Louis XIV declared, “I am the state.” The motto of today’s Democratic Party should be “Democracy is us.” Supporting anything we oppose is a threat to democracy. On the other hand, opposing anything we support is anti-democratic.
According to democracy’s self-appointed champions, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation of criminal aliens, President Trump’s campaign against urban crime, congressional districts that reflect reality, ballot ID laws, cutting the bureaucracy, opposition to racial quotas and protecting women’s sports and privacy all are existential threats to democracy.
The smallest club in the world is Democrats who haven’t accused Mr. Trump of being a threat to democracy, an existential threat to democracy, a clear and present danger to democracy, or a dictator. The drumbeat started in 2016 and grew louder with each election cycle.
Rep. James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who was instrumental in securing the Democratic presidential nomination for Joseph R. Biden in 2020, said democracy would end if Democrats lost the 2022 midterm elections. They did; it didn’t. In 2024, The Washington Post ran an opinion piece titled “A Trump dictatorship is inevitable.” The ubiquitous Democratic strategist James Carville said the 2024 election would decide whether we are “going to have a Constitution or not.”
Throughout his White House years, it was impossible for Mr. Biden to open his yap without warning, in the most lurid terms, that his predecessor was “an existential threat to our system of government.”
Not surprisingly, Vice President Kamala Harris agreed. If she didn’t win the presidency, she said, 2024 “genuinely could be” the last democratic election. It’s me or the abyss.
The Democratic Party is the little boy who cried wolf because the wolf is all he has.
It’s also a classic case of projection. For the real threats to our system of government, look leftward. Voters did not elect an autopen in 2020. They elected a man who was mentally and physically incapable of governing.
A White House cabal governed in his name while repeatedly assuring us that the man who had to be led away from one event by the Easter Bunny was at the top of his game and sharp as a tack. This conspiracy was the ultimate betrayal of popular sovereignty.
The Democratic Party did everything it could to rig the 2024 election. Democratic secretaries of state tried to keep Mr. Trump’s name off the ballot. A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court rejected this unprecedented overreach.
Throughout the campaign, Democratic officials bent the law in novel ways to prosecute the once and future president. New York Attorney General Letitia James ran for office on an I’ll-get-Trump platform. She decided crimes had been committed before producing any evidence. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis rounded out the George Soros lawfare trio.
All this was intended to prejudice voters against Mr. Trump. It was an attempt to sabotage the democratic process in the midst of a presidential election.
The Democratic Party is hardly a model of democracy. Ms. Harris didn’t win its presidential nomination; it was bestowed on her.
So, according to the left, democracy is allowing 2 million illegal aliens (including hardened criminals, drug dealers and gang members) to cross our borders; interfering with law enforcement because they don’t like a law; letting illegals who can’t read road signs drive big rigs; opposing voter ID laws because they make it harder to steal elections; using public office to enrich their families; inciting violence that results in months of urban riots; gun confiscation; so-called gender transitioning for minors; indoctrination in public schools; slow-walking presidential nominations to an unprecedented degree; statehood for the District of Columbia (assuring the Democratic Party two votes in the Senate in perpetuity); abolishing the Electoral College; and packing the Supreme Court.
God save democracy from its defenders.
The argument about what constitutes a democracy goes back to Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party. Jefferson’s ideal was a small government of strictly limited powers, the very opposite of what his party has advocated since the New Deal. If Jefferson were president today, most Democratic officeholders would say the author of the Declaration of Independence was a threat to democracy.
Democratic hysteria isn’t working. Polls show voters think the real threat to democracy is a party that incites lawlessness, not a president who stands for public safety.
Yet Democrats are addicted to Chicken Little tactics (“Help, help, our democracy is falling!”), so their smear campaign against the president and his allies will continue.
This column was first published at the Washington Times.