REDISCOVER THOSE ARTICLE II LIMITATIONS.

Even before a single vote was cast, Our Progressive Betters had to offer advice.  Francis "L 'Ombre de L'Olivier" Turner noticed that the Davoisie were worried.  "Elections : Dangerous for 'our' democracy."  He continues, "I’ve spotted a number of recent articles where the 'right sort' of people are very very concerned that the 'wrong sort of person' i.e. orange might be re-elected president of the US."  The Davoisie reference is to the same sort of fretting arising over British voters, French voters, German voters, or Taiwanese voters.

I'll concentrate on these United States, where before a single pot of coffee was prepared in an Iowa caucus room, the editorial board of New York's Times offered The Responsibility of Republican Voters.

Donald Trump, who has proved himself unwilling to do so, is manifestly unworthy. He is facing criminal trials for his conduct as a candidate in 2016, as president and as a former president. In this, his third presidential bid, he has intensified his multiyear campaign to undermine the rule of law and the democratic process. He has said that if elected, he will behave like a dictator on “Day 1” and that he will direct the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals and his critics in the media, declaring that the greatest dangers to the nation come “not from abroad, but from within.”

Mr. Trump has a clear path to the nomination; no polling to date suggests he is anything but the front-runner. Yet Republicans in these states still have their ballots to cast. At this critical moment, it is imperative to remind voters that they still have the opportunity to nominate a different standard-bearer for the Republican Party, and all Americans should hope that they do so. This is not a partisan concern. It is good for the country when both major parties have qualified presidential candidates to put forward their competing views on the role of government in American society. Voters deserve such a choice in 2024.

Mr. Trump’s construction of a cult of personality in which loyalty is the only real requirement has badly damaged the Republican Party and the health of American democracy.

It obviously never occured to the poobahs of Times Square that the presidency has long been a cult; that Mr Trump has a Borscht Belt schtick that is a little off in a presidential election, which is supposed to be limited to Excessively Earnest People Acting Presidential, and thus cracking wise about issuing executive orders for Sean Hannity and his guests is An Existential Threat, and that those criminal trials are motivating voters who will contend with Polar Vortex and Media Scorn alike to caucus in Iowa.

Spiked contributor Sean Collins offers a similar suggestion.

[E]ven if you are a Republican who thinks Trump has been unfairly treated by the Department of Justice and other prosecutors, that on its own is not a positive reason to select him as your party’s nominee. Trump comes with enormous baggage. After all, he stands a good chance of being a convicted criminal before November. And his first term in office demonstrated his erratic nature, inability to govern and disrespect for democracy. Going with Trump just to push back against Biden and the Democrats’ indictments, just to ‘own the libs’, would be a sign of immaturity among the populist strand within the party

Yes, because the mature people have acquitted themselves so well in this century, haven't they?  It has all the elements of a Greek tragedy, and Victor Hanson to spell it out.

The prosecutors began accelerating their indictments only once Trump started to lead incumbent Joe Biden by sizable margins in head-to-head polls. Moreover, had Trump not run for the presidency, or had he been of the same party as most of the four prosecutors, he would have never been indicted by any of them.

Yet now they are in a doom loop of discovering that the more they seek to rush to judgment before the election and gag Trump from speaking publicly about these star-chamber proceedings, the more he rises in the polls.

In truth, each succeeding cycle of corrupt leftwing lawfare that ends in failure—the Russian collusion hoax, the weaponized first impeachment, trying ex-president Trump in the Senate as a private citizen, the laptop disinformation set-up, the Alfa bank ping caper, the pathetic attempt to erase Trump from state ballots, and the unfolding Fani Willis moral debacle—does not return things to zero.

Rather, they serve as force multipliers for each other. Each overreach geometrically increases the dangers to democracy, ever more turns the public off, and ironically cascades sympathy and poll numbers for the very target of their paranoias.

And so a few Iowans braved the polar vortex and the snarky questions from the palace guard media, and they voted.

