talkingpointsmemo.com

I don’t think we can discuss this debate as citizens, take stock of it as a country, without noting that this is certainly the first time one candidate has openly threatened to jail the other candidate. Trump said openly that he would instruct the Justice Department to open a new investigation of Clinton and that he’d make sure it ended with her imprisonment. That’s something we expect it kleptocracies and thin democracies where electoral defeat can mean exile, imprisonment or death.

Such a ferocious claim, one that puts our whole constitutional order on its head, is not something that can be easily undone. That’s the ranting threat of a would-be strongman and dictator The threat itself is like a bell that can’t be un-rung. Through the course of what was often an ugly debate, I was thinking a lot of the destructiveness of this entire campaign, virtually all of which stems from Trump’s transgressive, norm-demolishing behavior. It’s a topic we’ll have to return to in the ed blog and one the country is going to need to wrestle with. None of this is going to disappear after November 8th. These are slashing wounds to the country’s political fabric that will at best leave tremendous scar tissue we’ll still see for decades.

Yep. This is the real story from tonight. Our political tradition has not seen this sort of thing since Cromwell and the Roundheads in the 1640’s.

This is not going to go away, and Trump is doing everything he can to strangle Hillary’s presidency in the crib. No matter what she does from here out, that Trump shadow will still be lurking around behind her with his followers…promising investigations, intimidation and violence.

This is 40% of the electorate that wants a dictator who will punish her and by extension all the rest of us who are not real Americans as far as they are concerned.