The United States has experienced serious political upheaval several times before in the last century. The Great Depression caused Americans to question the country’s economic system. World War II and the Cold War created threats from global authoritarian societies. The 1960s and 1970s were marred by assassinations, riots, a failed war and a disgraced president.
These earlier times were in some ways more frightening than anything that has happened in the United States recently. Yet in each of the previous periods of turmoil, the core strength of American democracy has been solidified. The candidates who won the most votes were able to take power and try to solve the country’s problems.
The present time is different. As a result, the United States today finds itself in an unprecedented situation in history. American democracy faces two distinct threats, which together represent the greatest challenge to the ideas of national governance in decades.
The first serious threat: a growing movement within one of the country’s two major parties – the Republican Party – refuses to accept defeat in the elections.
The violent attack of January 6, 2021, on Congress, aimed at blocking the certification of President Biden’s election, was a clear manifestation of this movement, but it has continued since then. Hundreds of Republican elected officials around the country are falsely claiming that the 2020 election was rigged. Some of them are running for statewide offices that will oversee the upcoming elections, which could put them in a position to overturn the elections in 2024 or beyond.
“There is a possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office,” said Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies democracy.
The second threat to democracy is chronic but growing: The power to set government policy continues to be disconnected from public opinion.
The course of recent Supreme Court decisions — sweeping and, by some accounts, unpopular — underscores this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court appears poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades. age. And the council is just one of the ways that policy outcomes are getting less and less close to the will of the majority.
Two of the last four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote. Senators who represent the majority of Americans are often unable to pass bills, in part because of the increased use of the filibuster. Even the House, which is meant to be a branch of the Government that reflects the opinion of many people, does not always do so, because of the way the districts are drawn.
Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die,” said Steven Levitsky: “We are far from the most conservative democracy in the world.”
The causes of the two threats to democracy are complex and debated among scholars.
Enduring threats to democracy often come from the most enduring aspects of American government, some of which are written into the Constitution. But they did not clash with popular opinion to the same degree as in previous decades. Another reason is that states with large populations, whose citizens receive less power due to the Senate and the Electoral College, have increased more than smaller states.
The serious threats to democracy – and the rise of authoritarianism, or at least its acceptance, among many voters – have different causes. In part they reflect frustration at nearly five decades of slowly rising living standards for America’s working and middle class. They also reflect the cultural fear, especially among whites, that the United States is being transformed into a new, multi-racial and non-religious country with changing attitudes about prompt about gender, language and more.
Economic pressure and cultural fear have combined to create a divide in America’s political life, between prosperous, diverse big cities and small towns with common economic, religious and economic problems. The first group is increasingly liberal and democratic, the second is increasingly conservative and Republican.
The political rivalry between the two can be felt by people in both camps, with disagreements on nearly every issue. “When we vote, we vote not just for a set of policies but for what we think makes us Americans and who we are as people,” Lilliana Mason, political scientist and author of “Uncivil Agreement: How? Politics Became Our Identity,” he said. “If our party loses the elections, all these parts of us feel like we are lost.”
This strong disagreement has caused many Americans to question the country’s system of government. In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 69 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans said that democracy is “at risk of collapse.” It is true that these two sides have very different views on the nature of the threat.
Many Democrats share the concerns of historians and scholars of democracy, pointing to the possibility of overturning election results and the breakdown of majority rule. “Equality and democracy are under attack,” President Biden said in a speech this month in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “We don’t do ourselves any favors by pretending to be different.”
Many Republicans have defended their increasingly aggressive tactics by saying they are trying to protect American values. In some cases, these statements are based on lies – about election fraud, “socialism” of Mr. Biden, the place of birth of Barack Obama, and others.
In others, they worry about things that are happening, including illegal immigration and “cultural erasure.” Some on the left now view the prevailing views among conservative and moderate Americans — on abortion, the police, affirmative action, Covid-19 and other issues — as so contradictory that they cannot do not argue. According to many conservatives and other scholars, this intolerance stifles open debate at the heart of the American political system.
Differing views on issues on the left and right can undermine democracy, and are exacerbated by technology.
