Behind the Threats to "Our Democracy™"

How can you tell that something is "undemocratic"? When it slows down Democrats.

Much is being made in the current national discourse about threats to Our Democracy™.  These supposed threats include “mis- and disinformation,” voter ID laws, and even constitutionally mandated institutions such as the electoral college, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. Supreme Court.  The latter three examples were, of course, designed specifically to be undemocratic: indeed, that is a chief virtue of those constitutional institutions.  It also is not sufficient in defending Our Democracy™ to rail against our “undemocratic” institutions; rather, the left now characterizes even those instances where democracy works as intended as undemocratic. 

An especially droll example was the left’s reaction to Liz Cheney’s loss in the 2022 Wyoming Republican primary by one of the largest margins in congressional primary history.  Cheney took only 27% of the vote, despite outspending her opponent Harriet Hageman several times over.  But leftist commentators were clutching their pearls: Cheney’s resounding primary defeat in what was widely accounted as a free and fair election was nevertheless considered profoundly undemocratic, as Cheney had been the most prominent Republican critic of Donald Trump in the House of Representatives.  Cheney, the daughter of the man who was once public enemy number one to the left, became overnight the regime media darling because of her opposition to Trump: first voting for his impeachment and then helping to lead a “bipartisan” special committee that recommended criminal charges against the former president.  As a writer at Vox claimed, “Liz Cheney’s downfall shows the GOP threat to democracy is getting worse.”

How is it possible to make the preposterous claim that a well-known and well-funded congressional incumbent, who lost a primary election by an almost 40% spread to her challenger, is a blow to democracy?  Democracy by definition means, above all, rule by the majority, and the majority spoke—and spoke clearly—in Wyoming.  The answer, of course, is anything that might endanger a Democrat or progressive victory is a threat to Our Democracy™.  The media narrative was that Cheney’s primary defeat happened because Republican voters were unhappy with Cheney, not because Cheney had betrayed their interests but because they had been brainwashed by the reviled Donald Trump.  It was as if St. George had been stricken down by the very townspeople he was trying to save before he could slay the evil dragon.

Donald Trump represents for the left the most serious of all the threats to Our Democracy™.  His promotion of “The Big Lie”, i.e., that the 2020 election was stolen is said to be an existential threat to democracy.  The possibility that he maintains majority support among the populace, support that could lead to his success in the 2024, is an abomination that cannot under any circumstances be tolerated. Almost any corrupt or unwise measure can be (or has been) advanced as long it might prevent Donald Trump from returning to power.  In other words, all measures necessary to ensure Democratic victory, regardless of how far they go to destroy the rule of law, institutional and constitutional norms that have been in place for several centuries, or the integrity of our electoral systems, are necessary to preserve democracy.

It is not enough to call out the imprudence or even duplicity in the left’s advocacy for these illegal, unconstitutional, and otherwise unwise measures.  The progressive left is not only convinced that such measures are necessary to defeat the existential threat that is Donald Trump: they are also convinced that these measures never should be used against themselves.  Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who likely committed treason by opening a back channel with the Chinese over fanciful concerns that President Trump would try to start a war with China, overtly calls Trump a dictator yet “worries” that Trump might have him court-martialed.  Many others, especially in the Department of Justice, publicly express concerns that if Trump becomes president again, he will try to weaponize the Department of Justice against them.

In an especially laughable piece entitled “The Coming Trump Revenge Tour” in Politico, many of those who abused and weaponized the justice system against Trump for purely partisan purposes now fear a Trump victory.  According to Politico, Trump “could easily wreak havoc with many of his political opponents’ lives simply by subjecting them to long, costly and highly disruptive criminal investigations and prosecutions.” In a breathtaking lack of self-awareness, the article concludes that even “if the effort failed to produce any real convictions, the process itself would be a form of punishment for the targets. It could also seriously erode public faith in the federal criminal justice system while chilling political opposition to Trump.” (Emphasis added.)

It is possible that those who relentlessly harassed, undermined, or prosecuted Trump might be truly worried about Trump retaliating against them, although he showed little appetite for retribution against his political enemies during his first presidential term. Being vocal about the possibility does, however, feed into the perception they are trying to create that Trump is a dictator who refused to give up power despite losing a democratically fair election.  Even though complaints about electoral fraud by the loser of a presidential election have been a staple of modern elections going back at least to 1960, only Trump is afforded no such indulgence.   At bottom, however, the rabid opposition to Trump is not fundamentally based upon his support for “The Big Lie” or even his part in the January 6 “violent insurrection.”  Indeed, these are little more than a convenient sophistry, trotted out for their propaganda effect when and where it seems they will gain traction. That this is undeniably so is proven by the fact that Trump was called a threat to democracy from the moment he came down the elevator in 2015, and the left stopped at almost nothing either to try to prevent his election in 2016 or to cripple his presidency while in office. 

Why then, does Trump pose such an existential threat to democracy, as the left understands it?  Why has Trump been subject to unrelenting lawfare based on entirely specious charges brought by the most corrupt—and in many cases incompetent—political hacks?  Why has it become de rigueur for most every journalist, celebrity, academic, CEO, etc., to denounce Trump as a dictator, Hitler-incarnate, etc.?  Moreover, why is it that those same elites—who wilt at the slightest micro-aggression—continue to use such extreme language even after three assassination attempts on Trump’s life?

Trump is not considered by the left to be a threat to Our Democracy™  because he questioned his defeat against the senile, corrupt, basement-dwelling child sniffer.  Rather, the threat Trump poses is much more serious, indeed existential, from the perspective of our ruling elites.  Trump’s ultimate offense is his refusal to bend to the current power structure: a structure characterized by the benign authoritarianism of the ruling class; by the elites who claimed to have the people’s best interest in mind while they opened our borders, welcomed millions of illegals, shipped our working class jobs overseas, and turned our cities into third world hellholes; and by a uniparty often more interested in preserving the prerogatives of power than of truly representing the interests of their constituents or the good of the nation. Although Trump was certainly not uniformly successful in challenging these powerful interests during his first term as president, the current power structure has every reason to believe that Trump has learned something from his mistakes.  He is already surrounding himself with better, smarter, more dedicated people who, like Trump, do not fit the establishment Republican mold and who are not invested in the go-along-to-get-along mentality of the Washington, D.C. swamp.  He has made an excellent choice in J.D. Vance, a choice that may carry the legacy of “MAGA” far into the future. 

The left has every right to be worried: Our Democracy™ may indeed be in peril, but the beginning of the restoration of our constitutional republic committed to the rule of law and government by the people, for the people, and of the people might well be at hand.