I & I Editorial BoardNow that they can’t use COVID to scare the public into submission, Democrats – from President Joe Biden on down – are working on Plan B. Shouting “Democracy is at risk!” every chance they get.
That’s become the default line for the left. This weekend, when CBS News reporter Bill Whitaker asked Vice President Kamala Harris about the possibility of Biden dying in office, her response was: “Let me just tell you, I’m focused on the job. Our democracy is on the line, Bill. And I frankly in my head do not have time for parlor games when we have a president who is running for reelection. That’s it.”
Notice the contradiction in Harris’ statement? If we have, as she says, “a president who is running for reelection,” how is it that “our democracy is on the line”? Aren’t elections what democracy is all about?
Let’s assume that Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination. (That’s a big assumption, since the first primary is still months away and because history is replete with presumed front runners not getting the nomination.) Let’s also assume that Biden is the Democratic candidate. (Another big assumption.)
Trump and Biden will have to campaign for the presidency, as will various third-party candidates. They will travel the country making their case. The press will spend a great deal of time covering the campaigns – mostly attacking the GOP candidate. There will be nationally televised debates. Voters will start paying attention as the election nears.
A little more than a year from now, millions of voters will cast their ballots. And, according to the rules laid down in the Constitution, the next president will be elected. That could be Trump.
Where’s the threat to democracy here?
Does Biden mean that Trump could once again win the presidency despite losing the popular vote?
That can’t be it.
Biden recently gave a speech about “strengthening our democracy” in which he said that “I believe very strongly that the defining feature of our democracy is our Constitution.”
Well, look it up. Article II, Section I of the Constitution establishes the Electoral College, how many electors each state gets, and their role in deciding the election outcome. The framers of the Constitution knew that this could result in a candidate winning the electoral vote while losing the popular vote, but set it up this way to create a more stable and long-lasting democratic republic.
The Electoral College, in Biden’s words, is one of the “defining features” of our democracy.
Is there concern among Democrats that Trump or some other Republican candidate will steal the election? Is that why “our democracy is on the line”?
That can’t possibly be it, either.
Democrats have spent the past three years telling the public that election fraud is a myth and that – even in the midst of a pandemic when states were making last-minute changes to election procedures – the 2020 election was the most secure in history. They can’t suddenly claim that widespread fraud threatens to cost Democrats the 2024 election.
So what’s left? What does Biden really mean when he says “democracy is at risk.”
That’s easy enough to figure out if you listen to him and others on the left. In that same speech, Biden said that “their extreme agenda,” referring to so-called MAGA Republicans, “if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.”
Really? How so? By cutting back the size and scope of the federal government? By slaying a regulatory Leviathan that strips Americans of their basic freedoms? By bringing entrenched federal bureaucrats to heel when they actively try to defy the will of the people? By reining in “independent federal agencies” that operate as an unelected, unaccountable fourth branch of government? By making sure that the Justice Department no longer operates as the Democratic party’s enforcer?
Millions of Americans believe that these reforms are needed to restore the institutions of America’s republican form of government as set forth in the Constitution.
At times Biden lumps in the harsh rhetoric of people such as Trump in his “risks to democracy.” If Biden truly believes this, then he should resign immediately. After all, it was Biden who once described millions of Americans as “semi-fascists.”
He should also forcefully denounce Hillary Clinton, who, in addition to being an election denier, recently declared that Trump supporters are a “cult” and “maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members.”
The truth is that leftist Democrats could care less about “democracy.” What they want is to gain and keep power – whatever the costs.
So, when Democrats talk about how “our democracy is at risk,” what they really mean is “our socialist agenda is at risk.”
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
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Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
The leading Democrats aren’t worried about democracy but about “our democracy,” a padded government beholden to identity politics, transgenderism and support for illegal aliens. This is the “fundamental change” that their fake god Obama preached.
I’m very very hopeful that the new speaker will be a sharp turning point in the way the Republicans have responded to governance! We shall see as we all know politics is a surprise regularly!
Is this a mystery to everyone else, too?
“How do the Democrats say the same things in such instantaneous and brilliantly staged unison?”
Is there a secret internet station, just for Democrats, which they all listen to every morning at dawn so they can say in unison, “Threats to Democracy,” “Deniers,” “Our sacred values,” and all the sanctimonious, cockamamie and sophomorically nutty things they mouth like programmed zombies?
How do they do that?
It is all projection. Who uses the alphabet agencies to silence, censor and promulgate lies, thwart criminal investigations of POTUS, promote fear (white supremacy, COVID), and investigate parents and the Catholic church? Who forced a new, untested vaccine, with threats of losing your job? Who closed businesses and schools? Who allowed in millions of unvetted illegal aliens of military age, aided and appeased our sworn enemies abroad and turned away from our allies. Who claimed their is no inflation, allowed and encouraged rampant crime, and let tens of thousands live on the streets and die of overdoses like a third world nation. Who is prosecuting political rivals with novel legal theories and for actions they themselves have used before (contesting an election). Who is prosecuting attorneys for doing their jobs and scaring them into pleas? Who have been using secret servers and family to enrich themselves peddling influence? Who is compromised by this illegal conduct? Who is using the IRS to target journalists and political rivals? All while their State media propagandists gaslight us.
well
well said and completely accurate…the Dems are playing with fire. I actually think that they are pushing and pushing and pushing for the MAGA revolt they’ve been warning us about so they can say…”see, I’ve told you all along they are dangerous extremists”…then, ala Jan 6th they can start rounding up the dissenters and jailing them without due process.
Only a liberal could accept this logic: “In order to save our democracy we need to keep Donald Trump off the ballot.”
Biden is right. Johnson’s elevation to Speaker demonstrates the Republican efforts against democracy and equal rights.
Excellent column. It’s clear and direct, and its tone hits the perfect notes of skepticism and disdain for the Democrats’ dishonesty and hypocrisy about “our democracy.”
One stylistic note: the third-to-last sentence should say that “Democrats could not care less about ‘democracy,'” rather than “could care less.”
If Democrats care about democracy, then they have the ability to care less about it — that is, they could care less.
However, if Democrats do not care about democracy at all, then they do not have the ability to care less about it — in other words, they could not care less.
Keep up the great work, I&I, I love your columns!
Correction: the Democrats’ agenda is not “socialist.” It is authoritarian in the extreme, at least as deeply anti-freedom, and likely more so, as anything Stalin, Hitler, or Mao Tse Tung could have dreamed. And every time the Democrats get ahold of the White House, I become terrified anew of our government – as I am now.