And the left goes moon-barking crazy

Two Harvard professors writing in the NYT (where else?) declare Trump to be the biggest threat to democracy since - since... well, since anybody! Bwahhaaa!

[First, the pompous exposition of their expertise]:

We have spent two decades studying the emergence and breakdown of democracy in Europe and Latin America. Our research points to several warning signs.

Now, to the meat of the matter:

The clearest warning sign is the ascent of anti-democratic politicians into mainstream politics. Drawing on a close study of democracy’s demise in 1930s Europe, the eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz designed a “litmus test” to identify anti-democratic politicians. His indicators include a failure to reject violence unambiguously, a readiness to curtail rivals’ civil liberties, and the denial of the legitimacy of elected governments.

Apparently the authors are not referring to the IRS's targeting of conservatives on Obama's enemies list, the sitting president's welcoming Black Lives Matter instigators to the White House, or the overriding of local laws by executive fiat. They've spotted someone else at fault, someone who hasn't even taken office yet:

Mr. Trump tests positive. In the campaign, he encouraged violence among supporters; pledged to prosecute Hillary Clinton; threatened legal action against unfriendly media; and suggested that he might not accept the election results.

Now they'll turn to Harry Reid and the sitting president's efforts to delegitimize the election, right? Well, no.

With the false claim that he lost the popular vote because of “millions of people who voted illegally,” Mr. Trump openly challenged the legitimacy of the electoral process. At the same time, he has been remarkably dismissive of United States intelligence agencies’ reports of Russian hacking to tilt the election in his favor.

But now they'll speak of Reid's exercising of "the nuclear option" and eliminating the senate filibuster, right? Er ....

Among the unwritten rules that have sustained American democracy are partisan self-restraint and fair play. For much of our history, leaders of both parties resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage, effectively underutilizing the power conferred by those institutions. There existed a shared understanding, for example, that anti-majoritarian practices like the Senate filibuster would be used sparingly, that the Senate would defer (within reason) to the president in nominating Supreme Court justices, and that votes of extraordinary importance — like impeachment — required a bipartisan consensus. Such practices helped to avoid a descent into the kind of partisan fight to the death that destroyed many European democracies in the 1930s.

If there weren't such an unbroken history of it, the solipsism of these people would be astounding. As it is, well ....

What does strike me, however, is the level of actual hatred the left holds towards its opposition. Read the comments to the Time's screed (some of them - there are over 1,000): the Hillaryites truly, deeply despise those of us on the other side. I find them amusing, albeit completely wrong; they just hate. If this keeps up, and there's no evidence it won't, I think many who are, for now, laughing at these antics will tire of the vituperativeness and start hating them back.

How deluded are these people? Check out this post from yesterday's Salon: they don't even realize that Trump isn't in office yet, nor that it was their president who set in motion and made possible the massacre in Aleppo.