Despite lower-than-usual turnout due to weather, an estimated 120,000 Iowans still showed up — and the lion’s share caucused for a figure who faces four criminal trials on 91 felony charges ranging from election interference to hoarding classified documents.

Why? According to the AP's VoteCast survey, a full three-quarters of Iowa caucus-goers said the charges against Trump are political attempts to undermine him rather than legitimate attempts to investigate alleged crimes.

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents to the National Election Pool entrance poll said that Trump would still be fit to serve as president if convicted of a crime — double the number who said the opposite (32%). And among white evangelicals, Trump’s support — just 22% in 2016 — soared to 53% this time around.

“I’m here in part out of spite,” Marc Smiarowski, a 44-year-old public utility worker, told the AP at Trump's final pre-caucus rally Sunday in Indianola. “I can’t abandon him. [With] the political persecution he faces, I feel like I owe him this.”

I'm not prepared to accept that the major party slates are set, not on the basis of a small self-selected sample in a caucus that last picked a winner in 1976, when writers at The Washington Monthly thought the caucuses were a new and meaningful disruption, putting Jimmy Carter in play.  That should have been a warning, but the deterioration of that magazine since is for another day.

But is it settled?  The Colonel thinks so.  "Iowa has made clear that the base is intent on riding Donald J. Trump all the way to the finish line."

George Will fears so.

A small minority of Iowa’s tiny minority (0.96 percent) of the U.S. population has spoken. Next week, a portion of New Hampshire’s 0.42 percent will speak. By Feb. 24, when South Carolina (1.63 percent) will be heard from, these three states might have consigned the other 97 percent of Americans to a November choice that disgusts a whopping majority.

Writing in National Affairs, Wheaton College political scientists Bryan T. McGraw and Timothy W. Taylor say that in 2016, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump “had the lowest favorability of any candidates in presidential polling history.” Eight years later, a Biden-Trump rematch probably would establish a new low.

The "Not Trump" voters in the Republican coalition have not yet reached consensus on who the alternative is.  The Democrat machine will install Dementia Joe unless nature runs its course first.  Mr Will notes there is polling that should frighten Democrats.  Let them tremble, says Stephen Kruiser.  "Donald Trump certainly brings a lot of baggage to this race, and it's understandable that some people have more than a little trepidation about voting for him. Let's hope those voters realize that the people Trump annoys the most are the ones that no freedom-loving person ever wants to be in power."  They're trembling.  "Trump Iowa Win Called a 'Stark Reminder' of Threat He Poses to Democracy."  I read Common Dreams, dear reader, so you don't have to.  If you aren't encountering people who treat Mr Trump's Borscht Belt schtick seriously, you're encountering people who threaten to stay home if Mr Biden doesn't cave to the intersectional left even more than he already has.

The Jarrett regency shouldn't be worrying about the intersectional left, it's the security moms who will do them in.

By regularly griping about the supposed mystery of why so many voters say they prefer Donald Trump or another Republican, President Biden’s pundit backers mainly expose their own elitist ignorance.

Because if they’d been shopping to feed their families these last few years, they would have noticed the average grocery bill has shot up 25%.

And wage growth hasn’t remotely kept pace: It rose less than inflation for Biden’s first two years, and while the 2023 stats aren’t final, it wasn’t a ton better last year.

The interns who run Dementia Joe's social media keep telling us how food prices have risen less rapidly since 2022. Yes, and the Chicago Bears, who still suck, played winning football in November and December. The offensive coordinator got fired all the same.  David Axelrod, who knows a thing or two about winning elections, is worried.  “The president and his campaign need to get into gear and they need a message. And they need a message that takes in not just democracy but the day-to-day concerns that people have, and they need to prosecute it every single day through every single surrogate.”  Alan Singer, yes, another Common Dreams contributor, is worried.

Undocumented immigrants and political opponents could end up in Trump detention camps. Critics charge that Trump is a threat to the future of democracy in the United States. His promised actions echo those of elected leaders in other countries that have been labeled illiberal democracies.

