King 45

The worst case scenario when electing an authoritarian is that they will refuse to ever cede power. 45 has done nothing to allay these fears. He discredits the media and threatens to shutter organizations whose reporting he deems inconvenient. He openly signals that he will pardon his co-conspirators if found of wrong-doing. He asserts the power to self-pardon – essentially claiming the mantle of lawless king. He insists that the Attorney General and Department of Justice act as his personal lawyers who defend his lawlessness and can be sicced, along with the FBI, upon his political opponents – and to legally retaliate against career bureaucrats who refuse his orders and demands of fealty. He calls into question the legitimacy of elections and has already claimed that coming elections have been rigged against him (since he calls the lifelong Republicans investigating him a bunch of Democrats, his twisted non-logic can't be followed to tell whether he means the primary or the general).

Democrats – due to their own shoddiness – lack the authority to check his claim to unchecked, dictatorial powers.

Despite winning the presidency in the 2016 election, 45 still maintains that it was rigged against him simply because of his insecurity over losing the completely meaningless popular vote. He lies about a thing as trivial as his inaugural crowd size.

Even if he loses in 2020, he can simply sue over the election results on whatever spurious grounds, and his Cult will believe him when Dear Leader whines that he was once again treated unfairly by their political enemies in the culture war.

Since the spineless Democrats allowed Republicans to steal Obama-nominee Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat and hand it to Neil Gorsuch, Republicans can once again use the SCOTUS to steal the presidency, as they did in 2000. Even if Democrats were to miraculously flip both chambers of congress by 2020, impeachment requires a two-thirds super-majority in the senate (with VP as the tie-break).

Does anyone seriously believe that Cult 45 would allow elected Republicans to go along with impeaching their own Dear Leader?

By 2020, if 45 has already fired Mueller, and the Beltway was briefly perturbed, but it blew over and no action was taken; already intimidated the media by retaliating against a reporter or two with trumped up charges that, say, Comey’s memos should’ve been classified because national security or something or other…

Democrats are chosen to lose. Bowing down is in their nature. And the corporate media is trained in neutrality and politeness. He said, she said. And war is peace and you’d be happier if you’d just go shopping more.

But, in a twisted bit of fate, it could be the corrupt oligarchs who stand up to the Mad King of the American Empire. They don’t simply fund the political campaigns of their employees in elected office. They also provide lucrative jobs for politicians and their families as lobbyists, board members, consultants and the like for myriad industries and think tanks. The oligarch goes to the politician with an offer he can’t refuse: do what I say, and you’ll always have a job; refuse, and we’ll pull your campaign funds, plus you get frozen out of that lavish network of crony capitalism.

The stock market may not mean much more than a 401(k) to the average worker, but that’s where a bunch of ponzi scheme money is at that the oligarchs shift around to one another on computers. If, say, trade wars or actual wars cause the markets to tumble, those ponzi shares lose their perceived value, that fake money starts to vanish from their digital balance sheets, and wealthy billionaires turn into poor, unfortunate millionaires.

The oligarchs got what they wanted all along in Republicans' corporate tax cuts for the wealthy. While that may have bought 45 some temporary goodwill amongst the oligarchs, his job is effectively done, so he can kick rocks at any time and it’s all the same. Besides, Pence would be more effective at passing the Republican corporate agenda into law, and his policy is far more right-wing than 45 - with the added bonus of backward puritanical fundamentalism (which isn't a big motivator of 45 or most of the actually wealthy oligarchs).