Conspiracy theories and outright lies have a long history in America, dating back to 18th century mass media attacks. In the mid-20th century, tens of thousands of Americans joined the John Birch Society, a far-right group that claimed Dwight Eisenhower was a secret Communist.
Today, however, lies can spread more easily, through social media and corrupted news. In the 1950s, no major television network spread propaganda about Eisenhower. In recent years, the most watched cable channel in the country, Fox News, has constantly promoted lies about the election results, Mr. Obama’s birthplace and other issues.
These same forces – digital media, cultural change and economic collapse in rich countries – help explain why democracy is also struggling in other parts of the world. Just two decades ago, at the beginning of the 21st century, democracy was the triumphant form of government around the world, with dictatorships retreating from the former Soviet Union, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, South Korea and other places. Today, the global trend continues in the opposite direction.
By the end of the 1990s, 72 countries were democratizing, and only three were growing in power, according to data from V-Dem, a Swedish democracy watchdog. . Last year, only 15 countries grew more democratic, while 33 slipped into authoritarianism.
Some experts remain hopeful that the increasing attention in the United States to the problems of democracy can help prevent the problem of the constitution here. Now, Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election have failed, in part because of the refusal of many Republican officials to participate, and federal and state prosecutors are investigating the actions his. And while the permanent decline of majority rule will not change anytime soon, it is also part of the great struggle in history to create an inclusive American democracy.
However, many experts point out that it is not yet clear how the country will survive a major crisis, such as a rigged election, sometime in the next decade. “This is not politics as usual,” said Carol Anderson, a professor at Emory University and author of the book, “One Person, No Vote,” about voter suppression. “Fear.”
The Will of the Majority
The founders did not create the United States to be a pure democracy. Read also : Philippines in talks to buy US helicopters after dropping deal with Russia.
They distrusted the old idea of direct democracy, in which the people came together to vote on every important issue, and believed that it would not work for a country that growth. They did not consider many citizens of the new country to be citizens who deserved to have a say in political matters, including Natives, enslaved Africans and women. The founders also wanted to prevent the national government from becoming too powerful, as they believed was the case in Britain. And they had the problem of needing to persuade the 13 states to lose their power in the new federal government.
Instead of a direct democracy, the founders created a republic, with elected representatives to make decisions, and a multi-tiered government, where different branches checked each other. The Constitution also established a Senate, where each state had an equal voice, regardless of population.
Pointing to this history, some Republican politicians and toxic activists have argued that the founders were comfortable with limited government. “We are definitely not a democracy,” Senator Mike Lee of Utah wrote.
But historical evidence suggests that the founders believed that the majority — defined as the prevailing view of citizens with rights — should generally dictate national policy, as Claremont McKenna’s George Thomas College and other constitutional scholars explained.
In the Federalist Papers, James Madison equated “the union of the majority of the whole nation” with “justice and the common good.” Alexander Hamilton made similar points, describing a “representative democracy” as “happy, common, and lasting.” It was a powerful idea at the time.
For most of American history, the idea has been there. Even with the presence of the Senate, the Electoral College and the Supreme Court, the political power showed the opinion of the people who had the right to vote. “To say we are a republic and not a democracy ignores the past 250 years of history,” Mr. Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard University, said.
Before 2000, only three candidates had won the presidency while losing the popular vote (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes and Benjamin Harrison), and each served only one term. At the same time, parties that won repeated elections came to power, including the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson’s time, the New Deal Democrats and the Reagan Republicans.
The situation has changed in the 21st century. The Democratic Party is in the midst of a historic winning streak. In seven of the last eight presidential elections, going back to Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, the Democratic nominee has won the popular vote. Over two hundred years of American democracy, no party has been so successful for such a long time.
However the current era is not the era of democracy.
What has changed? Another important point is that, in the past, the parts of the country that gave more power than the Constitution – the sparsely populated, often rural states – voted on such as highways and urban areas.
This similarity meant that the small state bonus in the Senate and Electoral College had only a small effect on the state results. Both Democrats and Republicans benefited, and suffered, from undemocratic parts of the Constitution.
