The Institutions of American Democracy are Hanging by a Thread

Trump has brought the United States further down the path of democratic backsliding than many realize. The election is the only barrier left.

If Donald Trump wins the 2024 election and becomes president again, American democracy is done. That may sound dramatic, but that’s because we’re living through a historical moment, and I don’t see any benefit in sugarcoating it.

The U.S. won’t cross into authoritarianism all at once, and won’t feature a dramatic seizure of power, like Mussolini’s March on Rome. It’ll happen via democratic backsliding, where a leader who gains power by election abuses it in office—corrupting law enforcement, degrading checks and balances, and ensuring that future elections are not free or fair.

In the 21st century, we’ve seen versions of this happen in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, India, Israel, and Peru. And to some extent Russia, though it started from a lower baseline. Brazil is at risk, with a scare in 2022. The American South experienced democratic backsliding with the failure of Reconstruction and imposition of Jim Crow. “It can’t happen here” is naive.

Some look to Trump’s presidency, see that America didn’t become a dictatorship, and think concerns he’ll break democracy are overblown. But that has it backwards. It’s because Trump was president that the threat is so great.

With democratic backsliding, the first term often starts out slow, as the would-be authoritarian is unsure what they can get away with. They take office atop a professional civil service, and appoint establishment figures to add credibility. As their law-indifferent desires get frustrated, they push through barriers, sidelining rule-followers and empowering personal loyalists.

They don’t have to be good at this for it to work. As Hannah Arendt argued, incompetence hollows out institutions by getting competent people to quit—out of frustration, morality, etc.—thereby opening up more spots for loyalists.

Similarly, breaking through barriers that separate democracy from authoritarianism doesn’t need to be strategic, and often isn’t. Act on impulse until you meet resistance, then stubbornly keep pushing without concern for established norms.

Second terms, when democratic backsliders get the validation of election after showing their true colors, are usually when things break.

That’s what will happen if Trump regains national power. He’s already fought nine battles against the institutions upholding Constitutional democracy, winning seven. The only barrier remaining is re-election.

1–Executive branch internal checks

The first restrictions Trump fought were executive branch internal rules, as he resisted the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election. It was the easiest barrier to overcome, since the president appoints and fires top federal officials. Trump appointed a new Attorney General, William Barr, in February 2019, shortly after Democrats gained control of the House in the 2018 midterms. Barr misled the public about special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings, and stifled further investigation.    

Later that year, Trump secretly blocked Congressionally-authorized military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to extort Ukraine’s President Zelensky into manufacturing accusations against Joe and Hunter Biden. But an executive branch whistleblower brought it to the attention of…

2–Congressional oversight

Trump’s first impeachment was for an action similar to Watergate, abusing national security authority to give himself a leg up in reelection. The Democratic House impeached, but the Republican Senate didn’t convict.

In the aftermath, Trump further weakened the executive branch’s internal checks, firing staff connected to the impeachment, and later removing inspectors general—the internal watchdogs installed in post-Watergate reforms—from Transportation, Health and Human Services, State, Intelligence, and Defense.

Demonstrating and increasing the power of loyalists, Attorney General Barr further corrupted the Justice Department, intervening to give Trump associate Roger Stone special treatment. Barr also traveled to Italy and the U.K. to pressure officials to validate Trump-sympathetic conspiracy theories.

But in the end, Trump couldn’t overcome…

3–Reelection (fail)

This one proved too great. Trump lost, and by too many states to throw the results into chaos. He presumably hoped to win outright, but likely planned on the whole thing coming down to Pennsylvania. 

Trump focused his pre-election lies about fraud on Philadelphia, and prepared to exploit the state’s expected vote counting “red mirage.” More COVID-conscious Democrats had voted remotely, and Pennsylvania counted Trump-leaning Election Day voters first, giving Trump a false narrative that he was “winning” before something happened. But with Biden winning swing states Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan, Team Trump couldn’t steal it.

Even so, they tore down the barrier of… 

4–Post election norms

Many losing candidates have complained. Some have challenged results in court. But all before Trump officially conceded. Hillary Clinton gave a concession speech the morning after networks called the 2016 election for Trump. Al Gore conceded after the Supreme Court ruled on Florida recounts in 2000, and as vice president, Gore presided as the Senate certified his loss.

Every previous outgoing president peacefully transitioned power to the president-elect, including ones who lost reelection, such as Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Barack Obama hosted Trump at the White House and began the transition shortly after Hillary conceded.

By contrast, Trump lied incessantly about his loss and desperately tried to overturn it. He also took the unprecedented step of changing executive branch personnel after losing reelection, replacing some top civilian officials at the Pentagon with loyalist hacks.

It’s easy to underrate norm violations. But unprecedented actions make the unthinkable thinkable, and after-the-fact defenses acculturate partisans to support what they previously would’ve shunned. Unprecedented actions such as… 

5–Coup attempt (fail)

Trump pursued recounts, audits, and lawsuits in bad faith, based on lies, but those methods are legal, and they confirmed Biden’s win. When legitimate means didn’t get Trump the answer he wanted, he turned to illegitimate ones.

Trump’s attempted autogolpe—or “self-coup,” where a leader who gained power legally acts to stay in power after the law requires him to leave—had three main prongs. He tried to get state officials to overrule their voters, and while some signed their name to fraudulent Electoral College documents, enough followed the law instead. He tried to get the Justice Department to lie that it found evidence of fraud, but so many top officials threatened to resign and go public that he backed off.

