No one would elect Donald Trump to be the next Pope. Well, maybe Trump would do so himself, but few others would burn their ballots into white smoke for the thrice-married former president, if only because few think of him as a pious or godly person.
But the presidency is not the papacy. And while Trump would be horrible in the latter position, he was not at all bad in the former.
The prospect of Trump returning to that job has absolutely terrified the people who directly benefit most from him not holding it. And so the Democratic Party Industrial Complex, which has become increasingly unhinged, is now unleashed to do or say anything, no matter how undemocratic, to prevent it.
Former President George W. Bush famously declared, “I have abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.” Democrats are likewise abandoning the concept of democracy in order to save it.
To offer up ostentatious declarations of fealty to democracy, all the while devising dodgy new legal theories to put your electoral opponents on criminal trial, seems at least inconsistent — perhaps even hypocritical. To put your electoral opponent on trial for a crime your own candidate also committed might give rise to the impression that there's a double standard at play.
And if you are really committed to democracy, to the point that you try to frame your opponent as a "threat to........