On July 30, Donald Trump tweeted out the suggestion of delaying the 2020 presidential election.

Many people immediately pointed out how obviously alarming this idea was: how the president lacked the authority to delay an election, how his justification of the dangers of mail-in voting are misleading, how the president even suggesting delaying an election while polls show his re-election becoming more and more precarious is undemocratic and authoritarian. Other Republicans dismissed the idea out of hand. Op-eds denouncing the idea quickly appeared in major news publications.

But for many Americans, the scale of the blowback to the tweet was seen as unnecessary and overblown. The president either didn't mean what he said and was just attempting to raise awareness of issues with mail-in voting. Or he was trolling his own people, just trying to stir a reaction. You know, "owning the libs," and all that.

This shift away from taking the commander in chief's words at face value isn't new. For years now, ideas of the president, some trivial, others much more important, have been received poorly only to be twisted by his supporters into some kind of little joke. It's an effective tool of political spin; if Trump is just being sarcastic, or he doesn't mean the things he says, those reacting to them become melodramatic. Analyzing the constitutionality of a president trying to push back an election, for instance, can be seen as being exactly the type of hysterical 'snowflake' the president was trying to infuriate, rather than someone seriously concerned about an unprecedented move by the American head of state.

And while some on the right may see the president's tendency to alarm his political opponents as funny or cathartic, they've also allowed the president (or any politician) a dangerous way to float ideas that would have been seen as crazy without risk of consequences. Regardless of whether you think he was that serious or not, the fact is that delaying the election is in the public conversation. It's an idea that is now up for debate.

After the initial outrage over the July 30th tweet began to die down, the Trump administration began to delay the election in practice if not officially. As the president has publicly criticized voting by mail, the administration has taken an unusual interest in the department, firing top executives in charge of day-to-day operations in what was described as a 'Friday night massacre.' The administration has claimed that the move is to ensure the USPS is running smoothly, but with the newly appointed postmaster general urging employees to cut back on overtime and altogether decrease service, that's becoming more and more difficult to believe.

These moves don't seem as extreme as I believe they usually would, in part since the idea of delaying the election altogether has already been broached. By refusing to see the president's comments for what they are - dangerous, undemocratic, and unconstitutional - a door has been opened to allow him to quietly achieve those same results (only slightly quieter). As we all bicker about whether or not he means the things he says to begin with.