelby applies that have consistently been relevant, namely Virginia and North Carolina. But this is not only the first election in which the Voting Rights Act protections will hold, but the first election in which more of these applicable states will be competitive. Indeed, with polls in Texas, Georgia, and Arizona all dramatically narrowed, the campaigns are converging on these three states that typically have not been considered in the toss-up (or even lean) category in decades.
 
Indeed, Georgia has not voted for a Democrat since 1992 (and very narrowly at that), with more recent presidential elections won in the state by wide margins. Texas has not voted for a Democrat since 1976. The only time since 1948 that Arizona has voted for a Democrat is 1996. In each of these states currently, Secretary Clinton could conceivably win, with Texas being the longest shot among the three and Georgia the most likely.
 
Even absent competitive elections, the last couple of decades have continued to show instances of voter intimidation and suppression of minority voters in southern states and beyond. People for the American Way documented, for example:
 

• Louisiana (2002): Flyers distributed in African American communities informing them that they could alternatively go to the polls on the following Tuesday.
• South Carolina (1998): A state representative mailed 3,000 brochures to people in African American communities, claiming that law enforcement agents would be “working” the election and indicated that the election “is not worth going to jail.”
• South Carolina (1996): Considerable voter intimidation in Charleston County.
• South Carolina (1990): Charleston County election officials sought to prevent African American voters from seeking voting assistance.
• Michigan (2004): State representative quoted as saying, “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election.”
• Texas (2004): Students at predominantly African American university were erroneously told that they were not eligible to vote in the county, despite legal precedent applying to their case.
• Florida (2000): Numerous instances of voter intimidation, especially in immigrant communities.
• North Carolina (2000): Allegations of voter intimidation at the polls.
• North Carolina (1998): GOP officials in some counties planned to videotape people in heavily Democratic precincts, saying that it was to prevent voter fraud, though it was considered in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
• North Carolina (1990): The North Carolina Republican Party sent postcards to 125,000 voters, 97% of whom were African American, giving them false information about voter eligibility and warning them about criminal penalties for voter fraud.
• Alabama (1994): Under the guise of investigating church arson, FBI approached 1000 people and interrogated voters about potential fraud and demanded that many submit handwriting samples.

 
This is a mere sampling.
 
To be clear, the preclearance provisions apply not to incidental incidents of intimidation, but rather the procedures according to which elections formally are conducted, though it indicates that, contrary to the Court’s claims, the Jim Crow South is far from dead.
 
This election is contentious for a number of reasons. The Democratic nominee is the first woman to run in a major party, and has high unfavorable. The Republican nominee has stoked racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, sexist, and violent rhetoric contributing to such cries as “lock her up,” and signs with Swastikas and racist and sexist epithets. This, coupled with anxieties around crime and policing, as well as Second Amendment rights being discussed at length, is in many ways the perfect storm. That the Voting Rights Act protections of Sections 4 and 5 overturned in Shelby County will not hold is hardly the source of conflict this election cycle, but it is probably adding fuel to the fire.  
 
What is worth noting is that the various irregularities that were identified were not necessarily in regions with competitive races – indeed, most were not. The concern, of course, is that with heavy campaigning absent voting rights protections, we might feel the effects of Shelby County v. Holder all the more acutely than whatever treatment effect we might observe if her expansion of the voting base were in (more predominantly white) heartland states to which preclearance provisions did not apply.
 
While there is the normative desirability of voter participation, there is the reality that some states are not competitive, and with the Electoral College, there is not as much need to battle to win states such as Alabama and Mississippi (or on the other end of the spectrum, Massachusetts and Connecticut), which reliably vote for the same party every year. Secretary Clinton is showing a growing base of support in the South and southwest in such states as Georgia, Texas, and Arizona, regions that have the history of discrimination against which the Voting Rights Act had been working to guard. What remains to be seen is whether the increased need to fight for every vote in these southern and southwestern states yields changes to their voting rights landscape that have lasting adverse consequences for minorities’ political participation.

In the third presidential debate, Republican nominee said of whether he would accept the election outcome, he said he would keep us -- the media and the American people -- in suspense: "I will look at it at the time... I will keep you in suspense."  

In some sense, this is shocking. Our democracy depends on our accepting the validity of election outcomes and the peaceful transfer of power between presidents. To have a major party nominee not commit (on a major national stage, no less) to accepting the election outcome of the presidential election is unprecedented. 

