Will Trump try to end democracy? Yes — but these scholars claim he can't pull it off

David Gergen : A second Trump term would almost certainly be much worse than the first .

He says the authors of a book " The Dictator's Handbook " reassured him that the U.S. is a mature democracy.

Gergen says a second term would be worse than a first term.

He asks: Are they still hopeful, or do they now believe that Trump could destroy our democracy?.

Author: Trump 's efforts to seize and hold power “will fail” for the same reason that public pressure during the 1960s ended the Jim Crow laws and ended legal segregation.

Author: " Trump 2.0 will likely be so disastrous that Trump will lose some of his base. They might still support his policies, but they will be so negatively impacted by the broader decline of our country that they’ll turn against the man they voted for".

Julian Zelizer : If a leader wants to stay in power, he or she will have to keep an ever-larger number of people happy.

He says the number of autocratic countries has declined over the past century and a half while democratic countries have risen.

Zelizer says the average person is overall better off in a highly democratized state than even the most privileged cronies in a dictatorship.