The Fragility of American Democracy

One Hundred and twenty-six Republican members of the House of Representatives, several Republican senators, and the Republican attorneys general of eighteen states joined in, or backed, Trump’s attempt to get the Supreme Court to overturn the election for no reason other than power-grabbing desire, and a large percentage of other Republicans holding public office have demonstrated that they would be have been willing to join in this enterprise if it had had any chance of success. This turn of events reveals that, although American democracy is for the most part still intact, it remains vulnerable to succumbing to autocratic rule, a calamity that may have been avoided this election cycle only because, as Michael Gerson put it in a Washington Post op-ed yesterday, “Trump combines the ambitions of a despot with the strategic planning and operational competence of a hamster.”