The withdrawal of losers’ consent is now a growing problem in American politics. According to the right-thinking classes, there’s only one side to blame – Donald Trump and his allies. In the words of one Atlantic pundit, MAGA types ‘seeded election denialism after Trump lost his bid for the presidency in 2020’. As New York magazine has it, there is ‘zero doubt’ Trump will dispute the result again should he lose the presidential election on Tuesday. Indeed, the Guardian reckons that Trump has already laid the groundwork for an assault on the result’s legitimacy. There are apparently ‘dozens’ of pro-Trump local officials in place to certify, or reject, vote totals and a support base primed to suspect election-rigging.

There’s just one rather serious flaw in this ‘election denialism’ narrative. In foisting all the blame on Trump, it obscures an earlier and far more damaging act of election denial – namely, the Democrats’ claim that the 2016 election result was produced by Russian interference.