Nice country ya got there. Be a shame if something happened to it.

That sentiment is loud and clear in the message Democrats are sending about the upcoming “most important election in our lifetime”: Vote for us or the country gets more rioting and unrest.

Over the past few months, left-wing groups have been “war-gaming” several election scenarios, revealing the results to sympathetic media in order to motivate their side into action, especially if Donald Trump “refuses to concede defeat.” Coming from the folks who’ve refused to accept Trump’s victory in 2016, this is a classic case of projection. They’re also preparing for “MAGA violence” after the election — unless, of course, Joe Biden is the clear winner. Their goal if Trump is ahead: “occupy [stuff], hold space, and shut things down, not just on Election Day but for weeks.”

The game is simple, as the editors of The Washington Free Beacon opine: “It’s the latest example of the left’s campaign of extortion: If you want the protesting, rioting, and murder wave to end, all you have to do is hand Joe Biden a landslide.” Bear in mind, this is the same Joe Biden who remained silent about the riots all summer until the polls began turning against him. Only then did his handlers tell him to weakly object to the violence.

Adding to the confusion is the Democrats’ push in many states for mail-in voting, as opposed to the more formal and recognized system of opt-in absentee balloting — a process that has been legitimately employed for decades by those unable to come to the polls on Election Day, such as active-duty military. Sending thousands of unsolicited live ballots through a mail system Democrats now claim is overburdened is an attempt to ensure the vote-counting process drags on for weeks. This will buy leftist activists plenty of time to make trouble while a sympathetic media promotes their agenda.

Conspiracy theories about a president refusing to leave office aren’t new — there was fake news that Barack Obama wouldn’t cede power to Donald Trump when the appointed time came. Little did we know at the time, of course, that Obama really was doing his best to sandbag the incoming administration rather than ensure a time-honored peaceful transfer of power.

But this story is about far more than a few rumors; it’s serious enough that the leftist war-gamers are laying out the most radical of outcomes. “In a simulation they ran, Team Biden ‘encouraged Western states, particularly California but also Oregon and Washington, and collectively known as Cascadia, to secede from the Union’ unless structural reforms were made,” writes Sam Stein in The Daily Beast. “In exchange for Trump getting the presidency, for instance, Republicans would need to agree to abolish the Electoral College, give Puerto Rico and D.C. statehood, and divide California into five states for better Senate representation.” In essence, Trump would stay as president, but what a Faustian bargain: perpetual Democrat control of the Oval Office and the courts.

While leftists are plotting future unrest, the president is addressing the current violence in many of the cities their party has run into the ground. Operation Legend, named after LeGend Taliferro, a four-year-old victim of a stray bullet in Kansas City, has been enacted in nine cities around the country as “a sustained, systematic and coordinated … initiative in which federal law enforcement agencies work in conjunction with state and local … officials to fight violent crime.” Since its beginning in Kansas City in July, this project has shown results: “Over the first five weeks of Operation Legend in Chicago, murders dropped by 50% over the previous five weeks. August ultimately saw a 45% decrease in murders compared to July, and a 35% decrease compared to June.”

Speaking on the success of Operation Legend, Attorney General Bill Barr explained, “Bringing federal charges is significant because defendants arrested for violent crimes are often detained before trial, unlike state defendants who are too often released.” That revolving door helps explain why Peaceful Protests™ in Minneapolis, Seattle, and Portland have gone on for so long — far-left prosecutors are sympathetic to the rioters’ cause.

That sympathy, however, may not extend to the general public if the election results are unduly delayed and left-wing anarchists follow through on their promised temper tantrum. In that case, they should be careful what they wish for.