> Consequently, there are two main ways to protect American democracy. The first is to reform the GOP, so that it’s again a conservative, but not authoritarian,

> Consequently, there are two main ways to protect American democracy. The first is to reform the GOP, so that it’s again a conservative, but not authoritarian, party (à la John McCain’s or Mitt Romney’s Republican Party). The second is to perpetually block authoritarian Republicans from wielding power. But to do that, Democrats need to win every election. So to protect democracy, America needs to institute one party rule forever? To save the village we have to destroy it? This "lesser of two evils" mindset is a major reason why the country got into this mess in the first place (and why both parties can get away with terrible candidates and policies). Fortunately the article does offer some excellent proposals for reform later on, but they include: > establishing a nonpartisan national election-management body, ..., and enforcing an upper age limit for Supreme Court justices Trying to make a political body "nonpartisan" is like trying to find a non-biased newspaper, and implementing it at the national level is just a honeypot waiting for the next authoritarian leader to wield it against states that are making genuine efforts to protect their elections. Similarly, I think that setting an upper age limit on judges will have unwanted consequences, and we'd see presidents appointing 15 year olds to serve on the court. The better reform here is to limit them to 30 year terms (although with that in place there may be some merit to also introducing age limits). I'm glad, though, that the article didn't suggest term limits for congress, which would just make politicians more dependent on their parties and donors rather than their reputation and records.