In the other sense, in this strange election of not an October Surprise but October Surprises (and we still have a ways to go!), we have been reminded of Mr. Trump's inability or at best unwillingness to accept outcomes that are not in his favor. He has insisted vociferously that the election is "rigged" despite the studies showing that voter fraud is all but nonexistent, and despite people calling to his attention the dangers in stoking such anger among his supporters. He tweeted several times the night of the 2012 election to declare that it was a "sham" and "not a democracy." He tweeted that the Emmy Awards were rigged, and when Secretary Clinton baited him about that at the debate, true to form, he took the bait: "Should have gotten it." Perhaps the man so keen on calling others losers cannot come to grips with things coming full circle (karma).

His campaign's rebuttal to critique of Trump's comments about the legitimacy of the election has been quite misleading, using Vice President Al Gore as an example. This is hardly a legitimate grounds on which to make his case, for a number of reasons:

1. Mr. Trump is preemptively declaring that the election is rigged, absent literally evidence to support this wild claim, and based on that is preemptively declaring that he will not automatically accept the outcome of the election as legitimate. This is a true undermining of the democratic process, which typically works very well, resulting in ebbs and flows in party control and the policy direction of our nation's governance.

2. In the 2000 election, Vice President Gore had won the popular vote and the Electoral College was legitimately in question. This was not a hypothetical election irregularity, but a genuine question of whether the ballots had been accounted for. It was ultimately determined to a difference of 537 votes in the entire State of Florida.

3. Gore did not himself push for the recount. Rather, it was determined by Florida state law applying to those elections determined by 0.5% or less.

4. At the conclusion of the highly controversial Supreme Court decision of Bush v. Gore (2000), with the Court ruling 5-4 along party lines in Bush's favor, Vice President Gore declared, "Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the Court's decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession. I also accept my responsibility, which I will discharge unconditionally, to honor the new president-elect and do everything possible to help bring Americans together in fulfillment of the great vision that our Declaration of Independence defines and that our Constitution affirms and defends." Frank Bruni recently called attention to this speech (and others) as a lesson in grace for Mr. Trump. He is correct. 

No one -- no Democrats, no Republicans -- would begrudge Mr. Trump for seeking a recount in the event of an extraordinarily narrow election. But that is not what he is saying, and he has no reason based on the polls to believe that he will be in such a scenario. To undermine citizens' faith in the democratic process as a "cover" in the eventuality of his loss is dangerous and a disgrace.

He and his supporters know better. They should act like it. 

Despite the Republican Party's traditional association with fiscal and social conservatism, its current dilemma appears to be between democracy and delusion. 

​It is difficult to turn on the news, let alone a speech or tweet by Mr. Trump, that does not use one specific word: rigged.
 
Indeed, just today Mr. Trump went on yet another tweetstorm, with several tweets highlighting conspiracy theories that the media is rigging things in favor of his opponent Secretary Clinton. Mr. Trump has repeatedly made the claim that if he loses Pennsylvania, it will be because the election was rigged, despite the fact that Pennsylvania has voted for Democrats from 1992 onward. Even in August, 69% of Trump supporters in North Carolina believed that if Clinton wins, the election will have been rigged against him, with only 16% viewing it as being because she legitimately won more votes.
 
This is dangerous and frightening for a few reasons.
 
To begin with, voter fraud is all but nonexistent, with a comprehensive investigation finding only 31 legitimate cases of voter fraud out of a billion votes cast.
 
And it is not surprising, when thinking like the Downesian rational voter: the probability of being a pivotal voter is virtually zero, with a much higher probability of being penalized due to the illegality of that action. 
 
Yet despite the essentially inconsequential nature of voter fraud, it continues to be used as a justification for Mr. Trump to call upon his supporters to “watch” polls in “certain” areas, suggesting that they intimidate minorities in their precincts, which of course are far more predominantly Democratic. And distressingly, his supporters are answering Mr. Trump’s call to action, both pledging to “watch” minorities and immigrants, and discussing outright revolution and bloodshed in the event of a Clinton win. And as Nate Persily and Jon Cohen note, the lack of faith of democracy is driven in part by partisan identification, with only 52% of voters expressing continued faith in American democracy, but 6 in 10 Democratic voters still having faith in Democracy but only 4 in 10 Republican voters saying the same. Protection of democracy should not be a partisan matter. Rather, it is a system through which Democrats win sometimes and Republicans win sometimes, and that is healthy. Sadly, this issue no longer transcends party identification. It has gone from being about left versus right to being about Trump versus facts. 
 
