As far as the Democrats are concerned, anyone who doubted that the 2020 presidential election was “the most secure election in American history” is an insurrectionist “election denier.” And such “deniers” are, in this formulation, a threat to democracy whose efforts must be thwarted again in 2024. But the assumptions behind this mindset are the reason why it is President Joe Biden‘s political party, not the Republicans, that may well be the real threat to election integrity and democracy this year.
Having spent the last three and a half years trashing their political foes as authoritarians, Democrats have come to believe their success at the ballot box is indistinguishable from the survival of American democracy. But, while most Americans don’t buy Donald Trump‘s continued claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, that isn’t going to be enough to give Biden another four years in the White House.
The Democrat’s performance on a host of issues like immigration, inflation, and foreign policy reinforce the perception that his age has diminished his capacity to govern. That has left his approval ratings deep under water. Trump leads in the polls for both head-to-head matchups with Biden and those involving third-party candidates, as well as in most of the battleground states which will decide the election.
Though all that could change in the next six months, it still raises the question of how Democrats would react to defeat. Starting in early 2022, many in the corporate liberal media have been predicting that Republicans would try to cheat or steal the 2024 vote. At the heart of this panic about their opponents was a conviction that Trump and the GOP could only win by foul play.
But Democrats’ adoption of deeply undemocratic tactics, such as seeking to censor dissenters against favored policies and opposing state laws intended to avoid repeating the pandemic-induced chaos that undermined faith in the integrity of the vote, has reinforced Trump’s narrative.
Most importantly, the banana republic-style lawfare campaign against Trump is causing many on the Right to wonder whether Democrats will let themselves lose an election under any circumstances. Their all-out effort to bankrupt, imprison, or throw their opponent off the ballot is the chief threat to the integrity of the 2024 vote and, consequently, democracy.