Washington, DC, September 15, 2026 --  

The past decade has seen hard times for democracy. Hope is not lost, but the worst years may be yet to come.

Nearly two years of democratic backsliding have liberal-minded Americans in a desperate mood. American democracy has suffered a brutal anti-immigrant backlash, the weaponization of the Justice Department, a series of betrayals of American allies, and a wholesale abandonment of valuable trade partnerships. Good news is needed more than ever. Could America's midterm elections serve as a much needed turning point?

Odds are good that the Trump-dominated Republican Party will face a real drubbing. High fuel prices, rising inflation, an unpopular war in Iran and years of political overreach have exhausted the electorate and sent President Trump's approval rating falling to 33 percent last week before recovering slightly to 35 percent in a Reuters poll released yesterday.¹ Conventional wisdom is that Republicans will lose the House of Representatives and possibly even the Senate.

While this may slow America's democratic backsliding for the second half of Trump's term, it won't change the broader global trend, where the outlook for democracy remains poor. In Germany, the right-wing AfD party recently won the Saxony-Anhalt state election as Germany's centrist parties continue to stumble. In France, the right-wing National Rally led by populist Marine Le Pen is on the edge of taking power. And in the United Kingdom, the populist Reform UK party, that led the Brexit push, appears unstoppable in its rise to win the next election. These and other illiberal movements bound to erode European democracy in the near future.

These trends make it clear that the decline of democracy has further to go before it reaches its nadir. Many Europeans who wagged their fingers at American as they voted for a man who had incited a mob to attack the Capitol will soon have their own chance at embarrassment.

Prospects in East Asia are similarly gloomy, where democratic Taiwan is struggling to avoid having its way of life crushed by Communist China as happened in Hong Kong in 2020.

Democracy has been on its heels since the 2008 financial crisis sent unemployment and inequality soaring in the rich world. The 2010 Arab Spring protests and the 2013 Ukrainian Maidan uprising were the high water mark of democracy. Those democratic newcomers all suffered violent backlashes. The Arab Spring movements all collapsed in the face of reactionary counter revolution, and Ukraine's fledgling democracy has suffered 12 years of Russian invasion and imposition of martial law.

Democracy's decline was eased by the rise of social media and collapse in readership of traditional fact-based news sources. Politicians offering simple answers and populist platforms were the big winners. Authoritarian leaders Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were well-positioned to exploit liberalism's misfortune, and seized the opportunity to boost their influence at the expense of the rich liberal democracies. Populist and authoritarian movements continue to challenge the liberal establishment throughout the West.

Is liberal democracy doomed? Will it stage a comeback? If so, when?

Those worried about an end to liberal democracy should remember it has faced even darker times before. The rise of fascism before and during the Great Depression saw many European democracies fail either due to coup d'états or outright invasion by fascist Germany as happened to France, Denmark, Norway and Czechoslovakia. Depending on how you count them, only a dozen democracies remained by the time fascism peaked in 1942. That nadir came 20 years after Benito Mussolini became the first fascist dictator in 1922.

A similar yardstick today might measure from Victor Orban's 2010 election victory in Hungary. Or perhaps not until the disastrous year 2016 which saw both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. A similarly long 20-year decline in democracy would continue until 2030 or 2036 before reaching rock bottom.

While this is hardly reassuring, this time will one day pass. And it is important to remember that there is nothing magic about the 20-year length of the last big democratic decline centered around the Great Depression. Perhaps today's democratic slide won't last that long.

In the meantime, liberals must stay the course and try to muddle through until conditions change. For those yearning for a democratic renaissance, rock bottom can't come soon enough. As painful as it is to experience, the only way to go is up.

Notes:

1. USA Today, Trump Sees Approval Rating Reprieve After Weeks of Record Lows, September 14, 2026