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This seems a bit off. "America has had gerrymandering, the Senate, the Electoral College, and the Supreme Court since the beginning, and liberals rarely worried that they were an existential threat to democracy." https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/10/democracy-is-alive-and-well-in-america-without-court-packing-or-new-states/
I mean, in "the beginning," these issues were framed very differently, but still, 18C democrats did explicitly oppose the anti-democratic structures baked into the Constitution.
More to the current point, though, what we now call liberalism developed precisely to do things like reform the Senate to make it more democratic (a progressive success) and oppose the EC (a failure).
In 1970, with 80% public support, according to polling, the House voted 338-70 to amend the Constitution to abolish the EC. The measure was defeated by filibuster in the Senate.
The piece seems to mingle an argument that democracy is doing more or less OK with a fuzzy notion that a) democracy was with us from the beginning and b) everybody was cool with anti-democratic institutions anyway.
Democracy in the modern and progressive sense was not with us from the beginning, putting it mildly. We have the degree of democracy we have because people fought to change systems.
But in the piece, that all gets fuzzed out and blended with an argument regarding the supposed general popularity of certain issues--as if under circumstances where GOP has more seats with fewer votes, the popular will is even clear.
When people say "democracy is under threat," sure, they partly mean that there's a recoil in certain quarters from following the will of the majority. But the democracy under threat isn't *only* about majoritianism.
Minority rule isn't democracy, of course. But part of what's under threat now is hard-won, always provisional progress on, how shall I put this, democracy for minorities, democracy for women. OK, done.
