How will Trump react to electoral defeat?

Josh Marshall thinks Trump will be all Hitler in the bunker, trying to take the whole country down with him as he goes:

Rage, narcissism, self-loathing, fear – each vividly on display. We got a clear view last night of something very basic about this moment. The country isn’t so much facing an election as a hostage negotiation. Trump is losing, probably not just the presidency but just as critically his immunity from the law. Does he come out peacefully? Or is he one of those degenerates who kills his wife and kids on the way out?

If he’s going to lose he wants to burn the country down.

As my vivid and ugly analogy suggests, this isn’t strategy. It’s instinct. It’s rage.

Obviously we’re spitballing here, and maybe this is just optimism bias at work, but I don’t think that’s how it will go down.

One of the many things that’s hard to grasp about Trump’s profound weirdness as a human being is that I don’t think he really cares much about, or even at a basic level knows, what being president of the United States actually means.

He has no sense of history, no real ideology, and no commitment to anything other than what’s good for Donald Trump’s ego and bank account. In other words, he’s raging right now because that’s what he always does: this could be another real estate deal that’s falling apart, or another alimony negotiation, and he’d be talking exactly the same way, about how the world is going to come to an end if he doesn’t get exactly what he wants.

But I suspect it’s all bullshit and bluffing, and that when it’s time to fish or cut bait he’ll just walk away, like he’s walked away from so many deals, relationships etc., because he’s a quitter and a coward and incredibly lazy, and fighting for something — really fighting for it, not just spouting off on Twitter — is actually hard work, and Donald Trump doesn’t do hard work.

Sure he’s in legal jeopardy, technically, but let’s face it in this country we don’t put people like Trump in jail, most especially when they’re Republicans, because that would be criminalizing politics dotchaknow, and it’s not like this is some sort of banana republic.

So I doubt he’ll even be put to the inconvenience of having to flee the jurisdiction. But he’ll certainly do so, if the alternative is having to display any courage or work ethic or any other human virtue that Donald Trump has never had and never will have.

He’s a hollow man, and we’re heading for a whimper, not a bang.