Mick Hartley

Should we be worrying? Yes, we should be worrying. A Trump upswing is to be expected after the Cleveland Republican Convention, but still: Nate Silver's latest 2016 Election Forecast gives Hillary Clinton 42.5% to Trump's 57.5%.

Trudy Rubin:

Last week Donald Trump laid out a deeply disturbing view of America's role in the world. The Trump Doctrine – if we can call this mass of contradictions a doctrine – embraces isolationism while simultaneously insisting Trump can swiftly destroy ISIS. It suggests we should abandon our closest allies, the democracies in NATO and Asia, even as Trump embraces autocrats like Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

This is the statement of a demagogue who will do tremendous harm to U.S. security if given the chance. Let us count the ways that Trump's message will, and already has, made America less safe:

Yet Trump has falsely defamed his own country. Contrary to his claims, the U.S. economy is doing well, unemployment is down, and serious urban crime, while undergoing a 2015 uptick in some cities, is down in many urban areas and has been dropping steadily for over a decade.

Second, Trump's praise for autocrats, and disrespect for his own democracy, further feeds the Russian-Chinese-ISIS narrative that liberal democracies are headed for history's dustbin. In a scary foreign policy interview with the New York Times, Trump expressed admiration for only two foreign leaders. The first was Putin, who pulls all the strings in Russia, sends opponents to Siberia (if they are not mysteriously murdered), and is trying to imitate a Russian tsar. "I think Putin and I will get along very well," he told the Times.

The second was Erdogan, who wants to reclaim the past glories of an Ottoman sultan. He has used a failed coup as an excuse to round up tens of thousands of civilians, including anyone who might ever oppose him, behavior that Trump refused to criticize. Even before the coup attempt, the Turkish leader had silenced leading opposition media by using draconian libel laws that bankrupted critical newspapers. Trump has said he would tighten U.S. libel laws if elected (First Amendment be damned).

Third, Trump promotes an America First isolationism that will convince the world that our country is a spent power. He has undercut key alliances with Europe, Japan, and South Korea, which will thrill Russia and China as they try to dominate their neighbors….

We know the Donald already has a long enemies list that includes blacks, Hispanics, the media, and anyone who crosses him. His angry followers, including the racists and crazies who have been mainstreamed by his campaign, would no doubt vent their anger on these traitors.

The one person Trump is unlikely to blame for the security debacle that will follow his election would be himself.

And James Kirchick:

There is an unspoken social contract in democratic politics: candidates should not overtly appeal to citizens’ basest instincts. As citizens in the world’s oldest constitutional democracy, we place a great deal of faith in the judgment of individuals, trusting that they would never willingly elect a tyrant to power. And thankfully, there are multiple, mediating institutions in our system of republican government to prevent a single man or movement from assuming absolute control. But what if a totally unscrupulous demagogue—one with undeniable charisma and mass media appeal—comes along and decides that the unspoken social contract, like every other rule he has ever encountered, does not apply to him?

That is what Donald Trump has done: he has broken the social contract between the American people and their political leaders by banking on the assumption that unvarnished nativism, bigotry, and ignorance will win him the presidency.

Even worse, Trump has been rewarded by purportedly responsible and reasonable people, people whom I once respected and had to watch barking like seals as this madman and would-be tyrant brought them up to their feet again and again with his empty promises of salvific national recovery. When the delegates cheered him, did they think about the time he ridiculed John McCain for being “captured?” For me, like many others, that was the first moment I thought, “It’s over” for Trump. How many insults, stunning professions of ignorance, and outrageous revelations ago was that “gaffe!”

As they rose to hoot and holler, did the Republicans in Cleveland remember, even in the distant recesses of their minds, when he mocked a physically handicapped reporter? Did they recall the many loathsome remarks he made about women, or the praise he offered the Chinese communists for running their tanks over people in Tiananmen Square, or the encouragement he bestowed—just a day prior—upon Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruthless purge? The morning after accepting their nomination, when Trump—citing a supermarket tabloid—once again speculated that Ted Cruz’s father had been involved in the JFK assassination, did they reflect upon what their enabling a plainly demented individual says about their patriotism? Did these latter-day Pontius Pilates, many of whom pridefully advertise themselves as adherents of Judeo-Christian faith, pause a moment to consider what their ancient texts say about the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor, about those who lust for power at the expense of everything else? I hope they did, and that they felt at least a pang of guilt at their participation in this moral obscenity masking itself as an exercise in American democracy.