Democrats sometimes won small states like Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming in the mid-20th century. And California was a long-term state: Between the Great Depression and 2000, Democratic and Republican presidential candidates won it about the same number of times. That the Constitution gave advantages to the citizens of small states and disadvantages to the people of California did not strengthen the other party.
In recent decades, Americans have been organizing themselves along ideological lines. Liberals have flocked to large urban areas, concentrated in large states like California, while residents of small towns and rural areas have become more conservative.
This combination – the structure of the Constitution and the regionalization of the country – has created a disconnect between public opinion and election results. It has affected every branch of the federal government: the office of the president, Congress and even the Supreme Court.
In the past, “the system was still anti-democratic, but it didn’t have a partisan effect,” Mr. Levitsky said. “It’s now undemocratic and has a partisan effect. It’s tilting the playing field toward the Republican Party. It’s a new thing in the 21st century.”
In presidential elections, the small-state bias is important, but not the main issue. More subtle – the winner-takes-all version of the Electoral College in most states – is. The candidates never got more credit for capturing the country’s floods. But this feature was not very important, because landslides were rare in larger areas, meaning that fewer votes were “wasted,” as political scientists say.
Today, the Democrats control most of the big states, and they have won many elections. In 2020, Mr. Biden won California by 29 percent; New York with 23 points; and Illinois by 17 points. Four years earlier, Hillary Clinton’s margins were the same.
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This change means that millions of voters in major urban areas have left the Republican Party without having any influence on the presidential results. It is the main reason that both George W. Bush and Mr. Trump were able to win the presidency while losing the popular vote.
“We’re in a very different world today than when the administration was created,” said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California. “The power of exclusion is more obvious and I think it’s more confusing.”
Republicans sometimes point out that the system prevents a few states with large populations from dominating national politics, which is true. But it is also true: the Constitution gives special rights to the citizens of small countries. In presidential elections, many voters in major countries have become historically apathetic.
The Curse of Geographic Sorting
The changing population of the country is likely to have an even greater impact on Congress – especially the Senate – and the Supreme Court than the president. Read also : How the end of Roe could be pivotal in the midterms.
The organization of freedoms in large urban areas and conservative people in many rural areas is just one reason. One is that large countries have grown faster than small countries. In 1790, the largest state (Virginia) had 13 times the population of the smallest (Delaware). Today, California has 68 times the population of Wyoming; 53 times more than Alaska; and at least 20 times more than the other 11.
Together, these trends mean that the Senate has a pro-Republican bias that will persist for the foreseeable future.
How Times reporters report politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times employees can vote, they are not allowed to support or campaign for political candidates or causes. This includes participating in rallies or rallies to support an organization or donate money to, or collect money for, any political candidate or election cause.
The Senate today is split 50-50 between the two parties. But the 50 Democratic senators represent 186 million Americans, while the 50 Republican senators represent 145 million. To win control of the Senate, Democrats need to win more than half of the national vote in Senate elections. .
This situation has led to racial inequality in political representation. The populations of smaller states, given more influence by the Constitution, are disproportionately white, while larger states are home to large Asian American, Black and Latino voters.
In addition, two parts of the country that are disproportionately black or Latino — Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico — have no representation in the Senate. Washington has more people than Vermont or Wyoming, and Puerto Rico has more people than 20 states. As a result, the Senate gives a political voice to white Americans who outnumber them.
The House of Representatives has a balanced system of distribution of political power. It divides the country into 435 districts, each with the same population (currently about 760,000). However, the House districts have two aspects that can make the layout of the room not reflect the views of the country, and both of them have become very important in recent years.
The first is well known: gerrymandering. State legislatures often draw district boundaries and in recent years have become more aggressive about drawing them in partisan ways. For example, in Illinois, the Democrats who control the state government have proven Republican voters in a small number of House districts, allowing many other districts to lean Democratic. In Wisconsin, Republicans did the opposite.
Because Republicans have had a greater influence on fraud than Democrats, the current House map favors Republicans slightly, perhaps by a few seats. At the state level, Republicans have been even bolder. Gerrymandering helped them control the state legislatures of Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio, even though the states are very divided.
