Democrats

Democrats and Democratic Norms

8/20/24
from The Wall Street Journal,
8/20/24:

There’s a reason voters don’t see Trump as a unique threat to democracy.

‘We saved democracy in 2020,” President Biden told Democrats in Chicago on Monday, “and now we must save it again in 2024.” Democrats cite Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election as definitive proof of Mr. Biden’s claim, and these columns have been clear that Mr. Trump’s behavior was disgraceful. But then why do polls show that voters are more or less equally split on which party most threatens democracy? Partisanship is one answer. But so is the fact that over the last eight years Democrats have themselves used the imperative of defeating Donald Trump as an excuse to break democratic norms. And they are promising to break more. This record is worth recounting as Democrats portray themselves as the font of democratic virtue.

Start with the suspicion after the 2016 election that Mr. Trump won thanks to Russian collusion.

The same mentality is behind the persistent Democratic claims that their losses are from “voter suppression.” “Let’s say this loud and clear,” then-Sen. Kamala Harris told an NAACP dinner. “Without voter suppression, Stacey Abrams would be the Governor of Georgia.”

Many states had loosened voting procedures in 2020 amid the Covid pandemic. Any retightening of rules, Democrats argued, is racist. “This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle,” Mr. Biden said. Democrats want Congress to pass H.R.1 to override state laws on everything from mail-vote deadlines to ballot harvesting.

Then there are Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden’s recent calls to “reform” the Supreme Court. Democrats disapprove of how the current Justices are ruling, so they have tried to create the aura of an “ethics” crisis, via an innuendo campaign about flagpoles and fishing trips, which have nothing to do with any pending case.

Democrats also broke norms by making Mr. Trump the first former President to be criminally indicted. Two of the four prosecutions were pursued by Mr. Biden’s Justice Department and special counsel Jack Smith, who was so heedless of the separation of powers that he lost at the Supreme Court on Presidential immunity.

Americans who will nonetheless vote for Mr. Trump aren’t aching for dictatorship. They’re looking at the alternative, and they don’t see Democrats as sinless guardians of U.S. institutions. When Democrats lose, they have a habit of escalating by demanding to change the rules: end the filibuster; override voting laws in 50 states; abolish the Electoral College; restructure the Supreme Court; and grant D.C. statehood to add two new safe Democratic Senate seats. Don’t bet that a President Harris and a Democratic Congress wouldn’t do it.

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