The Most Important Election in American History

It’s been said by Democrats before: “This is the most important election in history.” And perhaps at those times the warnings were well-founded. The fight against abortion, the push for gun control, the need to combat climate change, the battle over the courts all seemed like grave threats to personal freedom, health and survival (and they still do).

But today the warning is rooted in democracy’s existential crisis. The survival of our Constitution, the rule of law and everything we’ve cherished for the past 243 years is at stake. Our precious democracy is teetering on the verge of…take your pick…autocracy, authoritarianism, dictatorship.

The Founding Fathers were brilliant in their creation of a system of checks and balances, where each of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of their nascent government would be equal. A fail-safe designed to reign in and hold accountable a rogue president who uses and abuses the office for personal gain, even at the risk of the our national security.

And for 243 years the system worked without fail. Until now. What the Founders never contemplated, and therefore did not create remedies for, was if one or more of those co-equal checks abdicated its oversight role and instead aided and abetted a corrupt, power-usurping president. Welcome to the Reign of Donald Trump.