Organizers and experts offer both optimistic and pessimistic explanations for Americans’ relative quiescence. Let’s start with pessimism: Some people are burned out. In her book “American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave,” Dana Fisher, a professor at the University of Maryland, described how a series of “moral shocks” propelled people who hadn’t thought of themselves as activists to join protests. But after three years of Trumpism, it takes more to shock people than it used to. “People have grown accustomed to a certain baseline level of outrage,” Fisher told me.

But that’s far from the whole story. Fisher surveyed people at the Women’s March and other demonstrations, and then tracked them afterward, doing follow-up surveys six months before the midterms and two days after. “All of their levels of civic engagement went up,” she said.

Many had called elected officials and attended town halls. Now, she says, much of the Resistance is focused on organizing for presidential candidates, particularly Elizabeth Warren. “One of the reasons we’re seeing less protest is that protest is being seen as the beginning of activism and political involvement rather than being the end,” she said.

So if America isn’t seeing the sort of huge demonstrations roiling other countries, it’s at least in part because those most fiercely opposed to Trump still believe in the power of our democracy to get rid of him. “People actually trust the election to sort it out,” said Chenoweth. “This is something that’s common in democracies — when you start to see a protest wave really pick up, a lot of time that mobilization really gets filtered into the next election.”

But the next election is a year away, and American democracy is in danger now. You can’t count on an election to restrain the president when the president is using the power of his office to subvert the election with foreign interference. Each day, it seems, Trump and those around him become increasingly brazen in their lawbreaking.