You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.
Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.
Well you’d need 60; 53 is enough to do a lot but you can’t amend the constitution or override filibusters.
Usually when the army “saves the day” by removing a democratically elected president undemocratically we call that a military coup and it’s considered, to put it lightly, a bad thing.
America isn’t at all volatile as a democracy; as you surmised, it’s on the robust side (sans nonsense like citizens united). However, there’s not much that can be done when the anti-democracy guys won democratically not just the presidency, but also all government posts that would be able to stop them.