Adam Serwer writes:

As 2022 begins, the risk American democracy faces is not just that Donald Trump supporters will repeat the events of January 6, 2021—attempting to overturn a free and fair election to illegitimately install Trump as president. It is that Trump will win outright, and use his second term in office to further erode popular sovereignty.

During the four years of the Trump presidency, his opponents could draw comfort from the fact that a majority of Americans had rejected him. Trump had lost the popular vote, his party never won the support of the majority of the electorate, and he had prevailed because his political coalition was ideally distributed for the Electoral College. His four years in office coincided with Republicans losing both chambers of Congress and ultimately the White House.

One of the great challenges of the Biden administration was that, in order to seal Trumpism’s fate, it would have to make good on a pledge of widespread prosperity that Trump had promised but never delivered, preferring instead to deliver a windfall to America’s wealthiest while benefiting from a recovery that began to crest as he was taking office. A Joe Biden presidency would have to show that liberal democracy functions better than the Trumpian alternative.

“The former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections. It’s wrong. It’s undemocratic. And frankly it’s un-American,” Biden said this morning during his speech commemorating the anniversary of the riot. But that is not the only way for Trump to return to power, and Biden’s troubles may pave the road for that return. As my colleague David Graham has written, “Those who fret about the fate of American democracy aren’t wrong to do so. They just may be focusing too much on the scenario in which Trump illegally seizes power, and not enough on the possibility of a duly elected second term.” [Continue reading…]