You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.
Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.
I don’t think so. Reconstruction ended in the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as a political compromise to settle the disputed 1876 election. Even if the Democratic Party in name didn’t survive, a new party would have formed, doing the exact same thing and that party would have been given the go ahead to implement Jim Crow at that time.