That the Republican Party would be engaged in voter suppression efforts is, sadly, not new. One reality is that the Democratic Party typically thrives with higher turnout. Another is that the Democratic Party thrives especially with higher turnout among minorities, and that demographic changes (along with shifts toward a more socially tolerant worldview amid generational replacement) make outreach to new swaths of voters difficult for the Republican Party absent some changes to its social policy agenda. When looking to win an election, you can broaden your base, or you can maximize your existing base. Absent the confidence that a base strategy can garner an election victory, some sadly turn to restricting the opponent’s turnout, whether legislatively through voter ID legislation, or illegally through intimidation at polling places and the spread of misinformation. Trump himself recognizes this, tweeting on the 2012 election night that "more votes equals a loss." This is common knowledge but not expressed as blatantly in the public sphere. 
 
It is not new, but it is dangerous in that it attacks the very core of our democratic process, which depends on our accepting election outcomes as valid whether or not we were the victor, whether or not we are pleased. Absent a view that our votes count or that our election is legitimate, we lose also the faith in the legitimacy of the leaders to whom we look in the White House and in Congress (as sadly exemplified by Mr. Trump’s perpetuation of the birther movement and his recent reference to the Obama presidency in air quotes, thus giving ammunition to those seeking to challenge the legitimacy of the policies of his administration). It is dangerous and frightening. And more than that, it is un-American. And it is un-patriotic.   
 
Mr. Trump has a history of not accepting election outcomes that he finds displeasing. Indeed, right after President Obama won reelection by a commanding margin, he tweeted, “This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!” Yet Governor Romney was, as should be accepted of any adult in the public sphere, a gracious loser, and in a recent speech in Nevada with Joe Heck did his part to reinstate that approach: he said that he was out-organized (“I wanted to run in the worst way possible and that’s what I did, I lost”) and encouraged Republicans to turn out better this time around. It was a “better luck next time” approach that is sadly missing from this year’s Republican nominee and the supporters who have eaten up his conspiracy theories and propaganda as to the legitimacy of an election in which he might not be the victor.

Of course the most notorious contemporary example is Vice President Al Gore's concession of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, the resolution of which controversially reached the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore and culminated in his concession, "While I strongly disagree with the Court's decision, I accept it. For the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession I also accept my responsibility, which I will discharge unconditionally, to honor the new president-elect and do everything possible to help him bring Americans together." (Ironically, Republicans should be very sensitive to the need to preserve institutional legitimacy given the challenges raised regarding the legitimacy of the Bush presidency in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's widely-criticized holding that determined the outcome).
 
Indeed, by all accounts Mr. Trump defied the system. By all accounts, the nomination should have gone to Marco Rubio, who likely would be tied or ahead in the current polls. Trump beat the odds. That he has proceeded to dig his own grave is a reflection on him, not on the media or our democratic institutions. Moreover, his conspiracy theories regard collusion between the Clinton campaign and the media have the additional adverse impact of leaving Americans unwilling to trust journalistic integrity. A free and independent media is a hallmark of democracy, and faith in that process likewise is essential.   
 
In our democratic process, sometimes our candidate wins. Sometimes our candidate loses. We pick ourselves up, we dust ourselves off, and we hope for success the next election cycle. We need political figures who serve as exemplars of respect for the democracy that we hold dear, and who respect our democratic institutions enough to abide by them. The spread of conspiracy theories, misinformation, and propaganda is no path toward America’s greatness, but rather its demise. 

​There is little that is positive that can be said about the current election cycle, especially that of the Republican nominee. What was already a negative campaign cycle – laced with racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny – was made all the worse with the now infamous tape of him from Access Hollywood, in which Mr. Trump boasted about his celebrity stature enabling him to engage in nonconsensual sexual activity with women.
 
The second presidential debate offered Mr. Trump an opportunity to clarify whether what he boasted about was inappropriate but only talk, or whether he had acted on those views. After being pushed on this point several times by the moderator Anderson Cooper, he said that he had not.
 
This triggered a number of women to come forward publicly in their effort to set the record straight. While a number of prominent Republicans rescinded their endorsements – perhaps most notably Senator John McCain – with Speaker Paul Ryan and others not formally rescinding endorsements but declaring no intention to campaign on behalf of Mr. Trump, some surrogates continue to maintain that the comments in the tape were “locker room talk” and question the motives of these women given the timing.
 
At least two things have been raised in the discussion here, that bear emphasis.

