The animating concept behind the Trump campaign will be chaos. This is what history shows us fascists do when given the chance to participate in democratic political campaigns: They create chaos. They do it because chaos works to their advantage. They revel in it, because they can see how profoundly chaos unnerves democratic-republicans—everyone, that is, whether liberal or conservative, who believes in the basic idea of a representative government that is built around neutral rules. Fascism exists to pulverize neutral rules.
So they campaign with explicit intention to instill a sense of chaos. And then comes the topper: They have the audacity to insist that the only solution to the chaos—that they themselves have either grossly exaggerated or in some cases created!—is to vote for them: “You see, there is nothing but chaos afoot, and only we can restore order!”
“We live in a Democracy!”
“I need to wait to see who they put forward for me to vote for…”
True only in theory
The DNC (and RNC) both operate as businesses in practice and will put forth oppositions in specific races that are more advantageous for specific donors. These backed members are heavily funded the up winning most the time, despite often being worse candidates.
Recently Tim Burchet was threatened by the RNC to heavily fund an opposition in his next race and he upset the military industrial complex donors attempting to pursue the UAP investigation SCIF.
Also pretty visible in 2016 when Bernie was leading the Democratic primary race until the DNC backed Hilary which massively turned the entire race. You can argue that she would’ve won anyways, which is a fair argument. But the reason it wasn’t close was the DNC backing.
If we can absolve all lobbying then I’ll agree that we live closer to a democracy, but right now we’re very plutocratic.