Friday, July 22, 2016

Whistling (if not quite singing) in the rain

In last night's RNC speech, Trump was almost commendably up-front about the fact that he is proposing to replace the U.S. legal and political order with a Putinist dictatorship.  By squinting a bit, however, I can discern three silver linings:

1) Prognosticators generally see a 60% to 80% chance that he will lose the election.

2) If he wins, we don't know for sure that the institutional barriers will fail.  This depends on other politicians in both parties, on Executive Branch employees and the military if (when?) they get illegal and improper orders, and on civil society institutions including the press.

3) We also don't know for sure that he means it.  If not, it wouldn't be the first time that purchasers of Trump products failed to get what they were promised.

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