1. There were questions as to the timing of the accusers coming forward this late in the campaign. The explanation has been that in the aftermath of the tape revelation as well as frustration with regard to Mr. Trump’s insisting that he had not acted on his abhorrent comments, thus creating an impetus to speak out.
2. There were further questions as to the legitimacy of claims with regard to quite old claims of sexual assault. Corey Lewandowski and others raised numerous questions as to why they would not have spoken out much sooner, such as shortly after the assaults. This was in many times a point made in conjunction with allegations that the claims were either politically motivated or else for fifteen minutes of fame.

 
This does an immense disservice to all women who have experienced rape and other forms of sexual assault, which is already one of the least reported crimes. And it is not difficult to understand why many would not want to discuss their assaults:
 
It is deeply personal and for many, embarrassing.
 
They may continue to blame themselves for the event based on how much they drank or what they wore. 

It involves someone exploiting a position of power, and in the aftermath of that assault one may feel devoid of the ability to reclaim control.
 
They may fear that they will not be believed.
 
They may not want to acknowledge how vulnerable a position they were placed in.
 
They may want to forget about the event because recounting the details may feel triggering and retraumatizing.
 
To spend time detailing one’s sexual assault, and on national television no less, is emotionally grueling. It involves recounting each painful and deeply personal detail to support the legitimacy of one’s claim. Those who do come forward often take a long time to do so. To allege that taking time to report an assault makes a claim less than legitimate is to not understand rape, assault, or harassment, and it is this deep ignorance that has been in full force since the revelation of the Access Hollywood tape and the subsequent allegations that he acted on his words. 

Mr. Trump’s surrogates have leaped to defend their candidate to the point of questioning the motives of these women (not to mention refuting one of the allegations with a clearly false story crafted in the New York Post), and in doing so highlight the very reason why women are reluctant. Having such public questioning of the legitimacy of these women’s allegations on the national stage could potentially have egregious consequences for further hesitancy regarding coming forward with their own claims. And when people are aware that crimes will likely go unreported, there sadly is more freedom to perpetuate such assault and harassment.
 
Mr. Trump may be shifting from fame to infamy, but should not drag the conversation even further to reduce the already too-rare reporting of sexual assaults.  

​Apart from his creative rewriting of American economic history in the aftermath of the New York Times revelation of his $916 million loss of 1995, along with his interesting promise in the second presidential debate to bring economics to the people (huh?), Mr. Trump has over the course of the campaign – and increasingly in recent weeks – shown himself to have a disturbing lack of knowledge about basic American politics, separation of powers, and economics that would be essential to responsible governance.
 
Mr. Trump has repeatedly lodged at Secretary Clinton the criticism that despite her promise to support a robust economy for the State of New York, she did not create jobs during her tenure as Senator and many jobs left upstate New York (e.g., Albany) during those years). A few points are deserving of attention.

1. A Senator is a member of a 100-body chamber, and each Senator receives one vote. The more effective Senators are able to convince broad coalitions to coalesce around issues that they defend, but nevertheless, one person one vote. Even the most effective member of the Senate has her limits, and for the first six years in which she was in the Senate, she was a minority member in the already supermajoritarian institution.
2. Senators are not the proper scapegoat for job creation or lack thereof. Rather, one should look to the governor and state legislature (as well as the president himself/herself).
3. While Mr. Trump could seek a more general attack on the Democratic Party’s economic policy (if ignoring the reality of job losses under Reagan, Bush Sr., and W. Bush, and job creation under Clinton and Obama), the further limit that Mr. Trump would face in such a line of attack is that Secretary Clinton served as Senator during the Bush Administration, the economic policies of which set the American economy into the worst economic devastation it had seen since the Great Depression. Disentangling the federal-level depression from the potential gains that New York State might have obtained is difficult.
4. To the extent that it is possible to disentangle the federal and state economies amid such economic devastation (with economic losses vastly preceding the collapse in 2008), Mr. Trump would face the further hurdle that for the first six years of Secretary Clinton’s tenure as Senator, the Governor of New York was Republican George Pataki. Thus, both the federal and state executive level offices were occupied by the members of Mr. Trump’s party.

 
Mr. Trump’s accusations extend to the setting of tax rates as well, again an issue that is not determined unilaterally (certainly not in a healthy democratic republic such as the United States (for now)) and certainly not by one who has occupied the roles of First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State.
 
Attacking one’s opponent is unappealing but expected. But ideally it should be grounded in the reality of the politics that you seek to govern. What's worse, he now routinely articulates -- even in the second presidential debate -- that he intends to put Secretary Clinton in jail should he be elected, a move that we see not within democracies but rather totalitarian regimes. Americans have the right to vote for their Commander in Chief, not the Dictator in Chief.
 
