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October 18 - October 28, 2025
The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.
Two basic norms have preserved America’s checks and balances in ways we have come to take for granted: mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals, and forbearance, or the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives.
The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture. America’s efforts to achieve racial equality as our society grows increasingly diverse have fueled an insidious reaction and intensifying polarization. And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies.
“Sire, forgive my attire. I come from the battlefield.”
Cold
Despite their vast differences, Hitler, Mussolini, and Chávez followed routes to power that share striking similarities. Not only were they all outsiders with a flair for capturing public attention, but each of them rose to power because establishment politicians overlooked the warning signs and either handed over power to them (Hitler and Mussolini) or opened the door for them (Chávez).
The abdication of political responsibility by existing leaders often marks a nation’s first step toward authoritarianism.
Although mass responses to extremist appeals matter, what matters more is whether political elites, and especially parties, serve as filters. Put simply, political parties are democracy’s gatekeepers.
We should worry when a politician 1) rejects, in words or action, the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, or 4) indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media.
Populists tend to deny the legitimacy of established parties, attacking them as undemocratic and even unpatriotic. They tell voters that the existing system is not really a democracy but instead has been hijacked, corrupted, or rigged by the elite. And they promise to bury that elite and return power to “the people.”
The responsibility for filtering out authoritarians lies, rather, with political parties and party leaders: democracy’s gatekeepers.
On the one hand, they sought not a monarch but an elected president—one who conformed to their idea of a republican popular government, reflecting the will of the people. On the other, the founders did not fully trust the people’s ability to judge candidates’ fitness for office.
The Electoral College goes into operation after the people vote, playing no role in determining who seeks the presidency in the first place.
They must, therefore, strike a balance between two roles: a democratic role, in which they choose the candidates that best represent the party’s voters; and what political scientist James Ceaser calls a “filtration” role, in which they screen out those who pose a threat to democracy or are otherwise unfit to hold office.
An overreliance on gatekeeping is, in itself, undemocratic—it can create a world of party bosses who ignore the rank and file and fail to represent the people.
But an overreliance on the “will of the people” can also be dangerous, for it can lead to the election of a demagogue who threatens democracy itself. There is no escape from this tension. There are always trade-offs.
For most of American history, political parties prioritized gatek...
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The other major factor diminishing the power of traditional gatekeepers was the explosion of alternative media, particularly cable news and social media.
Although many factors contributed to Donald Trump’s stunning political success, his rise to the presidency is, in good measure, a story of ineffective gatekeeping. Party gatekeepers failed at three key junctures: the “invisible primary,” the primaries themselves, and the general election.
A “candidate with qualities uniquely tailored to the digital age,” Trump attracted free mainstream coverage by creating controversy.
There is always uncertainty over how a politician with no track record will behave in office, but as we noted earlier, antidemocratic leaders are often identifiable before they come to power.
Trump met this measure when he questioned the legitimacy of the electoral process and made the unprecedented suggestion that he might not accept the results of the 2016 election.
For months, his campaign website declared “Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary from Rigging This Election!” In
And Trump’s words mattered—a lot. A Politico/Morning Consult poll carried out in mid-October found that 41 percent of Americans, and 73 percent of Republicans, believed that the election could be stolen from Trump. In other words, three out of four Republicans were no longer certain that they were living under a democratic system with free elections.
He offered to pay the legal fees of a supporter who sucker-punched and threatened to kill a protester at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
“Get out of here. Get out. Out! This is amazing. So much fun. I love it. I love it. We having a good time? USA, USA, USA! All right, get him out. Try not to hurt him. If you do, I’ll defend you in court. Don’t worry about it …. We had four guys, they jumped on him, they were swinging and swinging. The next day, we got killed in the press—that we were too rough. Give me a break. You know? Right? We don’t want to be too politically correct anymore. Right, folks?”
When gatekeeping institutions fail, mainstream politicians must do everything possible to keep dangerous figures away from the centers of power.
The first is the misguided belief that an authoritarian can be controlled or tamed.
If Trump threatened basic democratic principles, they had to stop him. To do anything else would put democracy at risk, and losing democracy is far worse than losing an election.
This aged poorly
capturing the referees, buying off or enfeebling opponents, and rewriting the rules of the game, elected leaders can establish a decisive—and permanent—advantage over their opponents. Because these measures are carried out piecemeal and with the appearance of legality, the drift into authoritarianism doesn’t always set off alarm bells.
One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion.
