It is fair to say that the one thing we have learned over the past two years is that we need more democracy, not less. For all the hysteria after Donald Trump’s election that populism was taking over — that we needed technocrats to defend us because Trump would subvert our core institutions — something like the opposite has taken place.

Trump has made his most lasting marks (tax cuts, right-wing judicial appointments, immigration restrictions) through the nation’s institutions, not against them. And he has made his moves not just through any institutions but the country’s most undemocratic ones — the Electoral College, the courts, the Senate, by executive decree. We do not need to save democracy from the people, we need more democracy.

In the United States, the Left can only dream of eliminating the Senate or the Supreme Court; even getting rid of the Electoral College looks improbable in any foreseeable future. But the sudden casting off of an equally undemocratic institutional regime is on the agenda elsewhere.