Does he encourage violence?

The last time I was in a bookstore, about a month ago, there was a prominent display of a new book, How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. I thought of buying it, but I thought it would be, because of its accuracy to what the nasty guy is doing, too depressing. Perhaps I’ll feel differently next time.

Mark Sumner, writing for Daily Kos, examines one idea from the Levitsky and Ziblatt book – four signs a candidate is likely to be authoritarian.

* Does the candidate appear to reject the democratic rules of the game?

* Does he deny the legitimacy of his opponent?

* Does he tolerate or encourage violence?

* Does he express willingness to curtail civil liberties of his opponents and the media?

Richard Nixon is the only candidate in the last century who showed any of these four signs. The nasty guy has shown all four.

Sumner adds the nasty guy didn’t wrap himself in a cloak of democracy which he threw off after the inauguration. His campaign, from the start, showed all four signs.

And for enough people that was the attraction.

The rest of Sumner’s post is about the GOP reaction to the nasty guy’s talk of firing special prosecutor Robert Mueller – more accurately the GOP lack of reaction. Yeah, they talk, some of them. But they aren’t saying, “If you fire Mueller, we’ll do …” They certainly aren’t saying they’ll open impeachment hearings. So there won’t be any consequences. And the GOP will be glad the investigation is over and the nasty guy is still in office.

Yes, the Constitution has a system of checks and balances. But, says Sumner:

What the Constitution didn’t plan for was a 40-year siege a long-term plan to make competent government into the enemy, remove all constraints of tradition or bylaw, and replace representatives of regional citizens with an ALEC-ized monopoly, all marching to the same script.

Brian Dickerson, opinion columnist for the Detroit Free Press, wrote about the different ways the US Constitution can be changed. The only one used so far is an amendment passed by 2/3 of each chamber of Congress and ratified by ¾ of the states. There are several amendment efforts underway, such as requiring Congress to balance the federal budget. There are as many horrible ideas trying to get into the Constitution as there are good ideas.

Another route is a Constitution Convention. Quite a few states have called for one. But there are a couple dangers. First, delegates may be sent to the Convention with specific instructions, but it is likely they’ll ignore instructions once the process is started. Second, with so many GOP controlled legislatures the chances for a GOP controlled outcome (abortion and same-sex marriage bans) are way too high.

Even so, Dickerson sees a big hole in our Constitution. He pulls an idea from The Crisis of the Middle Class Constitution by Ganash Sitaraman, law professor of Vanderbilt University. Those who wrote the Constitution were pretty good with the checks and balances – with the assumption citizens were relatively equal economically. But they “neglected to provide ‘constitutional structures to manage the clash between the wealthy and everyone else.’ … Campaign contributions, well-financed lobbying efforts, and collusion between regulated industries and the government employees who regulate them have tipped the scales in favor of the wealthy minority.” In another essay Sitaraman wrote, “The fundamental problem is that our constitutional system might not survive in an unequal economy.”