Sunday morning coming down.
Other Democrats as well as anti-Trump Republicans are reluctant to acknowledge the scale of our crisis, because our institutions may not be strong enough to cope with it.
On CNN, David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, said he was “not comfortable” with Lewis’ words, making an argument that echoed Rubio’s. “The greatest triumph for Russia would be to legitimate their charges about our democracy,” he said. “I worry about our institutions. I worry that we’re in this mad cycle of destruction. I understand the outrage. But where is this all going?”
This is a legitimate fear: Nobody knows where this is all going. Democrats particularly are in a difficult position, because they want to uphold basic political norms, but doing so alone, while the other side shamelessly flouts them, puts them at a constant disadvantage. The peaceful transition of power is a cherished value of our democracy. But it’s not the only value, or the highest one. It should not require us to sleepwalk into authoritarianism. If the price for preserving our democracy is pretending that our would-be god-king-emperor has clothes, then it’s already rotted beyond repair. Michelle Goldberg, Slate
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