In an essay for New York Magazine, the US commentator Andrew Sullivan voices an argument about Donald Trump at which other writers have preferred merely to hint.
Trump's rise, he says, exposes US politics as insufficiently elitist. Or, as the headline puts it, 'democracies end when they are too democratic'.
Much of what Sullivan says about the man now confirmed as the Republican candidate will seem familiar. Trump's a neo-fascist demagogue, a racist and an aspiring tyrant. 'In terms of our liberal democracy and constitutional order,' Sullivan argues, 'Trump is an extinction-level event.'
That's why, he says, the Trump ascendancy demonstrates the problem with the US system. Contemporary society has levelled hierarchies so effectively that America lacks the mechanisms to protect itself from Trump-style candidates.
Once, voting itself was restricted. Even when the franchise expanded, viable candidates still came from a small pool containing only those who had demonstrated various sorts of competencies. Now, though, 'that elitist sorting mechanism' has collapsed.
The rise of the internet has, Sullivan argues, 'given everyone a platform' and, as a result: 'We have lost authoritative sources for even a common set of facts. And without such common empirical ground, the emotional component of politics becomes inflamed and reason retreats even further. The more emotive the candidate, the more supporters he or she will get.'
The way thus becomes clear for a Trump, a man, Sullivan says, using crass demagoguery to establish dictatorial power. Hence the essay's conclusion: 'It seems shocking to argue that we need elites in this democratic age — especially with vast inequalities of wealth and elite failures all around us. But we need them precisely to protect this precious democracy from its own destabilising excesses.'
But if the argument's shocking, it's only because of the bluntness with which Sullivan spells it out. The underlying sentiment's been with us ever since the Trump candidature gathered momentum, with repeated calls for him to be somehow excluded from the race.
"What makes these efforts so striking is that they're less motivated by a fear of Trump's politics than by a fear of his supporters."
For a long time, the most oft-touted mechanism involved a so-called 'contested convention', in which, if the Donald failed to achieve a majority of delegates, those gathered at the Republican Convention could award the nomination to someone else — even if Trump was clearly the most popular candidate.
As Vox explains, at a brokered convention, 'the choice would effectively be taken