More from everyone’s favorite book, How Democracies Die:
Despite its purges and threats, however, the administration could not capture the referees. Trump did not replace Comey with a loyalist, largely because such a move was vetoed by key Senate Republicans.
Second time’s the charm, I guess.
During his first week in office, President Trump signed an executive order authorizing federal agencies to withhold funding from "sanctuary cities" that refused to cooperate with the administration's crackdown on undocumented immi-grants. "If we have to," he declared in February 2017, "we'll defund." The plan was reminiscent of the Chávez government's repeated moves to strip opposition-run city governments of their control over local hospitals, police forces, ports, and other infrastructure. Unlike the Venezuelan president, however, President Trump was blocked by the courts.
Same issue here, possibly.
Although President Trump has waged a war of words against the media and other critics, those words have not (yet) led to action. No journalists have been arrested, and no media outlets have altered their coverage due to pressure from the government.
Sorry, 2018 Levitt and Ziblatt. This has happened, seven years later.
Democracy's fate during the remainder of Trump's presidency will depend on several factors. The first is the behavior of Republican leaders. Democratic institutions depend crucially on the willingness of governing parties to defend them-even against their own leaders. The failure of Roosevelt's court-packing scheme and the fall of Nixon were made possible, in part, when key members of the president's own party-Democrats in Roosevelt's case and Republicans in the case of Nixon—decided to stand up and oppose him. More recently, in Poland, the Law and Justice Party government's efforts to dismantle checks and balances suffered a setback when President Andrzej Duda, a Law and Justice Party member, vetoed two bills that would have enabled the government to thoroughly purge and pack the supreme court. In Hungary, by contrast, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán faced little resistance from the governing Fidesz party as he made his authoritarian push.
The relationship between Donald Trump and his party is equally important, especially given the Republicans' control over both houses of Congress. Republican leaders could choose to remain loyal. Active loyalists do not merely support the president but publicly defend even his most controversial moves.
Welp.
This is good news, though:
Another factor affecting the fate of our democracy is public opinion. If would-be authoritarians can't turn to the military or organize large-scale violence, they must find other means of persuading allies to go along and critics to back off or give up.
Public support is a useful tool in this regard. When an elected leader enjoys, say, a 70 percent approval rating, critics jump on the bandwagon, media coverage softens, judges grow more reluctant to rule against the government, and even rival politi-cians, worried that strident opposition will leave them isolated, tend to keep their heads down. By contrast, when the government's approval rating is low, media and opposition grow more brazen, judges become emboldened to stand up to the president, and allies begin to dissent. Fujimori, Chávez, and Erdogan all enjoyed massive popularity when they launched their assault on democratic institutions.
I assumed Fujimori and Erdogan were unpopular just based on how blatantly bad their actions seemed.
We fear that if Trump were to confront a war or terrorist attack, he would exploit this crisis fully-using it to attack political opponents and restrict freedoms Americans take for granted. In our view, this scenario represents the greatest danger facing American democracy today.
Yeah, that would be the nail in the coffin.
A bit of a non-sequitur, but this is a nice bit of history:
Or take another example: In 1901, a routine White House press release was issued on behalf of new president Theodore Roosevelt headlined, "Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee, Alabama, dined with the President last evening." While prominent black political leaders had visited the White House before, a dinner with a leading African American political figure was, as one historian has described it, a violation of "the prevailing social etiquette of white domination." The response was immediate and vicious. One newspaper described it as "the most lamnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any itizen of the United States." Senator William Jennings Bryan ommented, "It is hoped that both of them [Roosevelt and Vashington] will upon reflection, realize the wisdom of abandoning their purpose to wipe out race lines."