Democracy in America: An Introduction

Democracy in America: what is it? Whatever it is, we know that it is under siege. Barely a moment goes by these days without tocsins sounding about various threats to “our democracy” (I’ll come back to that plural possessive below). It used to be that the biggest, baddest threat to “our democracy” was Donald Trump (I’ll come back to that, too). Then a curious thing happened. Trump still gets prominent billing, ex officio, as it were, but when it comes to “threats to our democracy,” he seems to have been overshadowed somewhat by a curious new threat: the Constitution.