My take is that it hurts him to play the rigged card.
His base is already energized. They are also increasingly viewed as irrational and somewhat frightening by the majority in America. Trump is now advocating, in essence, that after his loss this election that his base takes it as criminal theft of the election and do not honor the results. Many will indeed do so. Lacking proof of election fraud, this is about the lowest form of rabble-rousing there can be in a democracy, as well as being kinda pathetic on the face of it.
Trump is losing because he couldn't keep his mouth shut about his approach towards women, then he compounded it by flat out lying about it after others came forward. He DOES know those women. Coupled with his generally poor performance in the debates- a format that is really unkind to him- but that's not an excuse for revealing appalling shallowness on the issues (Mosul... oy... gibberish) and an easily-fatigued and rattled temperament. The guy can't speak for TWO MINUTES on an issue. He can't go 45 minutes before he tires and loses focus. This was all on display in the debates. He lost a LOT of potential voters there, people willing to give him and his positions a fair listen. He couldn't do it. Not mentally and temperamentally equipped.
If Trump had OWNED the woman stuff, and made half a [bleep] effort to prepare for those debates, he'd be right there. It'd be anybody's election. He didn't, and he isn't, and it isn't.
The question now is can the Republicans hang onto the Senate and a solid majority in the House to counter Clinton. I sure hope they can.
