threats to democracy. the final chapter of their book is titled, saving democracy. it feels more relevant now than ever. joining us now is daniel zip, lot harvard perez s or, political scientist. and one of the aforementioned of the authors of the book. thank you so much for being here. greatly appreciate your time. your book ends with several steps to avert the collapse of democracy. i have to know, as i did, it was written in 2018. given what we have seen in the intervening years, since that book came out, is it too late to take the steps that you outlined? thank you for having me. it s not too late, but i do have to say, when we wrote the book, we were very nervous. we were worried that donald trump showed all one of the things is really change over the last couple years, that we ve gone to realize, the problem is not about a single leader.
actually attended trump s rally. ten. the january six insurrection was proof, to many americans, of just how fragile our democracy is. with each day since then, the same forces who stormed the capitol, and stoked that insurrection, have been laying the groundwork to deliver the coup de grâce to that fragile system. while efforts to protect democracy are stymied in congress by moderate, iconoclasts, who may not be in denial about the outcomes of elections, but certainly seemed to be in denial about the seriousness and urgency of our current crisis. that begs the question, what do we do about it? harvard political scientist, stephen levitskiy, and daniel is a plot, are two of the country s foremost experts on democracies. and the forces that can either keep them alive, or quite frankly, break them. back in 2018, when the nation was just entering the second year of the trump