What does an America without democracy look like? We’re about to find out.
Whatever you think 2025 will bring, you’re most likely wrong.
If Donald Trump’s first term taught us anything, it was that even preparedness has its limits. Trump’s knack for stoking high-level uncertainty keeps his opponents off-balance while forcing the media into a constant state of catch-up. That puts the president-elect in a uniquely powerful position, even before considering his governing trifecta.
The return of Trump’s always-on, Twitter-driven news cycle might play well, but it’s going to be a nightmare for an American public whose sense of cultural context is already in tatters. A recent Pew Research survey found Americans nearly evenly divided over whether the American dream still exists. Record numbers of Americans now distrust the media, to the point that many people now inhabit realities shaped more by their specific media browsing habits than by actual facts.
Trump’s nine long years of decontextualized rants have played a leading role in destroying public trust in ideas and institutions most Americans once considered fundamental: Fact-based news. Democracy. Free and fair elections. Trump has succeeded enough to know that his toxic model of politics works on a sizable chunk of the American electorate. In his second term, expect Trump to push his personality cult as far as it can go — and for Democrats to once again underestimate their adversary.
Trump will lead a nation very different from the one that booted him from office four years ago. Since then, millions of Americans have told campaign pollsters that they place a personal allegiance to Trump above their belief in the Constitution. The number of people willing to consider alternatives to democracy is at a level last seen during the crises of the 1930s.
Trump knows he speaks for these people, and he’s awarded his base voters’ loyalty with a series of increasingly outlandish and aggressive statements, from a promise to seize Panama and Greenland to his more serious intention to pardon nearly 1,000 federal criminals behind bars for their roles in the violent January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Even more concerning are Trump’s increasingly blatant promises to “suspend” federal law in order to prosecute his political opponents. This is something Trump talks about a lot — he laid out his plans over 100 times during campaign season, and barely an interview passes without Trump venting his rage at political enemies from Liz Cheney to Merrick Garland. Soon, Trump will find himself in the Oval Office with few practical limits on his capacity to seek revenge.
It doesn’t take a political science expert to realize that the America Trump has in mind can’t coexist with democracy— and that Trump’s most committed voters don’t actually want to coexist in a constitutional democracy. Now it seems even more Republicans are getting in line with Trump’s authoritarian ideas. Just one year ago, three in 10 Republican voters told Fox News that they wanted a president “willing to break rules and laws.” Now that number is nearing half of all Republicans.
A Monmouth University poll conducted last month found largely similar results. When asked if they had any concerns about Trump’s repeated pledges to suspend the law in order to jail his political opponents, most Republicans said it didn’t bother them at all.
In fact, the number of Republicans who tell pollsters they would be concerned by Trump suspending or breaking the law has declined every single month since this summer. But the problem isn’t just the MAGA faithful; last month, the Washington Post found that even Trump-leaning independent voters are getting more comfortable with a lawless presidency. Back in June, 68 percent of those voters said they’d be concerned if Trump suspended the law. As of December, that number has fallen to just 55 percent.
The frightening reality of 2025 isn’t that Trump might attempt some end-run around the democratic process. It’s that he may not need to. Both the MAGA faithful and Trump-leaning independents are still racing rightward in terms of what they’ll excuse from a Trump administration. If Democrats think they can rely on the same anti-Trump messaging that carried them in 2020, they are catastrophically wrong. That audience is gone, and it isn’t coming back. Democrats are quoting laws to people carrying swords.
The grim reality is that too many Americans are skeptical about and alienated from our democracy, and they are willing to entertain some pretty extreme authoritarian “reforms” as an outlet for that skepticism. They are exhausted by news and suspicious of the other side. These are the Americans who will decide how much Trump reshapes our government over the next four years.
Right now, only one side is reaching them. That’s bad news for democracy.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.
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