Thread by @PMatzko

We can be thankful for yet another instance of Trump's incompetence belying his wickedness, but the attempted coup--frivolous lawsuits, 100+ GOP congresspeople joining the Texas suit, Trump's calls to state officials to overturn the election results--will have consequences. 1/

We are watching, live, a practice run for the end of a functional American democracy. A future, more competent incumbent--one who takes the "wannabe" out of "wannabe authoritarian"--now has the playbook for how to steal an election thanks to Trump and the GOP. 2/

But this isn't just some crazy, future hypothetical. If the election had hinged on a single state--and not three of them--I have no confidence that the coup attempt would be failing right now. 3/

Coordinating a coup across so many disparate actors, even when they are all from the same party, is just too much; too many state and local officials, whether from a combination of personal integrity and political calculus, have refused to go along. 4/

But if it only took one state party, one governor, one election official, I think we'd be in the worst constitutional crisis since 1876 right now. 5/

And consider that those local officials are going to pay the political price. The GOP officials, from the election certifier in Michigan to the Secretary of State in Georgia--have already been hounded at home and on social media; their political careers are dead in the water. 6/

Why? B/c a critical mass of GOP rank-and-file do not share their integrity. And when they're gone, all that'll be left are the grifters, sycophants, & deplorables who wholeheartedly support the President in his efforts to undermine our democracy in order to save his vanity. 7/

I've been an inveterate critic of Trump since '16, but I didn't predict just how thoroughly conservative ideology would be hollowed out, how rapidly the party would descend into conspiratorial madness, or how fully the Party would become a personality cult for Donald Trump. /fin