The abnormality is so staggering that it can actually become numbing.

It's all too easy to fall into reflexive habits,

to treat this as a normal campaign,

where both sides embrace the rule of law,

where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power.

But that is not what's happening this election year.

Those bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven't seen since the Civil War.

It's a test for the candidates for those of us in the media and for all of us as citizens.

And we are, I mean I know it sounds like hyperbole, but I think your opening is so correct that we are essentially,

as Neil put it, one vote away from the end of democracy as we know it with checks and

balances and to say it's an imperial presidency that would be created is frankly saying it would be a king.

He would be criminally immune.

And that is what is so shocking is how close we are

and we are really on the razor's edge of that kind of result, but for the Chief Justice.

Is this the United States of America?

Is this a nation that was founded on the principle that no person is above the law?

And then you tell these young people, if you don't get involved right now in this election, they're going to be involved in your life for the rest of your

freaking life and if Trump and Roberts and Alito and Gossage and Thomas and Leonard Leo and the Heritage Foundation. if they get a hold, there will be no government left,

there will be no rights left, you'll live under the theocracy, you'll end up Christian

nationalism, but that's all right, know 26 year old you don't feel like

the election's important to me they're not addressing the issues that I care about well the

New York Times Harvard you well sorry about the New York Times, well sorry about the Harvard Youth Pole, which is a pretty good

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