Both fighting and winning lie at the core of the Trumpian mythos and, apparently, at the heart of his appeal. That’s why Trump may have concluded that his greatest chance of pulling off an electoral upset is to convince his most passionate supporters that he’s more devoted to fighting and winning than ever — that his foes consider him such a formidable threat that they’ll cheat to bring him down, that he will never accept defeat, and that he’s bound to prevail no matter what the “results” appear to show.

Which means that all of Trump’s talk of the election being rigged, like his threat to contest the results, may not be about what he’s likely to do on Nov. 9 — but rather about trying to control what the voters do between now and the evening of Nov. 8.

In that case, all of the bluster could be a calculated political act that gets shelved as soon as the magnitude of his defeat becomes apparent after the polls close on Election Day. Dropping the incendiary bluff at the last moment and accepting his own status as an electoral loser would be arguably Trump’s only act of magnanimity in his entire 17-month campaign for president.