--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
date: 2024-11-10T19:16 tags: [date/2024/11/10, gemnews]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
created: 2024-11-09T23:09:38 (UTC +01:00) tags: [] source:
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4976386-trump-democracy-america/
author: Max Burns, opinion contributor
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
## Excerpt
Our democratic institutions are not ready for what comes next. Neither are the American people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A presidential campaign defined by
, threats of
and two foiled assassination attempts ended on Tuesday in a mostly orderly election. No matter what the results ultimately show, Americans’ commitment to a fair and peaceful vote is a thumb in the eye to authoritarians both at home and abroad.
That’s about all the joy Democrats (and lovers of democracy) will find in yesterday’s election results. The fleeting optimism that washed over the party after Ann Selzer’s storied Iowa poll showed Kamala Harris unexpectedly
by 3 points has crashed back to reality. In its place is the realization that democracy’s worst-case scenario is unfolding in real time.
Our democratic institutions are not ready for what comes next. Neither are the American people.
The Trump who will walk into the White House on Jan. 20 is a man steeped in
, who came within a hair’s breadth of a string of federal felony convictions that he is
with a self-pardon — as if those offenses and so many others had never even happened. Trump will see his priorities as he has always seen them: party over country and self over all.
A man with
can’t win the presidency in a nation where trust in institutions is high. It’s only in a culture where the justice system has long since lost its legitimacy that a man with such a thick criminal record as Trump glides by relatively unremarked. That one man can so effortlessly game American institutions to his own benefit says as much about the decrepit state of America’s institutions as it does about the moral decrepitude of the crook.
The nine years of the Trump era have taken a bat to our democracy, and Trump’s MAGA movement has exploited the nation’s systemic weakness at every turn. Political misinformation
social media networks owned by Trump’s key allies, or by Trump personally. Meanwhile, Trump and compliant Republican lawmakers torched public trust in the courts — first by appointing an
Supreme Court, and later by urging his followers to hate and distrust not only the judges who tried him but the entire “rigged” justice system.
Trump is now set to return to the White House, and he’s made no secret of his lofty goals for a second term:
, destroying the
independence of the Justice Department
and seeking political and legal revenge on his lengthy list of
. Judging by yesterday’s election returns, a majority of Americans are eager to see Trump do exactly that.
The former and future president now inherits a nation deeply weakened by his own toxic brand of politics. Our divided and exhausted nation will now need to fend off the constant extralegal whims of a president who is also, thanks to the Supreme Court,
from prosecution for any act he undertakes. If Trump’s first term was any indication, we won’t need to wait long for our next constitutional crisis.
Believers in the rule of law are in for a rough four years, because though Trump contradicted himself countless times during this marathon campaign, he never wavered in his
or his admiration for
. Members of the press can expect Trump to at least try making good on his oft-repeated pledge to rewrite the nation’s
. The rest of us will be along for the bumpy and chaotic ride.
It matters that Trump won his office in a free and fair election. It matters that free people voluntarily chose to cloak Trump in power he will almost certainly abuse in far-reaching and destructive ways. Our country made the choice to walk down the dark path of Trump’s resentments and conspiracies. We will come to regret it.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The worst-case scenario happened: Donald Trump won was published on 2024-11-10