If half of Americans choose Trump, then how dangerous can he be?
Dangerous.
Democracy has a suicide option. Democracy gives the public the power to elect charismatic fools and tyrants.
Republicans and Democrats each won about half the elections during my lifetime. I have had Republican presidents, senators, congressmen, state representatives. Often Republicans have slowed down or reversed what I thought were good policies, but the general trend has been good.
The world is more just now than it was in the 1950s, the imagined MAGA golden age for America. Income inequality is greater than it was then, but everyone is better off, which is a consolation. Racial justice is much improved, full stop. The air and water are cleaner than they were when we celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970. When I was a Jackson County Commissioner in 1981-85, Republicans in the state legislature impeded efforts to stop lumber mills from cleaning up the air, and they won, and the air stayed dirtier longer than I wanted, but eventually a restless public demanded change. Republicans got outvoted and scrubbers got installed and the air is far better. I see the same pattern with national and state issues regarding auto exhaust pollution, waterway pollution, lead in gasoline, lead in paint, protecting salmon, and now dealing with CO2. Republicans oppose things, slow progress down, and the status quo stays in place, and then the public demands some change, legislators get replaced, and progress takes place.
We saw this with expanding access to health care, too. Republicans fought Medicare. Then the public realized they loved it. Now Republican politicians like it. GOP legislators called the ACA "Obamacare" so they could campaign against it and its expanded access to Medicaid for the working poor. Then enough people realized it protected access to health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions -- including a lot of self-employed Republicans. Republican legislators kept on complaining about that awful "Obamacare," but they now support it without admitting it. It is unsteady progress, but progress.
Losing elections is the price of domestic tranquility in a democracy. What I consider good policy many others consider error or waste. I analogize democracy to a wagon train on the Oregon Trail, with democratic institutions holding together both fast wagons and stragglers. Besides: If over half of my fellow countrymen prefer it, how bad could it be? It isn't like people are going to choose to be led by a fool or a fascist authoritarian.
Over the weekend Trump posted late-night tweets, calling for all-cap DEATH for his former top military commander. He called on House Republicans to shut down the government to impede the government's prosecution of him.
My high school teachers, WWII veterans, taught us about the nature of authoritarian fascism, and Trump's words sounded an alarm for me.
Yikes!
The safeguards to Democracy worked last time. The courts did their work. Most election administrators in the states played it straight, against the urging of partisan legislatures. The Justice Department and the other federal agencies are largely staffed by "career people." Trump has wised up. He said he knows that what stopped him last time were all those people loyal to their tasks and the laws, not to him. That will change first thing, he said.
Trump is charismatic and Joe Biden is old and inarticulate. Biden has qualities of stability but not qualities of showmanship. And there are inflation and gasoline prices, the government will be shut down for a while, the budget is in deficit, and the southern border situation is getting worse, not better. There are always problems and Biden is not good at projecting confident competence to solve them. Trump is good at creating the chaos he condemns.
Things fall apart. The center may not hold. Mere anarchy may be loosed.
“Trump is charismatic”...well, that’s one way to describe the self promoting carnival barker. Biden, today beginning the process of insurrectionists in congress who waste government money & time to bring bogus impeachment charges against him without any evidence of wrongdoing. Biden continues to do his work, travel to communicate with leaders in other countries, as well as showing his support for auto workers on strike. The lies perpetrated by people who are still attempting their coup of our government are beyond the pale, their blatant lies about Biden, as well as the ones who refuse a subpoena, while issuing bogus subpoenas of their own...
I feel you give tfg too much credibility by stating that he is “charismatic”, while he is the bull in the china shop who praises violent dictators while attacking & lying about anyone who doesn’t kiss his, er, ring, the majority of the time.