Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times:
The main argument against prosecuting Donald Trump — or investigating him with an eye toward criminal prosecution — is that it will worsen an already volatile fracture in American society between Republicans and Democrats. If, before an indictment, we could contain the forces of political chaos and social dissolution, the argument goes, in the aftermath of such a move we would be at their mercy. American democracy might not survive the stress.
All of this might sound persuasive to a certain risk-averse cast of mind. But it rests on two assumptions that can’t support the weight that’s been put on them. The first is the idea that American politics has, with Trump’s departure from the White House, returned to a kind of normalcy. In this view, a prosecution would be an extreme and irrevocable blow to social peace. But the absence of open conflict is not the same as peace. Voters may have put a relic of the 1990s into the Oval Office, but the status quo of American politics is far from where it was before Trump.
More here.