Megan McArdle:

“[L]ook closer to home, where much of America’s educated professional class is in a perpetual stew about President Trump’s violations of democratic norms.

Frankly, I’m stewing about them myself — boiling over, really. But I’ve had to reckon with readers who support Trump and are unmoved by my pleas about the sanctity of democratic proceduralism.

To them, all those sacred procedures are the way that insiders rig the game against outsiders such as themselves. Insiders may throw around phrases such as “the rule of law,” but in the end, what constitutes a violation of those rules is decided by a tiny class of judges and politicians, abetted by professional commentators. Like any hometown ref, outsiders say, the insiders call all the close ones in favor of their own class — or, for the ones that aren’t close, the rules can be rewritten on the fly.

It’s hard to deny that the sentiment has a grain of truth. Not when those elites respond to populist insurgencies by questioning the legitimacy of a presidential election conducted under long-standing rules, or by threatening to hold Brexit do-overs until the voters fall in line. Call me naive, but I think that when a populist campaign against self-dealing insiders starts smashing up your politics, the most important thing those insiders can do is not prove them right.”