Democrats could not do it. If they had done it, they would be as bad as Trump is now.
You make it sound like "our democracy was never perfect, so obviously we always just had a mad emperor all along"...
It's like, if you built a bridge to carry 10,000 tons because you need it to carry 10,000 tons, and then it turns out it's starting to fall apart under 5,000 tons, it doesn't make sense to me to say that you should just fix it so it securely holds 5,000 tons, or if it breaks just restore it to hold 5,000 tons. You need to rebuild it so it can do what you need it to do.
This is still not a noce analogy because tearing down a bridge is just expensive (and maybe unnecessary). Tearing down a political system isn't something you can "just do". Most people don't seem to want that and as long as that's the case it won't happen.
US citizens still enjoy vastly more rights, protection and political participation than most people in most countries. If you tear the system down, quite likely what you get will be even worse. Gradual change can be for the worse but also for the better, there's ample historical precedent for both. There's still a lot of ways this could go.
Most people, as usual, are apathetic and don't care as long as it doesn't affect them.
For those that do: it seems that that's exactly what they want to do. Hence 2016 pushing a supposed anti-establishment Trump (an obvious mistake, but no one ver said the people made well informed decisions). It's a shame the DNC spent the last 3 elections rejecting such a sentiment.
The irony is that Trump is doing the exact opposite, tearing down those "surface-level" operations without doing anything to improve the foundations ---and in fact causing major cracks in those foundations, thus making it even more necessary to replace them.
America hasn't actually come that far.
A lot of people have decided that what Trump is doing is good. A lot have decided that it is evil. It is not so clear cut.
And I think it's even simpler than that. the only bipartisan point is that both sides are bought out by corporate interests. Many reps are not looking out for their constituents.
> but for good instead of evil
This is rich for the party that lacks morality and supports murdering children, forcing the removal of religion, and forcing acceptance of trans individuals lying about their gender. From my perspective dems are the evil ones.