Elect Donald Trump:

We are in the last few weeks of a presidential campaign that presents the most horrible choice on offer in our lifetimes, and perhaps in American history. The worst things that each major-party candidate say about each other are largely true. The next President to take the oath to defend and preserve the Constitution will very likely either be someone who despises it (particularly the first two amendments of the Bill of Rights), or someone who has almost certainly never even read it. Both of them have high public levels of disapproval, and a large swathe of the nation will loathe the next president, regardless of who wins. That is where we are. But there may yet be a glimmer of hope.

My thoughts, over @ricochet.

[Friday-morning update]

Related thoughts from Ace:

So both are bad actors. The question which remains is: Which bad actor will be more restrained by the political establishment of Washington DC?

You can’t judge a predator’s ability to ravish an environment without looking at the environment in which that predator operates.

Trump, if these allegations are true (and even if they’re not — he’s still shady and megalomaniacal) is a jackal being released into a swamp full of alligators looking to devour him.

Do I fear the jackal abroad in the swamp full of alligators? Well — no. No I don’t.

I almost pity him.

This jackal, being megalomaniacal, may think he can bully and beat up the alligators.

The rest of us know better, and know this particular jackal will be a warm, full feeling in someone’s belly by the dawn of the third day.

Clinton, meanwhile, is a jackal being set loose in a field full of sheep with no defenses (any Republican or Christian unprotected by the elite power structure) and a pack of ravening jackal minions who will gladly join her in hunting and tearing apart the sheep.

Yes.

[Late-morning update]

Trump the transgressive candidate. I do think he is unique to the moment.

[Saturday-morning update]

Let me make the point a different way. Mitt Romney liked to be able to fire people. The American people should like that, too. Trump is the only one of the two to whom we’ll be able to say “You’re fired!”

[Sunday-afternoon update]

I hadn’t noticed this at the time, but David Galernter was thinking along the same lines about the same time (though I actually pointed it out months ago):

Mrs. Clinton is right at home in the Oval Office and thinks she owns it. She holds herself entitled to supreme power, as her friends are entitled to fancy positions with enormous salaries and her followers to secure government jobs or ample government funds, as the case may be.

But forget psychology. Ordinary politics says that Mr. Trump will not do crazy things or go off half-cocked, because Republicans in Congress will be eager to impeach him and put Mike Pence in charge. That was the subtext of the vice-presidential debate, though Mr. Pence himself (probably) didn’t intend it. When it’s my turn, you can all relax. Democrats, obviously, will be eager to help when the task is removing a Republican.

Impeachment is Trump-voters’ ace in the hole. It’s an abnormal measure, but this is an abnormal year. Impeachment has temporarily dropped out of sight because of special circumstances. Republicans impeached Bill Clinton but got burned in the process; Mr. Obama, as the first black president, was impeachment-proof. Any other president would have encountered serious impeachment talk on several occasions, especially when he ignored Congress and the Constitution and made his own personal treaty-in-all-but-name with Iran.

As I pointed out, she will be impeachment proof as well, because a) she’s a Democrat, b) she’s a Clinton and c) any attempt to do so will be decried as “sexism.”