You’re asking me to speculate? Well in other countries where it has happened they have claimed that the government was infiltrated by enemies of the state and that they needed to be rooted out and that the elections were controlled by those enemies so those elections must be delayed until they could be assured of fairness. Alternatively, he could push for an alternative interpretation of the 22nd amendment. For example, arguing that he could run in the 2nd position and then the electors could presumably switch them. Lastly, he could attempt to amend the constitution (Putin-style), but unlike in Russia our amendment process is quite difficult so I very much doubt that could work.“what policy changes will allow that?”
And ^^^this^^^ was sort of the point” of my post.
Typically, rights and legal protections are most effectively eroded in a crisis. He could claim the border issue or some deep state conspiracy justifies him to act under his emergency/inherent national security powers. This is all raw speculation and far too premature. Even typing it seems outlandish. But I think COVID taught us that our systems are much more fragile than we ever thought.