Apartheid was only dismantled in the U.S. a half-century ago, after all:

We sometimes brag that we are the world’s oldest democracy, and that is true enough in a technical sense. But if you use a more modern definition of democracy, one that includes voting rights for women and minorities as a prerequisite, then we are one of the world’s younger democracies.

“For me, as a democracy scholar, it’s ridiculous to say America is the oldest democracy in the world,” Lindberg said. “The U.S. did not become a democracy until at least after the civil rights movement in the ’60s. In that sense, it’s kind of a new democracy, like Portugal or Spain"….

From this perspective, the Republican Party’s ongoing efforts to silence certain voters and politicize electoral administration are not aberrations from a glittering past of fair and competitive contests. They are reversions to our mean. And that makes them all the likelier to succeed.

“Younger democracies tend to be weaker,” Lindberg said. “It’s much more common that young democracies fail than older ones. If America became so bad that it could no longer be considered a democracy, it would be a return to America’s historical norm: Some liberal rights for some people, but not to the extent that it is a true democracy.”