Months in, Trump’s war on Iran has netted him none of the goals he proclaimed when he began dropping bombs. Iran still has a dictatorship, enriched uranium, plenty of missiles and drones, and effective control of the now closed Strait of Hormuz. Military observers repeatedly tell the press that for Trump to seize control of the Strait and Iran’s uranium would require a U.S. military invasion, “boots on the ground.” So, what’s stopping him? Obviously, it’s not the Constitution, which gives the power to declare war to Congress, not the President. And it’s not the Republican controlled Congress, who are too spineless to check Trump’s actions. So, again, what’s stopping Trump? Law and rules mean nothing to him. Maybe Trump has given the answer himself: “My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Maybe what’s on Trump’s mind is a wary and discontented public. A recent Ipsos poll found that more than 2/3 of Americans oppose his war. The war is not an abstraction. It’s hitting Americans where it hurts the most – in their pocketbooks. A recent NBC news report claimed that the war has cost U.S. households more than $1,200 each thanks to the rising prices of gas and groceries. The war is so unpopular that even 20% of MAGA voters oppose it, according to POLITICO. Trump’s overall approval numbers are in free fall. The Economist reports that as of a few days ago, Trump’s net approval has dropped a whopping 23 points since his reelection. Sixty percent of Americans disapprove of his performance. So far that public disapproval hasn’t changed his course of action on much of anything. But if Trump were to authorize a ground invasion of Iran public opinion may quickly turn into an active bi-partisan movement in the streets to end Trump’s war, and effectively, his presidency.

Trump may well be mindful of a lot of history here. Since the end of World War II, a series of failed wars has brought down presidents. Korea ended Harry Truman’s presidency just as Vietnam killed the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan’s Iran Contra debacle brought him to the precipice of impeachment. Trump grew up watching presidencies get chewed up in American military failures. He is old enough to remember how young people fought to end a war in Vietnam that he avoided with “bone spurs.” He knows that Richard Nixon’s impatience with that protest helped to bring on the Watergate scandal that ended his presidency. He knows equally well that the futility of America’s interminable bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq badly deflated George W. Bush’s presidential power and made him a candidate for worst president in American history. Trump knows that more is at stake here than Republican control of Congress. Viscerally, he senses that the fate of his personal power, which is to say, his very idea of himself as America’s monarch, as King Donald, hinges on popular docility. In June, he lamented to Fox News that he doubted that “America has the stomach” for the ground level war required to achieve his objectives.

The idea of “boots on the ground” is the bloody red line of democracy that even King Donald fears to cross. There is an important lesson here. Much has been justifiably written about Trump’s violation of informal democratic norms and constitutional rules. He has in countless ways tossed the institutions of procedural democracy into the garbage heap of his presidency. But it is important to remember that democracy is not only about norms and procedures. It is about ordinary people working in concert not only to voice but to affirm and take direct action. Millions have already done so in thousands of No Kings demonstrations. But those protests, as important as they have been, only hint at the democratic fury and power that Trump would unleash in a ground invasion of Iran. Democracy is not just a matter of procedures, institutions and norms. At the heart of authentic democracy is what economist Mehrdad Vahabi calls the people’s “scream power.” Democratic “scream power” ended the rule of earlier war presidents. King Donald, we think, grasps this elemental fact. Democracy scares him. This is no time to let up the pressure.

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