Donald Trump

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is a hammer in search of a nail: everybody is so annoyed with politics and politicians that we just want to see somebody get hammered.

okay so so the rise of Donald Trump is explained by it by a couple of factors the first factor explaining the rise of Donald Trump is that Donald Trump is a hammer in search of a nail right and everybody is so annoyed with politics and politicians that we just want to see somebody get hammered and so it doesn't so Donald Trump you'll notice he has a hammer in search of a nail sometimes he hits a puppy right sometimes he has a glass pane sometimes he hits a child and sometimes he hits a nail and when he hits a nail it's great so in the span of the last four days we saw Donald Trump go from a zero to a ten right he did his horrible speech in Iowa where he was reenacting ben Carson stabbing story and taking his belt buckle and moving to the side of the podium and unbuttoning and moving around his belt buckle like a crazy guy and then and everybody was going what is this and then two days later two days later the next day actually the Paris attacks happened and goes on national television and he's asked what he wants to do and he says I would bomb the shit out of them and most Americans go okay I get that I'm there all right you know I don't need I don't need a five paragraph essay I'm cool we got it right

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is not the heart attack of democracy he is the gum disease of democracy you can die from gum disease but it festers for a long time before it finishes you off.

Donald Trump is not the heart attack of democracy he is the gum disease of democracy you can die from gum disease but it festers for a long time before it finishes you off a  a second master idea is that we have that we have to be careful but assuming that checks and balances are anything more than a metaphor the Constitution has been described as a machine that will go of itself and it's been described that was described that way by one of my predecessors at the Atlantic as a matter of fact in the 1880s what people people don't often read the whole paragraph which says while people think the Constitution is a machine that will go of itself it is not it is operated by people and one of the things to understand what I mean by hypocrisy is to understand that what we're seeing here is a breakdown not just of the President and not just of the White House staff and not just of the executive office of the presidency but there are large systems of enabling

is at the center of a constitutional crisis in the making, in part, also because public debate was poisoned by foreign influence working through social media.

Public debate was poisoned by foreign influence working through social media. And gerrymandering has damaged the democratic accountability of Congress.

is both the result of, and a further contribution to, a constitutional crisis-as-dissatisfaction.

Donald Trump's presidency is both the result of, and a further contribution to, the crisis-as-dissatisfaction.

crisis

is flirting with a constitutional crisis because he won the election despite losing the popular vote, an outcome that is hard to justify under the principle of popular sovereignty.

Trump's election has exacerbated the crisis-as-dissatisfaction by bringing to the surface long-standing concerns about many features of the US Constitution, including the role of the Electoral College, funding of political campaigns, the quality of public debate, gerrymandering in the election of public officials and the determination of the ideological composition of the government, and the powers of the president. Trump won the election despite losing the popular vote, an outcome that is hard to justify under the principle of popular sovereignty.

is flirting with a constitutional crisis in that dissatisfaction could produce disruption at any moment and our constitutional system seems to have reached a point where constitutional reform is urgent.

If a crisis exists, it is a crisis-as-dissatisfaction rather than a crisis as- disruption. But a crisis-as-dissatisfaction could produce a crisis-as-disruption at any moment, and in any event our constitutional system seems to have reached a point where constitutional reform is urgent. Yet it is not clear that constitutional reform is possible, or that it will make much difference, or improve our system of national government. Everything depends on the nature and degree of polarization in the electorate, which can be glimpsed but remains poorly understood.

is flirting with a constitutional crisis in that his electoral victory was predicated on right-wing populist attacks on the political establishment and on the major institutions of our constitutional democracy.

A major factor in his electoral victory was his attack on the political establishment, an attack that resonated with millions of Americans. There is much truth to the now-commonplace idea that the election represented a right-wing populist revolt against establishment politicians, Republicans as well as Democrats. This interpretation is consistent with the evidence presented above of long-term public dissatisfaction with the major institutions of our constitutional democracy. The revolt can also be traced back to a more recent event- the financial crisis, which was simultaneously interpreted as a failure of liberal interventionism (federal housing policy before the crisis, the unpopular bailouts during it) and a failure of conservative economic policy (deregulation of the financial industry). Whichever it was, the establishment elites were blamed for the crisis and the aftermath, the bailouts that rewarded the wrongdoers and the recession that harmed virtuous workers and homeowners. Taking a longer view, we can see that economic stagnation and growing wealth inequality have also done their part in persuading the public that political and economic elites are corrupt.

is flirting with a constitutional crisis of dissatisfaction in part because gerrymandering has damaged the democratic accountability of Congress.

And gerrymandering has damaged the democratic accountability of Congress, contributing to the polarized atmosphere.

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