We’ve all seen posts and stories that the best we can hope for is an incompetent Trump administration. A competent and malign Trump administration would be far worse….
I would suggest that “competent and malign” is more likely than “incompetent”, and that we must be on our guard against malignancy.
As a case in point, consider the last few weeks of the Trump campaign. Trump repeatedly raised the spectre of a hacked or stolen election. Democrats rushed to defend the integrity of elections in America, arguing that they are impossible or nearly impossible to steal.
Why does it matter?
Given earlier (apparent) Russian hacking of the DNC and (apparent) attempts to influence the US Presidential election, an objective observer might have wondered about the mismatch between polls and election results. That objective observer might have suggested that the two events might be related. Once the Democrats defended the integrity of elections in the US, they (of course) could not argue that Russia or some other power had stolen the election for Trump.
To be clear, I am ***NOT*** suggesting that the election was stolen. Personally, having lived in several states that Trump won, I’m less and less surprised by the outcome. Rather, my point is that Trump’s rhetoric boxed Democrats into a corner where they were forced to defend the US electoral system. If or when Trump won, Democrats could not argue that he had stolen the election.
This type of ju-jitsu may be the move of a fool or a moron, but one assumes that’s the case at their own peril.
Do not underestimate Trump, and do not underestimate the damage he and the Republicans can do over the coming years.