However, that is not the only reason why members of the House do not reflect the country’s views in recent years. It may not be much of a reason, according to Jonathan A. Rodden, a political scientist at Stanford University. Sorting by location is.
Mr. Rodden wrote: “Undoubtedly, confusion makes things worse for the Democrats, but their main problem can be summed up in the old real estate formula: location, location, location.” The growing number of Democratic voters in major metro areas means that even a non-partisan system may have difficulty distributing these overwhelmingly Democratic votes across districts in a way that will allow the party to win the election. many.
Instead, Democrats now win more House votes in urban areas in landslides, destroying more votes. In 2020, only 21 Republican House candidates won their primary by at least 50 points. Forty-seven Democrats did.
at least by 50 percent)
Landslide (one candidate won by at least 50 percent)
Looking at where most of these elections took place helps make Mr. Rodden’s case. Flood winners include Representative Diana DeGette in Denver; Representative Jerry Nadler in New York City; Ambassador Jesús García Chicago; Representative Donald Payne Jr. northern New Jersey; and Representative Barbara Lee of Oakland, Calif. None of those districts are in districts where Republicans control the legislative boundaries, meaning they were not the result of Republican races.
Often, redistricting has helped create a growing divide between public opinion and election results, and this divide has shaped the Supreme Court as well. The membership of the council at any given time is determined by the results of presidential and Senate elections in the past few decades. And if the polls were to reflect popular opinion, the Democratic nominee would rule the court.
Every current justice has been elected in one of the past nine elections, and a Democrat has won the popular vote in seven of nine and the presidency in five of nine. However the council is now governed by a majority of six conservative members.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (until 2020)
There are many reasons (including Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision not to resign in 2014 when a Democratic president and Senate could have replaced her). But the increasingly undemocratic nature of the Electoral College and Senate plays an important role.
Mr. Trump was able to appoint three justices despite losing the popular vote. (Mr. Bush is a more complicated case, since he held congressional elections after winning re-election and the popular vote in 2004.) Similarly, if Senate seats were based on number of people, none of Mr. Trump’s nominees — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — were likely confirmed, said Michael J. Klarman, a law professor at Harvard. Senate Republicans also would not have been able to block Mr. Obama from filling the court’s seat during his final year in office.
Even the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991 depended on the makeup of the Senate: The 52 senators who voted to confirm him represented a minority of Americans.
The current court system has widened the divide between public opinion and government policy, as Republican-appointed judges have defeated Congress on some major issues. This list includes voting rights bills and campaign finance bills that previous Congresses had passed in bipartisan legislation. This time, the court handed down rulings on abortion, climate policy and gun laws that seemed at odds with popular, poll-based opinions.
Mr. Klarman said: “Republican judges would not say this and they may not believe it, but everything they have done translates into a direct benefit for The Republican Party.”
In response to the voting rights decision, in 2013, Republican lawmakers in several states passed laws making it harder to vote, especially in heavily Democratic states. They did so citing the need to protect electoral security, although there has been no widespread fraud in recent years.
Currently, the electoral impact of these decisions remains uncertain. Some critics point out that the restrictions have not been severe enough to prevent the influx of people. In the 2020 presidential election, the percentage of eligible Americans who voted reached the highest level in at least a century.
Some experts are still worried that the new rules could end up driving close elections. “When you have one side preparing to say, ‘How do we stop the enemy from voting?’ that’s dangerous to democracy,” Ms. Anderson, the Emory professor, said.
An upcoming Supreme Court case could also allow state legislatures to impose more voting restrictions. The court has agreed to hear a case in which North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers argue that the Constitution gives them the power to oversee elections, not state courts.
In recent years, state courts have played an important role in blocking Republican and Democratic lawmakers who tried to draw gerrymandered districts that benefited one party heavily. If the Supreme Court sides with the North Carolina Legislature, abuses may increase, as laws create new barriers to voting.
Amplifying the Election Lies
If the only challenges to democracy involved this chronic, long-term ongoing power, many scholars would not be more concerned than they are. To see also : Are you planning to fly this summer? Consider these tips to avoid a travel disaster. American democracy has always been flawed, after all.