With those barriers damaged but holding, Trump tried to get Congressional Republicans and Vice President Mike Pence to reject state-certified Electoral College votes, and rallied his supporters to Washington, DC on January 6, 2021 to pressure them. And that caused… 

6–Political violence

The Jan. 6 attack, a mix of preplanned sedition and protest-turned-riot, marks the first non-peaceful transfer of power in modern U.S. history. Though the attack didn’t get Pence to extend the coup—nor hang him—it did show that militias, conspiracy theorists, and hardcore supporters will commit mass violence in Trump’s name.

Jan. 6 left no doubt that America faces an anti-democracy movement. It has violent components, one sending an increasing number of threats to public officials, from election administrators all the way up to…

7–Congress

Surviving impeachment for his Ukraine extortion scheme showed Trump that Congress is weak. Surviving the second one showed him it’s toothless.

Conviction requires two thirds of the Senate, and enough Republican Senators put Trump above the Constitution that they voted against holding him accountable for the insurrection he incited against their own institution.

Explaining his vote against conviction, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump was responsible for Jan. 6, but the matter should be handled by the courts, which left Trump free to reassert control of…

8–The Republican Party

Republicans could have moved on from Trump after his coup failed. They rallied to its defense instead, pushing out Rep. Liz Cheney and others who treated Jan. 6 as bad. GOP primary voters could have picked culture warrior Ron DeSantis or Reaganite conservative Nikki Haley, but overwhelmingly backed Trump. He is what they want.

The party apparatus is now fully committed to Trump’s authoritarian project. They have think tank-crafted plans, such as “Project 2025,” which would end the professional civil service and stock the government full of loyalists.

Prominent Republicans refuse to say they’ll accept the results of the election, aping Trump’s BS that he wins or it’s fraud. Trump’s people have installed his daughter-in-law Lara as RNC chair, and a lot of party fundraising goes to help Trump fight…

9–The legal system

America’s criminal justice system has responded well to the Jan. 6 attack itself, convicting leaders of the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys of seditious conspiracy. But the courts are proving incapable of containing Trump’s threat to democracy.

Lawsuits arguing that Trump is barred from seeking office under the 14th Amendment’s prohibitions on insurrectionists convinced courts in Colorado, and won support from renown conservative jurists such as J. Michael Luttig, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Among the Court’s rationales was the lack of a Senate conviction in Trump’s second impeachment.

Law enforcement acted, rather than preemptively surrender, but its calendar is slower than politics’. Trump faces four criminal prosecutions, and only the one in New York for fraud to hide hush money will get a verdict before the election.

With anyone else, paying porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an affair would be one of the biggest scandals in presidential history. It looks trivial only compared to Trump’s other crimes.

Trump conspired to defraud Georgia out of its 2020 presidential vote. But D.A. Fani Willis’s sprawling RICO case would never have finished this year, and got sidetracked by reviews of potential conflicts of interest involving her romantic relationship with a prosecutor she hired.

Trump conspired to defraud the United States out of its presidential election results. But special counsel Jack Smith’s case has been delayed by three layers of federal court weighing in on questions of presidential immunity.

After leaving office, Trump stole, retained, and exposed high level national security secrets. But District Judge Aileen Cannon has acted more like Trump’s defense lawyer than an impartial jurist, and thrown up so many delays that it’s unlikely a trial even starts this year.

Lawyers can argue over how well each of these decisions fits the letter of the law. And one shouldn’t expect the legal system to follow an electoral timeline. Nevertheless, Trump’s successful strategy of delay has broken through the legal barrier enough to give him a chance to win executive power, pardon Jan. 6 seditionists, and shut down the cases against himself before they conclude.

Therefore, it all comes down to…    

10–Reelection

This is the final barrier. He’s through everything else.

If Trump loses in November, he’ll lie about the results and try to overturn them. Some state and local Republican officials might mess with vote counting and reporting, or declare that state legislatures, not voters, pick presidents. Some of Trump’s followers will probably get violent.

But the system can contain that. The government won’t be as surprised this time, and federal agencies won’t be taking orders from Trump. Congress reformed the Electoral Count Act, closing the loophole Trump tried to exploit on Jan. 6, and voters stopped many Republican election deniers in the 2022 midterms, keeping anti-democracy liars from taking over state election administration. Pro-democracy forces everywhere will be reinvigorated if Trump loses.

But if he wins, if the American people see him do all this and elect him anyway, the final barrier breaks, and Trump will sweep away any remaining parts of the others. No previously enacted restrictions will matter. With newly empowered Trumpist forces unbound by rule of law or concern about losing reelection, things could get very dark. 

American institutions contained the threat for a full presidential term, but it left them hanging by a thread. If Trump and his anti-democracy movement get institutional power, they won’t give it up, and no brilliant plan, no degree of rightness, no passionate resistance will be able to stop them.

You can say that’s unfair, it shouldn’t have gotten this far, the American people rejected it in 2020, institutions should’ve done the rest, and the fact that they didn’t is a sign of serious problems. And you’d be right. But that won’t change what the United States faces in November.

The 2024 presidential election is an up-or-down vote on Constitutional democracy.