He appears further to have a disturbingly limited understanding of the implications of moratoriums on federal regulations, which he has also proposed. Regulations are the bread and butter of policymaking in the United States, and whether you think that's for better or worse or for better and worse, halting the entire system in its tracks would be throughly damaging to the American economy, in addition to tying the government's hands with respect to responding to crises and other critical conditions. And not only would it be detrimental to our economic system and beyond, it would be illegal given the mandatory nature of much rulemaking and the inability of the president to circumvent those regulatory requirements. 

In the aftermath of his attack on the Khan family amid the Democratic National Party’s nominating convention, Mr. Trump insisted vociferously that contrary to the allegations, he had read the Constitution of the United States, all while insisting that Mr. Khan had no right to lodge those attacks. Perhaps Mr. Trump ought to have read up to the First Amendment.
 
The questions as to Mr. Trump’s understanding of the Constitution has been on full display with his disparagement and even press credential revocation of those media outlets that are particularly critical of him (e.g., the Washington Post). Whether politicians like the reporting or not, an independent and well-functioning press is essential to a healthy democratic republic such as ours (for now), and we have not seen from other mainstream candidates such blatant opposition to media outlets. Indeed, Mr. Trump has most recently threatened the New York Times with a lawsuit due to its reporting of the allegations of sexual harassment and assault by those with whom he previously has worked and interacted.
 
Whether or not the sexual assault claims ultimately prove true, they are consistent with prior patterns of behavior and are reported by one of the most well-regarded newspapers in the United States, and investigating such serious charges in the Republican nominee can hardly be construed as defamation. And indeed, so many of the great stories of our time (think Watergate) would not have been possible but for the solid investigative journalism that is all too rare nowadays (though which got a nice shout-out with the Academy Award-winning Spotlight). We cannot elect a president who fails to recognize, let alone appreciate this. Fortunately, the New York Times held its ground in responding to Mr. Trump's lawyers: "If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare to criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight." Before proceeding with his case, he and his lawyers would be well-advised to take a look at the landmark Supreme Court case of New York Times v. Sullivan ​(1964).
 
If Mr. Trump intends to insist his capacity to lead the most powerful nation in the world, he might want to take a civics lesson (or three). 

In the immediate aftermath of the release of the now infamous tape in which Mr. Trump bragged about celebrity status giving him license to grab women by their genitals and do what he wanted with them -- in many ways just confirming other accounts of his objectification of women but perhaps more striking when seeing the video footage itself -- author Kelly Oxford sent out a tweet that read simply: "Women: tweet me your first assaults," and she included hers.  

Within hours, she was receiving 50 responses per minute. By Monday, she had received 27 million. (Based on when I tweeted mine, it was probably around the 15 million mark). 

If 27 million tweets of FIRST assaults -- and this is just people on Twitter who are aware of this -- doesn't hit home the magnitude of those who would be personally and deeply moved by the callousness of the Trump tape, I don't know what will. And this is in addition to those men who reminded us that they have wives and daughters, thus bolstering their explanation of why they would care about predatory behavior that violates the law and is aimed at 51% of the population (not to mention a subset of the population that votes in large numbers).

The subject of Mr. Trump's mental health has been discussed, admittedly in violation of the "Goldwater Rule." Therapists more recently have begun to weigh in on the mental health impacts of this election -- the negativity, the cynicism, the blame, the hostility, the fear. Now in the mix is the aspect of triggering trauma histories made sadly more salient by Mr. Trump's casual admission of being a feckless thug with no respect for women, and perhaps more sadly the willingness of his surrogates Rudy Giuliani, Jeff Sessions, and Scott Baio to come to his defense, calling it "locker room talk" that was not assault, and Baio even going to far as to fell Fox News viewers to "grow up and get over it." To hear the former mayor of New York City not only dismiss the language as locker room talk but to joke about it is horrifying even in this election, especially given conservatives' purported support for family values. (For the record, professional athletes in the NFL ("we never had anyone say anything as foul and demeaning as you did on that tape"), NBA, and beyond have done their part to show that advocacy of sexual assault is not a feature in their locker rooms, nor would it hypothetically be accepted). Of course, there is irony in the fact that the candidate who joked about sexual assault, when asked by his party to step down as the Republican nominee, insisted "no means no." A little late on that lesson, Donald.

