Since his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump has posed a serious threat to American democracy. From the start, he refused to commit to accepting election results. As president, he routinely undermined the rule of law. And he eventually tried to illegally hold on to power after losing the 2020 election, going so far as to incite a deadly insurrection that ultimately failed. Now, his recklessness is putting the country’s institutions through yet another dangerous stress test that has many critics worried about the long-term viability of American democracy and the risk of Trump successfully governing like a dictator.
These are certainly valid concerns. Trump’s first month in office has been a relentless assault on government: He is gutting the federal workforce, overtly handing over power to the world’s richest man, and even trying to redefine American citizenship altogether.
Trump’s policies — from pursuing a plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza to launching a mass deportation campaign — are, and will continue to be, harmful. But for those looking for some glimmer of hope, it’s also true that it’s likely too early to be so pessimistic about the prospect of American democracy’s survival.
There are clear signs that American democracy might be able to withstand the authoritarian aspirations of this president. So if you’re looking for some silver linings, here are three reasons why American democracy is more resilient than you might think.
1. The Constitution is extremely difficult to change
When experts evaluate democratic backsliding in the US, they often compare it to other countries experiencing similar declines — places like Hungary, Turkey, or El Salvador. But one key factor that makes American democracy more resilient is that amending the Constitution of the United States is significantly more difficult.
Constitutional reform to consolidate power is a critical step that often precedes democratic collapse. It gives aspiring autocrats a legal mechanism through which they can amass more and more control — something that is unlikely to happen in the United States. Because while Trump is testing the limits of executive power and challenging the courts to stop him, he doesn’t have the capacity or political support necessary to permanently change the Constitution.
In the US, any proposed constitutional amendment would need to be passed by two-thirds of Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states. With the country divided relatively evenly between Democrats and Republicans — and power swinging back and forth between the two parties — it’s hard to see a party have enough of a majority to be able to do this without bipartisan support. Remember that even though Trump won the popular vote, he only won by 1.5 percentage points, hardly a mandate to change the Constitution.
By contrast, many other countries have fewer barriers to constitutional reform. In Turkey, for example, constitutional amendments are easier to pass because they can be put on the ballot in a national referendum if they first pass parliament with three-fifths of the vote.
“When you look at the countries where democracy has broken down, the institutional framework in the United States is so much stronger and so much more entrenched,” said Kurt Weyland, a professor in government at the University of Texas at Austin who focuses on democratization and authoritarian rule. “In my book, I look at [dozens of] governments and I see that seven of those governments really pushed the country into competitive authoritarianism. In five of those cases very early on there was a fundamental transformation of the constitution.”
In Hungary, for example, Viktor Orbán became prime minister in 2010 with a supermajority in parliament that gave him the ability to amend the country’s constitution with ease. As a result, his government removed checks and balances and strengthened Orbán’s grip on the political system.
“If you look at Orbán, he rewrote the constitution and so he rewrote the rules of elections, he rewrote the way the supreme court justices were chosen — the way the whole judiciary was run — and he rewrote the way elections were going to be organized. And so that way was able to control both the judicial branch and the legislative branch,” said Eva Bellin, a professor at Brandeis University’s politics department who focuses on democracy and authoritarianism. “That’s just not possible in America.”
The rigidity of the US Constitution is sometimes a frustrating feature of American democracy, essentially giving the judicial branch an almost-exclusive say in how the Constitution should evolve over time and limiting its ability to respond to the needs of modern society. But in times like these, the fact that it’s so difficult to pass a constitutional amendment is one of the principal safeguards against an authoritarian takeover of American institutions.
2. The Trump presidency has a firm expiration date
One of the core threats to democracy over the past decade has been Trump’s willingness to go to great lengths to win or maintain the presidency — a danger that materialized after he lost the 2020 election and tried to overturn the results, culminating in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. When he was a candidate during Joe Biden’s presidency, there was the prospect of another January 6-style event given his violent rhetoric, constant undermining of the public’s faith in the electoral process, and the loyalist partisans in state and local positions who were willing to block the election results should Trump have lost in 2024.
But now that he won, Trump has no more campaigns to run, and because of that, the threat of Trump trying to manipulate the next election to stay in power is virtually gone. Though he has joked about serving a third term, short of a constitutional amendment — which, for the reasons outlined above, is almost certainly not in the cards — there is no legal avenue for him to do so. Under the 20th Amendment of the Constitution, Trump’s term will end at noon on January 20, 2029, at which point a new president will be sworn in.
(Some might argue that the Supreme Court would favor Trump if he ever tries to challenge term limits, given how partisan the Court is. But that’s a highly unlikely scenario because of how clear the text of the 22nd Amendment is: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”)
The only way to circumvent the scheduled transition of power in 2029 will be for Trump to foment an actual coup. Of course, that’s what he tried to do four years ago, but next time, he would have even less going for him: He wouldn’t be eligible to run, so unlike in 2020, he can’t even claim that the election was rigged. Instead, he would have to convince America’s institutions to fully ignore not just one set of election results but the Constitution altogether.
The fact that Trump is term-limited also creates serious political hurdles for his ability to permanently reshape American democracy.
