We have come many times so close to the end of democracy, yet every time we keep shaking it off with the sigh of relief and keep saying "democracy worked"; yet will do nothing to fix the abuses of power, the lawlessness, not to say anything about the total collapse of the "norms" until one day... "What's norms got to do with it?" and "I am the law" (or did we gallop through that Rubicon already)?
-----
www.washingtonpost.com
Paul Waldman (WaPo): "We came much closer to an election catastrophe than many realize"
"But it was closer than you think. And it raises the frightening possibility that if Trump's team were not such a bunch of buffoons ... he might have been able to steal the election after all.
That's because the 2020 election was, in one critical way, even closer than 2016."
"You may remember that four years ago, Trump managed to win the electoral college because he prevailed in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by a combined total of just 77,000 votes. That tiny margin was enough to overcome Hillary Clinton's 3 million-vote lead in the popular vote and make him president with 304 electoral votes.
So what's the analogous magic number for 2020? It's even smaller.
Final tallies are being completed; Georgia is conducting a hand recount, and there could be a recount in Wisconsin if the Trump campaign decides to pay for one. But here are the margins by which Biden won three critical states, as of Wednesday morning:
Arizona: 10,457
Georgia: 14,028
Wisconsin: 20,565
Total: 45,050
But if Trump had managed to get those 45,000 votes, he would have won 37 more electoral votes, making the electoral college a 269-to-269 tie. Under the Constitution, the election would have then been decided by the House of Representatives, with each state delegation getting just one vote. Even though Democrats have a majority in the House, more state delegations have Republican majorities. Trump would have been reelected."
-----
As I've said here before - "way too close for comfort." If the powers of the King, er President, are not curtailed, we may have Trumpian dictator without Trumpian buffoonery or visible personal / mental defects.
People here kept asking: who could vote for such individual, who would want him again as President, with the broad "consensus" that only racists and degenerates would do so? We now have the answer, almost 75 million people did... or didn't necessarily want him, but voted "against the other candidate" they found even less acceptable, for various reasons.
We may not be so "lucky" next time, if we, the people, represented by the Congress of two parties equally hungry for power at any cost, don't reduce and/or remove many presidential powers that the Congress and the courts kept giving to the office, instead removing or reducing "checks and balances" on the occupant of the office.
_______
"Rules? What rules?
Norms? What norms?
Laws? What Laws?"
The President-in-exile Donald Trump.
_______