But the slow-moving ways in which majority rule is undermined come at the same time that the country faces an immediate threat with little precedent. A growing number of Republican officials are questioning the foundation of democracy: That those who lose elections are willing to accept defeat.
The roots of the modern protest movement date back to 2008. When Mr. Obama was running for president and after he won, some of his critics falsely claimed that his victory it was illegal because he was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii. This movement became known as birtherism, and Mr. Trump was one of its supporters. By making statements on Fox News and elsewhere, he helped transform himself from reality television star to political activist.
When he ran for president himself in 2016, Mr. Trump made false claims about voter fraud in the middle of his campaign. In the Republican primary, he accused his closest challenger for the nomination, Senator Ted Cruz, of cheating. In the general election against Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump said he would accept the result as long as he won. In 2020, after Mr. Biden won, election propaganda became Mr. Trump’s main political message.
His acceptance of these lies was in stark contrast to the approach of past leaders of both parties. In the 1960s, Reagan and Barry Goldwater finally divided the conspirators of the John Birch Society. In 2000, Al Gore urged his supporters to accept George W. Bush’s narrow victory, just as Richard Nixon had urged his supporters to do so after he lost to John F. Kennedy for a while in 1960. In 2008, when the Republican candidate was. meeting described Mr. Obama as an Arab, Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate and opponent of Mr. Obama, reprimanded him.
Mr. Trump’s promotion of propaganda, on the other hand, turned them into a central part of the Republican Party’s message. About two-thirds of Republican voters say Mr. Biden did not win the 2020 election fairly, according to the poll. Among Republican candidates running for national office this year, 47 percent refused to accept the 2020 outcome, according to a thirty-eight poll.
Most of the Republican politicians facing Mr. Trump, on the other hand, have lost their jobs or will soon. Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him for his role in the January 6 attack, for example, eight have since decided to withdraw or lose the Republican nomination, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
“By any measure, the Republican Party — the grassroots, the middle and the grass roots — is a party that can only be described as not committed to democracy,” Mr. Levitsky said. He added that he is more concerned about American democracy than when his book with Mr. Ziblatt, “How Democracies Die,” came out in 2018.
Juan José Linz, a political scientist who died in 2013, coined the term “unreliable actors” to describe political officials who typically do not initiate attacks on democratic laws or institutions but also do not try to prevent these attacks. . With their commitment, these unscrupulous actors can make the party, and the country, move to power.
That’s what happened in Europe in the 1930s and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. Recently, it happened in Hungary. Now there are similar signs in the United States.
Often, even Republicans who identify themselves as opposed to Mr. Trump include depressing references to his conspiracy theories in their campaigns, saying they too believe that “election integrity” is a major problem. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Gov. Florida’s Ron DeSantis, for example, has both recently campaigned on behalf of anti-choice voters.
In Congress, Republican leaders have largely stopped short of condemning the violent attack on the Capitol. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republican House, has come to show his support to colleagues – such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia – who have used violent images in public opinion. Ms. Greene, before she was elected to Congress, said she supported the idea of impeaching prominent Democrats.
“When the mainstream parties tolerate these guys, make excuses for them, protect them, that’s when democracy is in trouble,” Mr. Levitsky said. “There have been Marjorie Taylor Greenes. What I pay more attention to is the behavior of Kevin McCarthys.”
The party’s growing acceptance of the election raises the question of what will happen if Mr. Trump or another future presidential candidate tries to repeat his 2016 attempt to overturn the result.
In 11 states this year, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, a position that usually oversees the election process, qualifies as a “candidate,” according to United Action, a research group. In 15 states, the candidate for governor is the candidate, and in 10 states, the candidate is the primary candidate.
The growth of the anti-suffrage movement has created an opportunity that would have seemed unthinkable in the past. It remains unclear whether the winner of the next presidential election will agree or instead try to overturn the result.
‘There Is a Crisis Coming’
There are still many situations in which the United States will avoid a democratic crisis.
