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Thursday's Presidential debate revealed to the world that President Biden is mentally incompetent and that an unelected and unaccountable group of people is running the country, and likely has been running the country for some time. This unavoidable truth has likely doomed Biden's 2024 campaign. However, it has likely also struck a crippling blow against the Democrat Party's primary value proposition: "Democracy."
The Democrat's have made "Democracy" the party's core identity, its primary rhetoric, and indeed, its very reason for being. The Democrats insist that the right to vote for one's representatives is sacrosanct, that voting is "Democracy," that the country is "Democracy," and that the Democrats are "Democracy." Directly or indirectly preventing or diminishing the right to vote for the representative of one's own choosing is, according to the party, fundamentally anti-democratic. Moreover, they loudly and repeatedly insist that a vote for the Republicans is a vote "against Democracy" and will "end Democracy" in the United States. The rhetoric is existential, black and white, and leaves no room for maneuver.
Thursday's debate transformed the party's "Democracy" rhetoric into a mortal wound. If Joe Biden is mentally incompetent, then the only value of his candidacy lies in the proposition that the party will wield Biden's executive power without his knowledge or control. But, according to the Democrats, being forced to vote for an unnamed, unelected cabal of unaccountable lobbyists, bureaucrats, and special interests is no vote at all. Indeed, it is anti-democratic according to the party's own terms.
The Democrat's only argument is that "if we don't run the country anti-democratically, it will be the end of Democracy!" This is rhetorical checkmate. The Republicans and left-leaning, dissident democrats will turn the Democrat Party's super-weapon against them and there will be no escape. By jettisoning every other value but "Democracy" from the party, the Democrats have left themselves nowhere to retreat. The Republicans will use the last decade of the Democrat's own histrionic statements against them, rightly painting them as tyrants perpetrating a coup. Dissident, left-leaning Democrats will do the same, and claim the mantle of genuine "Democracy" for themselves.
Its actually, literally Joever.
The whole defending democracy meme is both an incredibly potent and incredibly sad choice of strategy for Dems. In this age of partisanship, it was entirely predicable that if the Dems become the party of democracy, people on the other side will reflexively drift toward being explicitly against democracy. I find myself going that direction. If the current establishment is synonymous with our new definition of democracy, well, I’m not for that.
Democracy isn’t fundamental to the USA. “Western Liberal Democracy” is only 30 years old. The postwar system is only 70ish years old. And universal sufferage only 100 years old.
They couldn’t resist using it though. And as I said, it seems potent with a certain type of person. I agree with comments here that say that reelecting Biden despite any handicap is consistent with their definition of democracy. They’ve totally redefined the term to be consistent with rule by the “adults in the room”.
It's kind of like the difference between equality and equity isn't it. Whereas equality means "equality of opportunity", equity means "equality of outcome".
In the current progressive mindset, democracy doesn't necessarily mean every citizen gets a vote and we determine the winner. It means getting the correct result at the end of the process. Voting for Trump is "undemocratic" and therefore unelected leaders must deny people the ability to vote for him by taking him off the ballot.
To be fair, the only time Trump has accepted the outcome of an election he was involved in was when the election went in his favor. Say what you will about HRC, but she did not contest the outcome of the election for the next four years.
I think keeping Trump of the ballot is bad because one of the advantages of democratic elections is that they are a means of avoiding armed confrontations within a country. The deal with democracy is that everyone gets to vote for their guy, and if your guy did not win this time, the best path forward is to try to convince more people of your point of view next time. If your guy is not on the ballot, you might decide that the best way forward is armed resistance, and get utterly crushed by the federal government.
There are situations where it is a good idea to keep an enemy of democracy off the ballot. Kicking the NSDAP off the ballot in 1933 would have been worth however many shootouts with their Sturmabteilung that would have resulted in, because the Weimar republic was fragile, with a lot of the government apparatus not sold on democracy and very willing to help Hitler along.
But Trump 2024 is not Hitler 1933. If he is elected and has a majority in Congress, he will still not be able to transform the US into a Fuehrerstaat. The SCOTUS may be friendly to him, but they are not his minions. And unlike Weimar, the US is full of bureaucrats who are very invested in the status quo. They might gerrymander a bit here and leak a bit of embarrassing info there for partisan reasons, but they will not dismantle democracy.
Well, Hillary never stormed the capitol with her army of fanatical HillDawgs(tm), but she (and the mainstream media) did spend four years strongly implying that Russia had rigged the elections in Trump’s favor. An argument that they kept on using until about a day after Biden’s victory in 2020, after which the argument that any American election had ever been stolen immediately became a laughable conspiracy theory. Twenty years of carping about dimpled chads in Miami Dade county also suddenly went down the memory hole.
The inauguration riots (DisruptJ20, not HillDawgs) have been memory holed by the media.
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This is probably excessively pedantic, but despite winning several states, he withdrew from the Reform Party primary for president in 2000 with a fair amount of drama, but not denying the outcome of the elections.
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