These have not been comfortable subjects for anyone. No sane person enjoys watching this tape. But having a history of sexual trauma -- which applies to far too many – makes it all the more difficult to hear about sexual predation left, right, and center in the news and social media, whether triggering actual flashbacks or otherwise unpleasant memories, potentially stirring depressive symptoms (which Secretary Clinton’s healthcare plan will at least treat comprehensively). Whether visible outwardly or not, sexual assault's impact on the person -- as well as those around them -- is lasting, leading to higher rates of depression, PTSD, substance abuse, and even suicide. The news provides a constant reminder of something that strikes a nerve with respect to an issue that may still feel acute. For those who have been private about their experiences, there is the question of whether to share one's story -- as in the Twitter collection, or among acquaintances -- to reflect on recent events in a productive dialogue about the proper boundaries of sexual conduct, or to maintain privacy (and the emotions that that brings up). And aptly, the organization End Rape on Campus tweeted on Friday upon the release of the tape, the message, "To those affected by the damaging rhetoric issued by Mr. Trump in the video released today -- we stand with you, we hear you, we support you." 

There is the legitimate fear of physical and emotional harm caused by the normalization of "locker room talk" (or worse, acting on it as Trump has been alleged to have) akin to the misguided notion that "boys will be boys" in the context of date rape. When people accept misbehavior -- or worse, assault -- in public discourse and behavior, we facilitate its perpetuation and dampen the vigilance with which we assert our rights as human beings deserving of respect. Please, let us not conflate how men talk in locker rooms with how some bad men may talk in locker rooms. 

They (we) then got to see sexual assault allegations made a spectacle of with a photo op leading into the second presidential debate from the same person dismissing his own taped remarks as locker room banter (note: without evidence of actually spending time in locker rooms himself) and as part of a cheap ploy transparently aimed at rattling his opponent (who actually does argue that women's rights are human rights). 

​Hearing what may have sounded like a familiar experience of unwanted contact (even rape) simply excused -- and in a presidential candidate, no less -- seemingly mocks and disregards the immense emotional impact that it has on the person, whose control was taken from them in a deeply personal way. Experiencing such events at all is more than one should have to endure. Having to defend their status as assaults is abhorrent. And worst of all, it facilitates far too many future opportunities to relive these sorts of experiences when we normalize in the public discourse sexist language and patently illegal behavior amid a marked number of sexual assaults on college campus and beyond. 
 
And it has already happened, with a man at Mr. Trump’s recent rally photographed wearing a shirt reading “She’s a Cunt, Vote for Trump.” Apart from the bad effort at rhyming, the negativity toward women – and the acceptance of transparent misogyny in the public sphere – can have distressingly boundless consequences. The issue is not political correctness for the sake of political correctness. It is moral decency that transcends party identification, and certainly transcends the aesthetics of one’s body, on which Mr. Trump appears to be creepily fixated.
​
No one is perfect, despite Mr. Trump's assertion that he himself is perfect and devoid of faults. Presidents are human, and humans are allowed to make mistakes. But we are also allowed to hold them to higher standards than we do ordinary Americans because they are meant to serve as positive examples for our citizenry and for other nations of the world. (Though to be sure, this behavior would not be accepted in our neighbors either). That we have not only shifted in our campaign season the discussion to an issue that is deeply painful for many to discuss -- with many dismissing the impact and legitimacy of such language and actions -- but creating a culture of violence against women in which we are all the more vulnerable to its greater perpetuation and acceptance.

We deserve better, as women and more importantly, as human beings. We need to prove it on November 8.  

There is so much that has been said regarding Mr. Trump’s offensive taped exchange with Billy Bush, holding that being a celebrity status gives one license to grab and kiss women without asking. Some have been surprised despite the tape’s consistency with prior, more recent remarks regard Judge Gonzalo Curiel, Alicia Machado, Mexicans, Muslims, the disabled, women, and others. Others have sought to conceal their delight about seeing them on tape rather than one-off comments and allegations, with the GOP fallout that has come in the hours that followed. Others have raised concerns as to how a President Trump might exploit is power and status in his future interactions with women.
 
What is perhaps most remarkable is that it was not leaked earlier. (Indeed, those who have worked on The Apprentice have indicated that there is lots more on tape that is of a similar tone).
 
The reason why it is so striking is that there were sixteen other Republican presidential candidates in the field (of varying viability, but sixteen nevertheless).
 
Sixteen candidates who could have done opposition research on the man whose views are not simply conservative but dangerous. (One might even say not even conservative). Sixteen candidates who could have done opposition research on the man whose demise now might be responsible for a landslide election for their opposing party at multiple layers of government.
 
