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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”.
I've said multiple times on here and the old site that "democracy" is best understood as rule by the managerial elite - if Trump won with a majority of the popular vote, then got disqualified and replaced with the Clinton caretaker government by the CIA, that would count as a victory for democracy as the term is used.
Exactly the same point I keep making as well.
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