I don't really think it makes sense to talk about "protecting democracy" in a two-party system where one party has fully given up on the idea of democracy and is steadily building out authoritarian rule.
Nor does success at pushing that party out of power while it remains fundamentally anti-democratic magically "restore democracy".
At this point, the goal must be to _create_ democracy in the United States.
@eloquence
Or, recognizing that every nation has been displaced by transnational forces, work to make a new transnational democracy.
The remedy will be no less bitter than the poison, I'm afraid. The kleptokrats that have amassed power over our systems of energy supply, commerce, communications, of governence and of independent press... They didn't do it against our consent.
Not entirely, they did it by operating in the grey-zone of what was permissable. Steadily treading the boundaries of what was possible without completely betraying our collective trust, that is until this last year. It was always a game of chicken against public backlash.
We squandered the inheritance of our great grandparents. They starved in bread lines, were beaten for labor organizing, were fire hosed for protesting obscene cruelties. I've watched that inheritance of civility carried foreword from the great depression evaporate since the 80's. We traded it for global production chains, cheap energy, and the internet.
Undoing the stranglehold of these same oligarchs and sociopaths will mean nothing less than collectively rejecting the convinces they set before us.
Walmart has to die before healthy manufacturing can thrive again. A carbon free energy system will require nothing short of the disenfranchisement of OPEC, Shell and Exon. An end to cheap energy, perhaps for decades if not more. The virtue in making the wise choices isn't measured in convinences garnered, it's measured in the harms avoided in doing so. Wisdom Trump's cleverness. We live in a society that exalts clever.