If the democrats lose the election, I fully expect them to roll over and let Trump take power. In that case, Trump would have the institutions on his side, even as he seeks to dismantle those same institutions going forward. Democrats constantly show themselves to be willing to play by the rules, even as Republicans show themselves to be willing to bend those rules.
If he loses the election, I expect there will be an attempt to take power anyways (again), but I think that attempt is likely to fail (again) when he doesn’t have the institutions on his side.
The degree of difference between the two potential outcomes is quite pronounced. You can say “Both sides bad” and you’d be right, but bad vs good is not a binary, it’s a spectrum, and there’s a huge degree of difference in how bad the two sides are.
Their worst sin in my opinion is actually how they split off the end of the Smaug storyline to be resolved in, like, the first five minutes of the third movie (literally before the title) rather than resolving it in the second movie. Huge pacing mistake.