Some view it as being in bad taste for primary candidates to eat their young rather than rising up in the interest of coming together in a show of party unity for core values (e.g., limited government, low tax rates, social conservatism). Indeed, looking too negative can be unappealing to the voters watching on television (though one might say that those watching presidential primary debates are likely the stronger partisans who are more likely than the average American to enjoy political theater). And running a primary campaign is a challenge. You want to set yourself apart from the field of candidates. You want to highlight your experience as well as any policy disagreements that you have with your co-partisans. But you also don’t want to damage your party to the point of hurting in November and ceding ground to the opposing party.
 
Some in the Republican primary were keen on attacking one another’s positions and temperament, sometimes seeking to prove who was the truer conservative. But there were at least as many cases of them saying that they shouldn’t be going after each others jugulars but rather ensuring a Hillary Clinton defeat on November 8.
 
There are some things that Trump has said and done on the campaign trail itself. He has mocked a disabled reporter. He called for a ban of Muslims. He said Mexicans are rapists and criminals. He said that Judge Curiel could not be unbiased because of his ethnicity. He said that African Americans are all in poverty and don’t have anything to lose by supporting him. He tweeted about a non-existent sex tape between the hours of 3am and 6am.
 
But there are things that vastly preceded this campaign, whether his old undeleted tweets, his ex-wife Ivana’s allegations of rape (to which Mr. Trump’s lawyer erroneously said that spousal rape was impossible), the many charges of harassment and objectification of women, the tape with Billy Bush that has led to the current fallout, and the potentially hours (days!) of footage of him that did not make the cut for The Apprentice, which was indicated in Seasons 1 and 2 producer Bill Pruit indicated in a tweet reading, “As a producer on seasons 1 & 2 of #theapprentice I assure you: when it comes to the #trumptapes there are far worse. #justthebeginning.” And that does not even get to Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns even amid the revelation of a couple pages of a 1995 return indicating that he lost nearly a billion dollars amid a robust economy, potentially allowing him to avoid taxes for up to 18 years.
 
So the question is, what were the Republican candidates doing in the fall of 2015? The emphasis on his nonpayment of taxes would not have sat well with the voters and might have reduced his chances in the early primaries and caucuses, after which it became all but impossible to catch up with his delegate count. The revelation of this tape prior to January would have led to Trump’s demise, likely resulting in Marco Rubio garnering the nomination (and likely win).
 
Part of the issue was that in such a crowded field, Trump had less time in the spotlight and thus less time to make comments that would be disqualifying. And in an era of more punditry than solid investigative journalism, there is inadequate accountability in contemporary politics and politicking.  
 
Party loyalty can come in many forms. It can come in the form of taking what is viewed as the high road and not going negative. It can also come in the form of loyalty to ensuring a candidate who will best serve the party, and keeping out of contention those who would be damaging, even when that means going negative.
 
Prediction for 2020: There will be a lot of mudslinging. 

​For all the media’s (and candidates’) attention to candidate health over the course of this presidential campaign, we seem to be spending precious little time in the presidential debates discussing the candidates’ actual health plans.
 
Those on the left have “diagnosed” Mr. Trump as unhinged and mentally unstable, calling attention to a narcissistic personality consistent with a DSM diagnosis, though in violation of the “Goldwater Rule.” They have further raised the unusual way in which Mr. Trump’s medical records were released, with language better characterized as flamboyant rather than scientific or precise, and a discussion of his health history on the television show of the widely debunked Dr. Oz.
 
Mr. Trump and those on the right have mocked Secretary Clinton’s health, replaying a collapse amid an episode of pneumonia. Pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli further went on Twitter to postulate that Secretary Clinton had what he viewed to be Parkinson’s disease, despite any medical records to support the “diagnosis.”
 
All told, the health of the candidates and public insistence on revelation of medical records was dominating much coverage prior to the more recent discussion of the importance of revelation of candidates’ tax returns.  The purported justification is that the American electorate deserves to know whether a person is physically fit for the demanding job of president, though presidential candidates’ publication of medical records has been a rather inconsistent practice over time, and past presidents’ deaths in office were not always attributable to medical conditions (e.g., assassination). More often than not, the emphasis appears to be for the purpose of media, gossip, and distraction.
 
That an American presidential campaign would be dominated at least in part by media sensationalism is hardly a surprise.  What is more distressing is that we have thus far spent more time discussing candidate health – which does not appear to have a bearing on the ability to effectively hold the office of President of the United States (think FDR) – than we have spent in the presidential and vice presidential debates on the candidates’ healthcare plans. (Side note: Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson does not even list healthcare on his website’s “Issues” section).
 
