Sanders says Trump reelection would be the ‘end of democracy’

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Sanders says Trump reelection would be the ‘end of democracy’
thehill.com

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the reelection of former President Trump would be the “end of democracy” in an interview released Saturday by The Guardian.

“It will be the end of democracy, functional democracy,” Sanders said in the interview.

The Vermont senator also said in the interview that he thinks that another round of Trump as the president will be a lot more extreme than the first.

“He’s made that clear,” Sanders said. “There’s a lot of personal bitterness, he’s a bitter man, having gone through four indictments, humiliated, he’s going to take it out on his enemies. We’ve got to explain to the American people what that means to them — what the collapse of American democracy will mean to all of us.”

Sanders’s words echo those President Biden made in a recent campaign speech during which he said that Trump’s return to the presidency would risk American democracy. The president highlighted the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol in an attempt to cement a point about Trump and other Republicans espousing a kind of extremism that was seen by the world on that day.

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That already happened in 2010 with Citizens United, and the late Justice John Paul Stevens' dissent nailed it:

"A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold."

I would've added,

"If money didn't influence elections, why are people spending so much on them?"

That's one part of it. This is a good read: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america-is-not-a-democracy/550931/

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

The worst part about all of this is, imo, we've known what the problems are for so long now, but nothing is getting fixed and the rot is apparent. I grew up in America, but seeing what it is becoming from the outside is heartbreaking.

Factionalization and internal party consensus would be a precursor as well.