I think of Barton Gellman as a little bit of a prophet.

He puts it differently.

I feel like the bad news correspondent, the catastrophe correspondent, and there are jokes

in our household about not reading my stories at bedtime.

Back in the fall of 2020, before we knew who would be elected president or what the weeks

and months after that election would look and feel like, Barton wrote this article.

It was called the election that could break America.

And when I read it, I thought, God, this guy is dramatic.

Did you hear from people after that piece with that sentiment?

Like, oh boy, dread, I guess.

Yeah, well, so I heard dread and concern and what can we do.

And then I also heard people saying that it was really inconceivable what I was talking

about, that this just wasn't going to happen.

And the Biden campaign at the time did not consider this article to be on message.

They were afraid of scaring voters, of if people felt fatalistic, then they wouldn't

show up at the polls.

We all know what followed.

A contested election, dozens of lawsuits, all of it culminating in a crowd of people storming

the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

I certainly didn't predict that there would be a riot at the Capitol and that a mob would

come to the seat of Congress and try to prevent the counting of electoral votes.

But it fit the pattern I was describing.

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