In 2024, Mr. Biden could win re-election by a landslide — or a Republican other than Mr. Trump could win by a landslide. Mr. Trump may disappear from politics, and his successors may choose not to accept election propaganda. The time to reject the Republican nomination may prove short.
It is also possible that Mr. Trump or another Republican candidate will try to reverse the imminent attack in 2024 and fail, as happened in 2020. Now, Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, has contradicted Mr. Trump after he ordered him to do so. “get 11,780 votes,” and the Supreme Court also declined to intervene. More broadly, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, recently said that the United States has “very little voter fraud.”
If the Republicans were to try again to overturn the election and fail, the union could begin to collapse.
But many democrats worry that these conditions may be wishful thinking. Mr. Trump’s potential successors are also making or tolerating false allegations of voter fraud. This organization is bigger than one person – and clearly always has been: Another attempt to make voting more difficult, often justified by false claims of widespread fraud. election, which took place before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016.
Believing that the Republicans will not overturn the imminent loss of the president in the coming years seems to depend on ignoring the social status of many Republican politicians. Mr. Mounk of Johns Hopkins said: “The situation in which we do not have a major problem of democracy at the end of the decade.
Ms. Levitsky said, “It is not clear how the crisis will manifest itself, but there is a crisis coming.” He added, “We should be very worried.”
The most promising strategy to avoid a rigged election, many experts say, involves a broad ideological coalition that divides those who reject the vote. But it remains unclear how many Republican politicians would be willing to join such a coalition.
It is also unclear whether politicians and democratic voters are interested in making deals that would help them attract more voters. Many Democrats have embraced a purer form of liberalism in recent years, especially in public affairs. This shift to the left did not prevent the party from winning the popular vote in the presidential election. But it has hurt Democrats outside of the big cities, too, in the General Election and in congressional elections.
If Democrats take control of the White House and Congress – and with more than one vote, as they do in the Senate – they have indicated that they will try to pass legislation to deal with chronic and serious threats to democracy.
Last year the House passed a bill to protect voting rights and prevent gerrymandering. It died in the Senate because it included measures that even moderate Democrats believe are excessive, such as restrictions on voter ID laws, which many other democracies around the world have in place.
The House also passed a bill to decentralize Washington, D.C., which would reduce the Senate’s current bias against urban areas and Black Americans. The United States is currently the longest period without admitting a new country.
Democratic experts have also identified other solutions to the growing divide between public opinion and government policy. Among them is an increase in the number of members of the House of Representatives, which the Constitution allows Congress to do – and which it did regularly until the early 20th century. A larger House can create smaller districts, which can reduce the number of uncompetitive districts.
Some experts favor proposals to limit the power of the Supreme Court, which the Constitution also allows and which previous presidents and the Courts have done.
In the short term, these proposals will generally help the Democratic Party, because current threats to majority rule have benefited the Republican Party greatly. However, over time, the effects of such changes are less clear.
The history of the new states provides this point: In the 1950s, Republicans initially supported making Hawaii a state, because it was seen as leaning toward Republicans, while Democrats said Alaska should be annexed. , again, for reasons of discrimination. Today, Hawaii is a strong Democrat, and Alaska is a strong Republican. Either way, the fact that both are countries has made this country a democracy.
Throughout history, American government has tended to be more democratic, with women’s suffrage, civil rights laws, direct election of senators, and more. Exceptions, such as the post-Reconstruction era, when Black Southerners were disenfranchised, were rare. The current period is particularly interesting because it is one of those exceptions.
“The point is not that American democracy is worse than it was in the past,” Mr. Mounk said. Throughout American history, the marginalization of minority groups, especially African Americans, was much worse than it is now.
“But the nature of the threat is very different from the past,” he said.
The structure of the federal government reflects public opinion more closely than ever before. And the likelihood of a true constitutional crisis – where the correct electoral winner will not take office – is very high. That combination shows that American democracy has never faced such a threat as it is now.
Nick Corasaniti, Max Fisher, Adam Liptak, Jennifer Medina, Jeremy W. Peters and Ian Prasad Philbrick contributed to the report.