Illiberal democracy is a relatively new term for an old idea—the use of democratic practices like winning an election to achieve undemocratic ends such as suppression of political dissidents, selectively banning immigrants, overturning religious freedom, and imposing slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Christian nationalists who believe the United States should be declared a Christian nation seem to be willing supporters of an illiberal, anti-democratic Trump.

It's the executive orders.  Read Common Dreams and you'll find calls for Dementia Joe to act like a dictator and cancel all student loan debt (writing for a radical website probably has a lousy return on investment) or to send more armaments to Ukraine but not to Israel (an odd stance for a nest of pacifists, but that's what being Perpetually Aggrieved looks like).  The Trump phenomenon, though, might be in part a pushback against Activist Presidents and the Administrative State of Wise Experts.  Or so thinks Cal Thomas.

In an extraordinary statement, [onetime House Speaker Newt] Gingrich said: "Trump is not a candidate. Trump is the leader of a nationwide movement to take back power from the Establishment." If that sounds like hyperbole, consider the number of states that have approved a convention of states to invoke Article 5 of the Constitution with the goal of enacting term limits and a requirement for a balanced federal budget. That would be 19 states, according to the Convention of States website with other states either having passed the resolution in one legislative chamber or are considering it. Thirty-eight states are needed. A Trump victory might encourage more states to sign on.

Instead of dwelling on Trump's personality, Washington politicians and the media ought to be examining the reasons behind voter anger and desire to move the country in a different direction. That's what Trump is promising. It is the reason he won big in Iowa and may run the table in every other primary state.

Nothing, nothing, scares Official Washington more than talk of a new Convention of the States.  Unless, perhaps, it's a return of Donald Trump, but with a better understanding of Presidential Prerogatives.

Now, bracing for Trump’s potential return, a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers is quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to cater to his political needs.

Those taking part in the effort told NBC News they are studying Trump’s past actions and 2024 policy positions so that they will be ready if he wins in November. That involves preparing to take legal action and send letters to Trump appointees spelling out consequences they’d face if they undermine constitutional norms.

“We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to,” said Mary McCord, executive director of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law.

Part of the aim is to identify like-minded organizations and create a coalition to challenge Trump from day one, those taking part in the discussions said. Some participants are combing through policy papers being crafted for a future conservative administration. They’re also watching the interviews that Trump allies are giving to the press for clues to how a Trump sequel would look.

Oh, great, more Russia! Russia! squirrel chases starting at election day again.

Read on, though, and consider what the people who fear a second Trump term notice.

“We are preparing for litigation and preparing to use every tool in the toolbox that our democracy provides to provide the American people an ability to fight back,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward. “We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy and it’s incumbent on everybody to do their part.”

America’s commander-in-chief has vast powers at his disposal — some well-known, others not so much. Some lawmakers and pro-democracy advocates worry there may be nothing stopping a president from mobilizing the military to intervene in elections, police American streets or quash domestic protests.

It's a strange pass we find ourselves, when most of what the conservative populists seek is a rolling back of the administrative state, and when nobody is asking how presidents aggrandized those powers in the first place.  Maybe in a quarter millennium we got a few things right.

America’s democracy has proved remarkably resilient. It has endured a civil war and economic depression, political scandals and domestic protests. In Trump, though, some former officials see a man backed by a fervent movement that could shatter the American experiment.

“We’re about 30 seconds away from the Armageddon clock when it comes to democracy,” said Cohen, the former Republican senator and defense secretary. “I think that’s how close we’re coming to it when you have a presidential candidate who can be indicted on 91 counts, who can be [found liable for] sexual aggression, who we have seen lies pathologically, who has flouted every rule in the book.”

Others who’ve seen Trump up close aren’t convinced. Plenty of obstacles would confront an administration that tries to steer the nation in an authoritarian direction, including the courts, Congress and the determined opposition of pro-democracy activists.

Might the rediscovery of those Article II powers also matter?