"Tone It Down?"

     While calls for the opposing candidate to cool down their rhetoric might make sense coming from a peace-and-love candidate -- Eugene McCarthy, say, or George McGovern -- it's a lot less plausible from Donald Trump, who has always campaigned by warning of a forthcoming -- or supposedly ongoing -- apocalypse and recently described Democratic candidate Kamala Harris as "...a Marxist, everybody knows she’s a Marxist," and "she has, destroyed our country with policy that’s insane. Almost policy that you’d say 'they have to hate our country.'"

     That was during the Presidential candidates debate on September 10.  You'll find similar descriptions of her in transcripts of every campaign speech the man has made since she replaced President Joe Biden, and similar dire warnings from the GOP's Vice-Presidential pick.

     The Democrats have often described Mr. Trump as a threat to democracy and freedom; the GOP has claimed that electing Ms. Harris would mean the end of the country.  These are large claims, and per Agenda 47 (Mr. Trump's internally-contradictory plan for action after a possible return to office and not, he has insisted, to be confused with Project 2025), he would certainly attempt a sweeping expansion of Presidential powers, meddle in state governments, and deploy troops against U. S. citizens and other residents.  Conversely, I'm not seeing any such Federal overreach in the Democratic 2024 platform -- except you're not going to like their plans for firearms regulation; but even that is same-old, same-old: universal background checks, red-flag laws and making manufacturers legally liable for the misuse of guns.  It ain't great, but it's all well within existing Federal purview, if they can get laws through Congress for it and if the U. S. Supreme Court lets them stand.  It's not end-of-the-Republic stuff.

     Whatever.  Do your own risk/benefit analysis.  In terms of threats to people standing for office, it doesn't matter.  Red-hot rhetoric doesn't fire up lone-wolf lunatics; and so far,* only lone-wolf lunatics manage to get close enough to try to do harm to Presidents and Presidential candidates.  These are people without coherent ideology, who often form imaginary parasocial relationships with political figures or see themselves as looming large on the stage of history.  Their motivations are murky at best, incomprehensible at worst.

     "Tone it down?"  Not going to happen, not from either side, and anyone who can picture a cool, cerebral Presidential campaign running in the United States has slept through every quadrennial contest in their life, including Bush vs. Dukakis.  It would be hilarious to see the present crop try -- if only the stakes were not so high.
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* With the sole exception of the conspiracy that included John Wilkes Booth's murder of Abraham Lincoln and the wounding of Secretary of State William H. Seward.