Wars and terrorist attacks produce a “rally ’round the flag” effect in which public support for the government increases—often dramatically; in the aftermath of September 11, President Bush saw his approval rating soar from 53 percent to 90 percent—the highest figure ever recorded by Gallup.
In the aftermath of 9/11, 55 percent of surveyed Americans said they believed it was necessary to give up some civil liberties to curb terrorism, up from 29 percent in 1997.
Likewise, the Constitution is virtually silent on the president’s authority to act unilaterally, via decrees or executive orders, and it does not define the limits of executive power during crises. Thus, Huq and Ginsburg recently warned that “the constitutional and legal safeguards of [American] democracy … would prove to be fairly easy to manipulate in the face of a truly antidemocratic leader.”
If the constitution written in Philadelphia in 1787 is not what secured American democracy for so long, then what did? Many factors mattered, including our nation’s immense wealth, a large middle class, and a vibrant civil society.
All successful democracies rely on informal rules that, though not found in the constitution or any laws, are widely known and respected. In the case of American democracy, this has been vital.
But two norms stand out as fundamental to a functioning democracy: mutual toleration and institutional forbearance.
Mutual toleration refers to the idea that as long as our rivals play by constitutional rules, we accept that they have an equal right to exist, compete for power, and govern. We may disagree with, and even strongly dislike, our rivals, but we nevertheless accept them as legitimate. This means recognizing that our political rivals are decent, patriotic, law-abiding citizens—that they love our country and respect the Constitution just as we do. It means that even if we believe our opponents’ ideas to be foolish or wrong-headed, we do not view them as an existential threat. Nor do we treat them
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When norms of mutual toleration are weak, democracy is hard to sustain. If we view our rivals as a dangerous threat, we have much to fear if they are elected. We may decide to employ any means necessary to defeat them—and therein lies a justification for authoritarian measures.
Polarization can destroy democratic norms. When socioeconomic, racial, or religious differences give rise to extreme partisanship, in which societies sort themselves into political camps whose worldviews are not just different but mutually exclusive, toleration becomes harder to sustain.
If deployed casually, constitutional scholar Keith Whittington warns, impeachment can become a “partisan tool for undermining electoral officials and overturning electoral results.”
According to Tea Party activist and radio host Laurie Roth: This was not a shift to the Left like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton. This is a worldview clash. We are seeing a worldview clash in our White House. A man who is a closet secular-type Muslim, but he’s still a Muslim. He’s no Christian. We’re seeing a man who’s a Socialist Communist in the White House, pretending to be an American.
On obama
According to a 2011 Fox News poll, 37 percent of Republicans believed that President Obama was not born in the United States, and 63 percent said they had some doubts about his origins.
In 1960, political scientists asked Americans how they would feel if their child married someone who identified with another political party. Four percent of Democrats and five percent of Republicans reported they would be “displeased.” In 2010, by contrast, 33 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans reported feeling “somewhat or very unhappy” at the prospect of interparty marriage.
Among politically engaged Americans, the numbers are even higher—70 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Republicans say they live in fear of the other party.
Voters are ideologically sorted in Britain, Germany, and Sweden, but in none of these countries do we see the kind of partisan hatred we now see in America.
God this aged poorly
Realignment has gone well beyond liberal versus conservative. The social, ethnic, and cultural bases of partisanship have also changed dramatically, giving rise to parties that represent not just different policy approaches but different communities, cultures, and values.
The nonwhite share of the Democratic vote rose from 7 percent in the 1950s to 44 percent in 2012. Republican voters, by contrast, were still nearly 90 percent white into the 2000s. So as the Democrats have increasingly become a party of ethnic minorities, the Republican Party has remained almost entirely a party of whites.
school prayer, and, later, opposition to gay marriage. White evangelicals—who had leaned Democratic in the 1960s—began to vote Republican. In 2016, 76 percent of white evangelicals identified as Republican. Democratic voters, in turn, grew increasingly secular. The percentage of white Democrats who attended church regularly fell from nearly 50 percent in the 1960s to below 30 percent in the 2000s.
other words, the two parties are now divided over race and religion—two deeply polarizing issues that tend to generate greater intolerance and hostility than traditional policy issues such as taxes and government spending.
This makes more sense
Unlike the Democratic Party, which has grown increasingly diverse in recent decades, the GOP has remained culturally homogeneous. This is significant because the party’s core white Protestant voters are not just any constituency—for nearly two centuries, they comprised the majority of the U.S. electorate and were politically, economically, and culturally dominant in American society.
Helps significantly in elections
