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If one good thing has comeout ofDonald Trumps presidency,it is the increasing clarity about the current state of democracy in American and the countrys drift toward tyranny. The election of Trump wasa kind ofwake-up call for many Americanswho had become complacent or apatheticduring the Barack Obama years, and it generateda widespread sense that something is profoundly wrong with our democracy.

Not surprisingly, some aspectsof our political system have received a lot more attention (and blame) than other aspects.After last Novemberselection, for example,most Democrats were focusedprimarilyon the Electoral College. Thiswasto be expectedafter aRepublican candidate who lost the popular vote was elected presidentby that archaic and undemocraticinstitutionfor the second time in less than two decades.

For the first month or soafter the election, the Electoral College was probablythe most widely discussed issue regardingAmerican democracy. Some liberals even held out unrealistic hopes that the Electoral College would deny Trump the presidency. After that body made Trumps election official in December, attention shiftedto another major story: How the Russianshacked our election and underminedourdemocracy.

That popular phraseis somewhatmisleading, considering that there is no evidence that Russian hackers compromised vote counts or voter data. But there is little doubt that Russia sought to meddle in the 2016 election by hackingand releasing emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign. This scandal has arguably said more, however, about the negligence of the DNC and the Clinton operation thanthe state of American democracy. The hack into Clinton campaign chair John Podestas computer, for example, apparently resulted from an embarrassingtypoby a Clinton aide,whoaccidentallytoldPodestathat a phishing email asking for his password was legitimate rather than illegitimate.

It is unfortunate, then, that the Russian interference asdisturbing as it is has ledmany liberals tosee Russia as the greatest threat to our democracy. According to a recent Pew Research Centersurvey, about 40 percent of Democrats nowbelieve that Russia is the greatest threat to the United States.This is troubling for a number of reasons, particularlybecause it distractsfrom more legitimate (and internal) threats to our democratic process, while giving the false impression thatAmericandemocracy wasin good shapebefore the Russkies came along andhacked our election.

Trumps victoryseemed to open many eyes to the fact that democracy is in trouble but on the other hand, the Russia scandalhas done moreto obscurethis reality than anything else. If anything it has led to the idealization of a deeply flawed and undemocratic political system, while renewing the myth of Americas commitment to democracy.

Of course, it is perhapsmisleading to say that the United States political system is flawed, as it was undemocratic by design. The founding fathers were notoriously waryof democracy, and as white landowning (and slave-owning) elites they deviseda political system that favored white (male) landowning elites. As historian Woody Holton explainsin his 2007 book, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, the Constitution was essentially a responsetotoo muchdemocracy:

The wave of insurrections and threats that swept over the United States during the 1780s and more important, the [tax] relief legislation that the rebels managed to extract from lawmakers and local officials convinced many of the nations more prominent citizens that the time had come to launch a rebellion of their own.

The form of government that resulted from this rebellion was meantto, in the words ofthe Constitutions authors, secure the public good and private rights against the danger of [the majority], and at the same time preserve the spirit and the form of popular government. Deeply distrustful of the masses, the framers agreed that enlightened statesmen were alone fit to govern, and for the first century of the countrysexistence only white male property owners were eligible to vote in most states, andonly members of the House of Representatives were directly elected byvoters (until 1913, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures). The Electoral College isa recurring reminder of this original hostility towarddemocracy.

It is worth remembering these undemocratic origins today, because after more than a century of progress and democratic reforms the country has reversed course in recent decades. Big money has flooded the political arena, voter suppression has been restored across the country, and gerrymandering has grown so extreme that politicians can almost literally choose their constituents (rather than voters choosing their representatives). All of this was made possible under the political system that our democracy-averse founders created more thantwo centuries ago.

Indeed,the most undemocratic branch of government has been responsible for much of this devastation. Over the past decade the Supreme Court has essentially legalized political bribery with rulings like Citizens United and McCutcheon v. FEC, whiledismantling important protectionsimplemented by the Voting Rights Act, resulting in asurge of voter suppressionlaws across the country.

Americas political system was designed to limit the political influence of the majority, which makesthis regression over the past few decadesunsurprising. Butthe framers also crafted a flexibledocument that couldbeaccommodated to times and events, as the first attorney general, Edmund Randolph, put it. As timeprogressed, democratic reforms were introduced andsocial movements transformed the countrysdeeply undemocratic government. What this means, of course, is that the currentdrift toward anoligarchic form of governmentcan be reversed but only when there are popular social movements that demand true democracy, as did popularmovements of the past.

The election of Donald Trump has instilled a new sense of urgency in people to act, and the Trump administration is rightfully seen as an existential threat to our democracy. (The administrations recent formation of a voter fraud commission, led by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, whom the ACLU hascalledthe king of voter suppression, is further proof of this threat.) But a lot of this energyhas been wasted on fruitless and self-indulgentendeavors, such as the quixotic effort to recruit Hamilton electors to refuseTrump the presidencyor callsto impeach the presidentfor his unproven acts oftreason.

In the era of Trump, it is more important than ever to think critically, and to recognize that Donald Trump is not the causeof our ailing democracy, but a symptom of it. Trumps impeachment or resignation, taken in isolation, would do little to reverse our slide intotyranny. As the Russia scandal continues to pick up steam with thelatest bombshellon Donald Trump Jr.s potentially unlawful meetingwith a Russian lawyer,it is worth rememberingthat American billionaire donors and corporate lobbyistsare still a much greater threat to our democracy than Russian hackers.

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American democracy is in big trouble but Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump aren't to blame - Salon