From: Bob Bauer, Trump’s Answer to the Senate and the Constitutional Stakes in the Pending Trial, Lawfare, Feb. 9, 2021:
However, the hope that the election would arrest the advance of the demagogic presidency has been tempered, if not dashed. By assaulting the legitimacy of the election, beginning the day after the election at 2:30 a.m., Trump has managed to persuade a large segment of the electorate that the election decided nothing at all. It was fraudulent, denying him the “landslide” he claims that he won. In fact, according to Trump, it was precisely because he had established his unique form of presidency, unlike any that had come before, that the election was “stolen” from him. The same elites aligned against everything he stood for, every innovation he offered the American public, had joined forces to deny him the second term he had clearly won.So Trump is out of the White House, but his attempt to vindicate his vision of the presidency has not ended. He continues to put it up as the alternative to the standard conception—the presidency that has operated within institutional norms for which he has exhibited disdain. It now falls to the impeachment process to confront and repudiate the demagogic vision of the presidency that Trump is endeavoring to keep alive.
