The thing about norms is that, once they're broken, it's very hard to un-break them.
It is in every politician's best interest to obstruct their opponents, prevent their opponents from voting, destroy ballots, jail their enemies on made-up charges, halt investigations into themselves, pack the court that will oversee their cases with allies, etc.
"Democratic norms" are a gentlemen's agreement to not use these highly effective tactics against each other, in the mutual interest of republicanism and democracy. They are highly advantageous, but the consequences are dire.
This is why, during the Obama presidency when Republicans first started deploying them, they called it "the nuclear option". Once one side has gone nuclear, the other side must reciprocate or die.
> "Democratic norms" are a gentlemen's agreement to not use these highly effective tactics against each other
This, more than any one election outcome, is what scares me most about our present moment. We've certainly seen malicious and undemocratic practice in the past and survived. Presidents from Nixon to Jackson have been utterly ruthless to opponents, and while Trump criticizes the press with particular zeal, he seems to achieved less actual influence than a lot of predecessors. (GWB, Nixon, and FDR all come to mind as having more actual influence over the press.)
What's more alarming is that it looks like our actual infrastructure doesn't work right and it simply took ~200 years for some of the cracks to show (or develop). The filibuster went from a rare protest or blackball to a motivator for bipartisanship to a minority veto, and then it went away. "Advise and consent" becomes a way for the legislative branch to cripple the others. Failure to appoint (and recess appointments to back it up) lets the executive cripple the judiciary and bypass the legislative. The only legal check on the executive is reserved to an increasingly partisan Congress, under rules of impeachment and pardon which have never been put to a full test. And all of that is before we touch on any of the more controversial representation, districting, and voting rights issues.
I'm not predicting national doom like some people have, but I'm definitely worried about a situation that alternates between paralytic divided governments run on recess appointments and executive orders, and united governments openly favoring their constituents in the absence of real minority-party or judicial checks.
(As for the nuclear metaphor, I can't help noticing that it seems to be about attack, rather than armament - in which case the dying part happens regardless of reciprocation...)
It is in every politician's best interest to obstruct their opponents, prevent their opponents from voting, destroy ballots, jail their enemies on made-up charges, halt investigations into themselves, pack the court that will oversee their cases with allies, etc.
"Democratic norms" are a gentlemen's agreement to not use these highly effective tactics against each other, in the mutual interest of republicanism and democracy. They are highly advantageous, but the consequences are dire.
This is why, during the Obama presidency when Republicans first started deploying them, they called it "the nuclear option". Once one side has gone nuclear, the other side must reciprocate or die.