I don’t agree that there will be civil war nor societal breakdown nor is the Constitution a “mystical document no one dare challenge” (they’re called Amendments because they amend) — in fact the entirety of the Supreme Court’s (and the Judiciary branch’s) job is to “interpret” the law which by definition cannot encompass every possible permutation or situation. I don’t think the current situation is a result of structural problems with the system. I’m prepared to argue both for and against the Electoral College, for example. With in the two party system there are (or were) very wide swaths of caucuses that in other nations would be separate parties. The system of checks and balances among the three branches of government has been tested by rogue actors but is holding generally (albeit shakily on a relative basis right now). Many posters here have mentioned the influence of money in politics and while the US is largely free of a lot of the open graft and corruption we see in other nations I agree that the system needs likely significant reform AND that it’s not really in the vested interest of the powerful nor those elected to actually reform it.
At the end of the day, as someone wrote, despots rise in times of desperation or decadence. What bothers me about the “both guys are so bad” argument is that it’s a gateway drug to “I’m going to disengage from the process because both guys are so bad.” And that’s what got us Trump in the first place, helped on by an amoral (at best) MAGA coalition willing to lie to make their opposition look as bad as possible, a complacent profit-centric media, and — lest we forget — an explosion in the ease of use and availability of social media that allows propaganda to spread (and in a world of deep fakes this may get worse).
The reality is — IMO — despite the frailty issue Biden isn’t “so bad” — he’s a confirmed moderate, a pragmatist, hono(u)rable and moral, who stepped into the breach when only relative extremists (Sanders and Warren) were options. Now I thought as I said he should have announced he’d be one term during his term (as Jerry Brown did in CA before Newsom came in). He could have helped smooth the way for the next generation, whomever that is, and he hasn’t. But regardless, he’s the last man standing between the people and Donald Trump. We owe him — as we’d owe whomever it was — every bit of support possible to defend ourselves from an option who openly wants to end American democracy to protect himself from personal legal consequences.
