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1. For our December issue, I wrote about a question that has obsessed me of late: What happens when a large section of the population becomes convinced that it cannot continue to win elections, and also that it cannot afford to lose them? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/how-america-ends/600757/
2. Democracies have generally required a healthy, vibrant center-right—confident it can compete in, and win, elections. Partisan coalitions in the United States are constantly reshuffling, realigning along new axes. But sometimes, instead of adapting, the political right hardens.
3. A conservatism defined by ideas can hold its own against progressivism, winning converts to its principles and evolving. A conservatism defined by identity reduces the complex calculus of politics to a simple arithmetic question—and at some point, the numbers no longer add up.
4. Trump may lose, but his defeat would only confirm his supporters’ fear that the demographic tide has turned against them. That fear is the single greatest threat facing American democracy, already battering down precedents, leveling norms, and demolishing guardrails.
5. The excesses of the left bind Trump's supporters more tightly to him, even as the excesses of the right make it harder for the Republican Party to command majority support, validating the fear that the party is passing into eclipse, in a vicious cycle.
6. But—and this is essential—demography is not actually destiny. Center-right parties have succeeded in broadening their coalitions before, and can again. It is not 1860 in America, or even 1850—but the threats to democracy are real and urgent: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/how-america-ends/600757/
7a. Stories like this one are necessarily group efforts. I’m not going to call out colleagues by name on this platform, because the mistakes here are mine alone. But I’m deeply indebted to the editors, fact-checkers, and designers, and to our audience and communications teams.
