As his behavior gets more and more reckless and unstable, the talk about removing Trump from office is getting louder every day, and now Buzzfeed is reporting that some top Democrats are trying to convince themselves that a Mike Pence presidency wouldn’t really be so bad.

“I’d sleep easier with almost any other human being as president than Donald Trump,” the former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau told BuzzFeed News. “I’m not as worried [Pence] would accidentally start a nuclear war because some Breitbart lunatic floated a conspiracy that got under his skin.”

“I never thought I’d be in a world where I’d say this, but I’d much rather have Mike Pence in the Oval Office,” said another former senior Obama administration official. “And the reason comes down to one word: crisis. All of the chaos of the last two months in the Trump White House has been self-inflicted.”

“I think it’s fair to say that every Democrat I know would prefer a President Mike Pence, without hesitation,” said a third top Democratic aide. “He would pass some very bad laws, possibly more efficiently than Trump will. But we would not be worried about nuclear war, the end of NATO and an unholy alliance with Russia, the dissolution of basic democratic norms and principles, or the base-level stability and mental health of the world’s most powerful person.”

“I know Pence is a much more doctrinaire conservative, but he is not evil and he is not crazy,” said one of Bill Clinton’s former top White House staffers. “I know that’s a pathetically low bar for the most powerful job on earth, but if that’s the choice, it is an easy one.”

I have to disagree. If you compare practically anyone to Donald Trump they’d seem level-headed, but in many ways Mike Pence is just as much of a horror show of authoritarianism — and you can add in the even worse component of religious fanaticism to that, which is one thing Trump doesn’t have, although he’s not averse to faking it to appease his easily duped religious right supporters.

You could argue, in fact, that Pence would actually be worse because he knows how politics and government works, and he’d be much more efficient and effective at imposing the GOP’s radical right wing agenda than Trump, who’s even pissing off his allies with his bizarre behavior.

Trump is a nightmare president, and he’s doing real damage to the United States. But say he’s removed from office. The question becomes: then what? Because when America elected the Trump-Pence ticket, it ensured a lose-lose situation. And even if Pence were somehow removed as well… then what? Horror show Paul Ryan would be next in line. Followed by horror show Orrin Hatch, followed by horror show Rex Tillerson.

It’s a horror show all the way down, and I don’t mind saying it’s pretty depressing to think about.