A NY Times analysis, straight from an antebellum headline:
American democracy faces many challenges: New limits on voting rights. The corrosive effect of misinformation. The rise of domestic terrorism. Foreign interference in elections. Efforts to subvert the peaceful transition of power. And making matters worse on all of these issues is a fundamental truth: The two political parties see the other as an enemy.
In 1848, the Mexican-American War ended — "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation," said Ulysses Grant — and Mexicans living in conquered U.S. territories were granted citizenship. Nativist intimidation of America's new citizens severely restricted their voting rights, however. In the following decade, the South's corrosive misinformation about the North's intentions toward the "peculiar institution" of slavery far outpaced today's GOP's claim of a Jan. 6 antifa insurrection. In the second year of the next decade, an unprecedented act of domestic terrorism — the assault on a federal encampment — ensued. Abraham Lincoln's transition to power was anything but "peaceful." The United Kingdom, especially, meddled in America's politics. And making matters worse on all of these issues was a fundamental truth: Our two political parties transcended merely seeing each other as an enemy; they were enemies.
Today, how many of us believe that the citizens of 11 or so states will unite in a fresh, independent confederacy against the Union, don grey uniforms, take up arms and begin bombing federal outposts?
The existing threat to our democracy "has a name," writes Nate Cohn in the NYT analysis: sectarianism. And it's undeniable that "a growing number of eminent political scientists contend that political sectarianism is on the rise in America," which "re-centers the threat to American democracy on the dangers of a hostile and divided citizenry."
As we sit around the evening campfire, there then emerges the spookiest of ghost stories: This threat becomes, or could become, "the story of Putin’s Russia, Chavez’s Venezuela and even Hitler’s Germany," warns Cohn & Co.
Bitte, Herren und Damen of politically scientific scholarship: The day we become Hitler's Germany or Chavez's Venezuela is the day I'll become a monthly subscriber to People Magazine.
A January CBS News poll, reports Cohn, found that "a majority of Americans said that other Americans were the greatest threat to America." As it has always been. Even as 20th-century world fascism encroached on peaceful, democratic or semi-democratic societies, in the United States the greatest threat was not fascism itself, but American Firsters who wished to deny or ignore the external threat. Had President Roosevelt not progressively persuaded most Americans to (principally) finance the war against global fascism, Britain, EuroAsia and the Pacific would have collapsed in the face of its brutal aggressions.
The declining threat to our democracy is enwrapped in a self-selecting element of approaching, political irrelevance: "Sectarianism has been so powerful among Republicans in part because they believe they’re at risk of being consigned to minority status…; conservatives fear that demographic changes promise to further erode their support." They are not wrong. Such changes are unstoppable — and those who presently call themselves conservatives must, tomorrow and the days after, either go with the changes or recede into imperceptible obscurity.
"In December," continues Cohn, "Rush Limbaugh said he thought conservatives were 'trending toward secession,' as there cannot be a 'peaceful coexistence' between liberals and conservatives. One-third of Republicans say they would support secession in a recent poll, along with one-fifth of Democrats" — presumably, those Dems who'd be delighted were Republican states to secede.
Furthermore, "one-third of Americans believe that violence could be justified to achieve political objectives." Does that statistic shock me? Damn right it does. One-hundred percent of Americans should believe that violence could be justified to achieve political objectives; e.g., whenever the day arrives that dead Hugo Chavez's Venezuelan army invades the United States.
Mr. Cohn finishes on something on an up-note: "Whatever risk of imminent and widespread violence might have existed in January appears to have passed for now…. [Joe Biden's] nomination and election demonstrates that sectarianism, while on the rise, may still have limits in America: The median voter prefers bipartisanship and a de-escalation of political conflict, creating an incentive to run nonsectarian campaigns."
Given many states' closed primaries and Republican State Legislatures Gone Wild in gerrymandering, median voters' preferences are suppressed, for sure. And yet, especially in the field of redistricting, voters are beginning to demand that nonpartisan commissions draw congressional lines, not parties. As for closed primaries, their candidates' resultant extremism shall someday burn itself out — because median voters are having their fill of competing one-upmanship.
Cohn's final finish: "Sectarianism … can last for decades or even centuries after the initial cause for hostility has passed." See: antebellum headlines — the likes of which in any vibrant democracy will always be with us, though not in the form of 620,000 civil war deaths (some estimates range as high as 850,000), which in today's population would equal about 6 million.