America will regret its decision to re-elect Donald Trump

Presidential campaign determined personal hatredthreats political violence and two thwarted assassination attempts ended Tuesday in largely organized elections. Regardless of what the results ultimately show, Americans’ commitment to fair and peaceful voting is a thumb in the eye to authoritarian powers both at home and abroad.

That’s all the joy Democrats (and democracy lovers) will find in yesterday’s election results. The fleeting optimism that swept the party after Anne Seltzer’s legendary Iowa polls unexpectedly revealed Kamala Harris leader Donald Trump returned to reality by 3 points. Instead, the realization came that the worst-case scenario for democracy was unfolding in real time.

Our democratic institutions are not prepared for what comes next. So are the American people.

Trump, who will enter the White House on January 20, is a man mired in unsettled vendettawho was coming within a hair’s breadth of a string of federal felony convictions that he now authorized to erase with self-forgiveness – as if these crimes and many others had never happened at all. Trump will see his priorities as he has always seen them: party before country and individual above all else.

Man with 34 felony convictions will not be able to become president in a country where trust in institutions is high. Only in a culture where the justice system has long lost its legitimacy does a man with Trump’s lengthy criminal record go relatively unnoticed. The fact that one man can so easily manipulate American institutions to his advantage speaks both to the dilapidated state of American institutions and to the moral decrepitude of the criminals.

Nine years of Trump have dealt a blow to our democracy, and Trump’s MAGA movement has exploited the country’s systemic weaknesses at every turn. Political disinformation flooded social networks owned by key Trump allies or Trump personally. Meanwhile, Trump and compliant Republican lawmakers have torched public confidence in the courts—first by appointing ethically vacant Supreme Court, and later urging his followers to hate and distrust not only the judges who tried him, but the entire “rigged” justice system.

Now Trump is set to return to the White House, and he makes no secret of his lofty goals for a second term: gut the civil servicedestroying independence of the Ministry of Justice and seeking political and legal revenge against his long list of personal enemies. Based on yesterday’s election results, that’s what most Americans want Trump to do.

The former and future president now inherits a nation deeply weakened by his own toxic policies. Our divided and exhausted nation will now have to fend off the constant extra-legal whims of a President who, thanks to the Supreme Court, also functionally immune from prosecution for any act he undertakes. If Trump’s first term is any indication, we won’t have to wait long for the next constitutional crisis.

Believers in the rule of law are in for a difficult four years, because although Trump contradicted himself countless times during this marathon campaign, he never wavered in his views. disgust for the rule of law or his admiration autocrats. Members of the press can expect Trump to at least try to make good on his oft-repeated promise to rewrite national policy. press freedom and libel laws. The rest of us will be on a bumpy and chaotic ride together.

It is important that Trump took office in a free and fair election. What matters is that free people voluntarily chose to hide Trump’s power, which he will almost certainly abuse in far-reaching and destructive ways. Our country has chosen to follow the dark path of Trump’s grievances and conspiracies. We’ll regret this.

Max Burns is a Democratic Party veteran and founder of Third Degree Strategies.

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