“People are like, ‘Oh, Trump is more dangerous because he has learned, and he has loyalists, and he has flushed out a whole bunch of people who contained him in his first government,’” said Weyland. “But not only can he not be reelected, but he will be a lame duck, especially after the midterm elections. And virtually every midterm election, the incumbent president loses support in the House.”
Given Republicans’ narrow majority, Democrats have more than a decent shot at winning the House in 2026, which would be a major blow to Trump’s legislative agenda and bring much-needed oversight to the executive branch.
The other factor to consider is that Trump has no natural heir. Some Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have mimicked Trump’s style and seen success at the state level, but struggled to capture Trump’s base at the national level in the 2024 GOP primaries. That could change when Trump is out of the picture, but no one has emerged as the definitive leader of the post-Trump Republican Party.
“One fundamental feature of these populist leaders is that they can’t have anybody [in charge] besides themselves,” Weyland said. So even if Democrats lose the House in 2026, as the 2028 presidential election gets underway and Republicans elect a new standard bearer, Trump’s hold on the GOP may not be as unbreakable as it has been since he became the party’s nominee in 2016. Even if the next GOP presidential nominee is a Trump loyalist — a likely scenario, to be sure — Trump will find himself having less direct influence over, say, members of Congress, who would be looking to their new candidate for guidance.
3. Multiculturalism isn’t going away
The United States has not always been a multiracial democracy. But since the 1960s — and the passage of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts — the United States has been a stronger and much more inclusive democracy than it has been for most of its history. That doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been backlash. To the contrary, gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics have long aimed to diminish the power of Black voters: In 1980, for example, only 5.8 percent of Black voters in Florida were deprived of the right to vote because of a felony conviction, but by 2016, that number was closer to 20 percent.
Still, the path to victory for candidates at the national level requires some effort to build a multiracial coalition. Even though white Americans make up a majority of the electorate, Republicans have to reckon with the fact that some 40 percent of white voters are either Democrat or lean Democrat, which means that they do need at least some Black and Latino voters to win.
So while it is concerning that Trump has made gains with Black and brown voters since his first election win, especially given the overt racism of his campaigns, there’s also a positive twist: Trump’s improvement with nonwhite voters shows Republicans that the party doesn’t have to abandon democracy to stay in power.Republicans have long been locked out of winning the popular vote. Between 1992 and 2020, Republicans lost the popular vote 7 out of 8 times. The lack of popular support gave the GOP two options: respect the rules of democracy and continue losing unless they change course, or make power grabs through minority rule. The party chose the latter, using Republican-led state legislatures and the Supreme Court to enact voter suppression laws.
But Trump’s ability to appeal to more Black and Latino voters resulted in Trump being the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That fact could change Republicans’ calculus when it comes to how they choose to participate in democracy. Trump, in other words, made it clear that they can win by appealing to more Black and brown voters, which means that they have an incentive to actually cater to the electorate rather than reject it and find paths to power without it, as they have previously tried.
“While [gains with Black and Latino voters] enabled Trump to win, I think in the broader sense it’s a good thing for American democracy because it precisely gets them out of that corner of thinking” they’re destined to be an eternal minority, Weyland said. “So that pulls them out of that demographic cul-de-sac and gives them a more democratic option for electoral competition.”
Ultimately, Trump’s improved margins with Black and brown voters is bad for Democrats and their supporters, but the fact that Republicans have diversified their coalition is a good step toward preserving America’s multiracial democracy.
American democracy is elastic, not fragile
American democracy has never been perfect. Even before Trump rose to power, presidents have pushed and pulled institutions and expanded the executive branch’s authority. There have also been other instances where American democracy has been seriously challenged.
In 2000, for example, the presidential election was not decided by making sure that every single vote was counted. Instead, the Supreme Court intervened and along partisan lines stopped vote recounts in Florida, which ultimately handed the presidency to George W. Bush. “Preventing the recount from being completed will inevitably cast a cloud on the legitimacy of the election,” Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the dissent.
That case, like many other moments in this nation’s history, shows that American democracy can bend — that it can stretch and contract — but that its core principles tend to survive even in the aftermath of antidemocratic assaults. The wealthiest Americans, for example, have been amassing more and more political power, making it harder than ever to have an equal playing field in elections. But we still have elections, and while grassroots organizers have an unfair disadvantage, they also have the ability to exert their influence in spite of deep-pocketed donors.
The roots of American democracy aren’t fickle. They’re deep enough to, so far, withstand the kind of democratic backsliding that has led other countries to authoritarianism.
Still, the imbalance of power between the wealthy and the rest of society is a sign of democratic erosion — something that has only escalated since Trump gave Elon Musk, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Republicans in the last election, the ability to overtly influence the White House’s decision-making. Moves like that show why the second Trump presidency remains a threat to democracy.
So while American democracy is resilient, it still requires vigilance. “[I am] persuaded that the institutional foundation of democracy in the United States is pretty solid and that it will survive in the long term — if people mobilize, if people use the tools that are available to them,” Bellin said. “We can’t just sit by twiddling our thumbs, but there are tools available to protect our system and I’m still persuaded by that without question.”
The post Three reasons why American democracy will likely withstand Trump appeared first on Vox.
