Arthur D. Hlavaty

Trump is not Nixon or Goldwater; he represents something the likes of which America has not seen since Huey Long: an authoritarian insurgency. That someone like him could win the nomination of one of the two major parties should set off alarm bells all across the country, for it shows that a substantial part of the electorate has lost faith in democracy.

If Hillary Clinton wins in November, she and the Democratic Party will have four years to undo forty years worth of damage that conservative policies have wrought on America. She will face the same obstructionists in Congress that have hamstrung President Obama for the past seven and a half years. If she fails, another authoritarian challenge will arise in 2020 backed by an even larger share of the electorate.

No political philosophy or constitutional order has any more weight than the confidence people have in it. We could be looking at the demise of democracy in America.