The first presidential debate between Mr. Trump and President Clinton did not include a single discussion of either candidate’s healthcare plans, whether with respect to access to care or reducing the cost of too-often-exorbitant prescription drug prices. With a record-breaking viewership of 84 million viewers, this was a missed opportunity for both candidates to discuss the merits of their plans on this key issue.
 
In the days that followed, Mr. Trump spoke at a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania in which he not only encouraged his supporters to intimidate voters – an action that would have garnered the top headline any other election – but also mocked Secretary Clinton’s stumble, to the cheers of his supporters. Mayor Giuliani was interviewed and continued his long history of unfounded assertions of an illness that Secretary Clinton might be keeping secret. 
 
During the vice presidential debate, the Affordable Care Act got mentioned by Governor Pence in his discussion of the concerns he had regarding the national debt:  “But a trillion dollars in tax increases, more regulation, more of the same war on coal, and more of Obamacare that now even former President Bill Clinton calls Obamacare a crazy plan. But Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine want to build on Obamacare. They want to expand it into a single-payer program. And for all the world, Hillary Clinton just thinks Obamacare is a good start. Look, Donald Trump and I have a plan to get this economy moving again just the way that it worked in the 1980s, just the way it worked in the 1960s, and that is by lowering taxes across the board for working families, small businesses and family farms, ending the war on coal that is hurting jobs and hurting this economy even here in Virginia, repealing Obamacare lock, stock, and barrel, and repealing all of the executive orders that Barack Obama has signed that are stifling economic growth in this economy.”
 
There are three points here worth emphasizing.
 
1. In two debates – one presidential, one vice presidential – no one has actually asked any of the candidates about healthcare, despite the fact that healthcare accounts for 17.5% of the United States GDP.
 
2. Governor Pence did not, in his discussion of Obamacare, discuss with any substance the alternative that he and Mr. Trump propose.
 
3. Senator Kaine did not use Governor Pence’s comments as an opportunity to pivot the conversation toward the progress that the Affordable Care Act has created – namely, 20 million more people with health insurance and a historic low uninsured rate of 8.6%, and the delivery of much-needed primary care and behavioral healthcare through Medicaid expansion in 31 states and the District of Columbia (which Governor Pence should know given that his state of Indiana accepted those government funds).
 
84 million watched the 90-minute presidential debate. 37 million watched the 95-minute vice presidential debate. In none of those 185 minutes did we learn – apart from the Trump/Pence ticket’s pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act – anything about the candidate’s positions on this issue affecting every American, rich or poor, young or old, Democrat or Republican.
 
That the personal health of the presidential candidates is making top headlines is silly, though not altogether inconsistent with the antics that have characterized this highly unusual election cycle. That their personal health is garnering greater attention during these forums than their own healthcare plans is a disgrace. 

​On October 3 in Pueblo, Colorado, Mr. Trump alleged that the early 1990s were the worst years for our economy since the Great Depression, worse than the 1980s and worse than 2008. This of course was in response to criticism leveled at him for losing nearly a billion dollars in the mid-1990s, according to the 1995 tax return sent to, and published by, the New York Times over the weekend.
 
Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, his comments don’t comport with reality when looking to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data on employment by year. (Side note: It may be worth emphasizing that the early 1990s and the mid-1990s (the years under public scrutiny) were under different presidents and theories of the economy, and that which was more profitable was the Clinton Administration, a point Mr. Trump understandably does not play up).
 
What we see nevertheless though is that the early 1980s under President Reagan were marked by dramatic job losses, followed by some economic recovery, followed by more losses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with marked job growth throughout most of the mid-1990s and late 1990s. The reality is that unlike with respect to the 1980s and the 2000s, the numbers are positive for the whole of the Clinton Administration as well as the Obama Administration after 2009. The point here is not to suggest that Clinton’s economic policy was flawless, or to suggest a direct correlation with the policies that we might expect under Hillary Clinton, though some have characterized her as being more progressive than her husband. Nor is the point to denigrate someone swinging and missing in business (no one bats .1000).
 
Rather, the point is to emphasize that Mr. Trump has proven himself to be quite keen on making bold statements that do not survive fact-checking (indeed, PolitiFact classified 53% of his statements as being False or Pants on Fire), asserting that his failed business ventures are attributable not to his business acumen (or lack thereof) but rather to a failing economy. The reality is that the economy under the Clinton Administration had been in recovery for a couple of years. This was not a bad time to invest (wisely), nor do the numbers of the Obama Administration suggest an economy in need of rescuing.
 
If Mr. Trump continues to maintain that he intends to run the country as he does his businesses, given the robust economy in which he made these failings, we should be concerned.