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I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises. However, to many Democrats it is almost as if Trump is a Lovecraftian god the mere mention of whom leads to insanity. Such Democrats view him as some sort of annihilating force the very presence of which in the universe warps and endangers the sane, wholesome building blocks of existence itself. Meanwhile I just see a fat old huckster sociopath who talks a lot of shit but is effectively restrained by checks and balances. Not a savory person, maybe even a rapist, pretty certainly a bad guy, but not some sort of fundamental essential threat to the entire being of American democracy or to sanity.
It is not that I do not believe in evil. But I do find it odd when liberals perceive demonic evil in Trump, yet make excuses for vicious violent criminals (at least, as a class if not always individually) who are enabled by Democrats' soft-on-crime policies.
Would Trump do many harmful things in office? I am sure. Harris would as well. Which one would do more, who knows? I do not see a clear-cut answer to that question. He certainly would be no angel, I am sure of that. But it also seems to me that often, vehement anti-Trump sentiment has little to do with a clear-eyed assessment of the possible harms that he would cause.
What explains the particular mind-shattering power that Trump somehow inflicts on so many of his political opponents? Interestingly, it largely do not seem to be his actual political counterparts among the Democrat elite who view him as an eldritch destroyer of worlds... the Democrat elite may hate him, may despise him, may say that he is a threat to democracy, but I don't think I can remember any time that any of them acted as if he was a threat to one's very psychological foundation. Maybe their power and their close understanding of American politics generally inoculates them against such a reaction.
Lest someone think that I come only to shit on the Democrats, unfortunately no. Would that I actually supported either of the two main parties... my political life would be easier. But the Republicans, too, deserve some questioning on this topic. Republicans' reaction to Bill and Hillary Clinton, at one point, was a sort of precursor to the mental shattering caused by the concept of Trump. Interestingly, despite often being accused of being racist, from what I recall Republicans did not actually react to Obama quite as hysterically as they reacted to the Clintons. Sure, there was a lot of vitriol against Obama, such as Birtherism, but it was probably half as vehement as what was thrown at the Clintons.
Yet even though Republicans were in many ways mind-melted by the Clintons, including to the point that Republican forums back in the day teemed with theories about the Clintons literally being a murderous and pedophilic crime family, I still do not think it quite matches up to the new standards of psychological devastation that Trump has wreaked. That might sound weird, given the murderous pedophile thing, but to me supporters of those theories generally just seem like they are stupid and prone to weird fantasies and LARPs but have always been that way, whereas people who are existentially shattered by Trump seem like they might have been different at one point, but then suddenly Trump appeared in the corner of their reality and traumatically inverted it into some new configuration of dimensions.
Why does Trump have this effect? Is it just that there is a large number of people in this country who fail to agree with me that Trump's chances of becoming a dictator are extremely small, that a man who has most key institutions against him, has the top military brass against him, and lives in a country where the military rank and file are probably not about to try to overthrow civilian authority, has very little chance of ending American democracy?
I am not sure. The idea of Trump being the curtain call on American democracy is certainly one of the main things behind his psychological impact on people, but I have seen plenty of people who seem existentially horrified by him for completely different reasons. Some people seem to be driven out of their wits' ends just by the very fact that Trump is crude and vulgar rather than sounding like an intellectual.
On the one hand I agree that Trump was effectively stymied by checks and balances from doing many things he wanted to do in his first term. On the other hand it's not like got none of his goals accomplished. Trump's election (and subsequent Supreme Court appointments) are pretty directly responsible for overturning Roe, for one example. Many of his judicial appointments issue, frankly, insane rulings trying to enact conservative political priorities. Stopped only by the Supreme Court of the United States. The idea that Trump's presidency had no lasting impact on the United States is simply not true.
On the threat-to-democracy front I think the obvious angle is that Trump tried to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election and regularly disparages the legitimacy of any election he loses. Forget the riot on Jan 6th. Here are some simple facts, not reasonably in dispute:
1. As of December 15th 2020 all states electoral votes had been cast and transmitted to the United States federal government. These votes were sufficient to elect Joseph Biden as the next President of the United States.
2. Additionally, some other individuals in particular states purporting to be those states' lawful electors had transmitted their votes to the United States federal government.
3. Thereafter Donald Trump and some members of his inner circle started a pressure campaign to get Mike Pence to declare that, as Vice President, he had the sole authority to decide which electoral college votes were valid and should be counted. They wanted Pence to use this power to either:
a. Count the votes cast in (2) rather than (1) for particular states, ensuring Trump would be re-elected as President OR
b. Declare that no valid votes had been cast from certain states and therefore neither candidate had achieved the needed majority and the election would be decided by the House. Which Trump would almost certainly win.
Of course, the Vice President does not have the power to decide which EC votes were lawfully cast. No Vice President has ever claimed or exercised this power. The abuses it enables are extremely obvious. Why would any ticket ever fail to be re-elected? Indeed, this is obvious because I suspect approximately none of the theories proponents would accept Kamala Harris doing anything like this with the results of the 2024 election.
I think a lot of people freak out about Trump because there is a perception that there is a Way Things Are Done that he neither does not know or does not care about. Sometimes this leads to our system of checks and balances stymieing his policy goals (see the million cases his admin lost for not following the APA) but sometimes it comes down to the bravery of individual people like Mike Pence. This concern specifically is enhanced by Vance being on record that he would not have certified the 2020 results like Mike Pence did.
Has Harris, who is specifically has the role of certifying the 2024 results, committed to doing so regardless of who wins? The optics of that particular person endorsing "the other candidate is dangerous for democracy" are, themselves, concerning as well.
Yes, Harris has committed to certifying the election results whoever wins.
Absent from this article: literally any quotes from Kamala Harris. "Advisors" say that she believes her role in certifying is ceremonial, and that she would certify even if she lost. Has she ever taken a question (and given a direct answer) about if she would meaningfully accept the results of the election in a timely manner, even if there were minor or moderate oddities?
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