Ever since the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats have desperately declared the nation’s democracy is at stake, often expressed with a finger pointed at Republicans. Or, as President Joe Biden mentioned at a fundraiser earlier this year, “There is one existential threat: It’s Donald Trump.” But Democrats aren’t the only ones who believe our government might skid off a cliff after the next inauguration. A recent AP/NORC poll revealed, “Only 21% of adults feel US democracy is strong enough to prevail no matter who wins the election in November.” Of those polled, more than half said they believe democracy is at risk “depending on who wins the election.”
That so many people are worried isn’t surprising, but it raises an important question: What do people really mean when they say, “Democracy is at stake”?
Democracy – A Series of Unfortunate Misinterpretations
Rebecca Dolgin of Psychology Today wrote an article in January 2023 highlighting a study that Cambridge University Press published in August 2022, analyzing what people deemed a threat to democracy. “This study found that people do not only rationalize undemocratic behavior when their ideology benefits, but they also view perfectly democratic behavior as undemocratic when it opposes their ideology.”
Both processes help people alleviate the uncomfortable feeling of “the ends-justify-the-means kind of voting.” The first method, called democratic transmission, uses conflation to justify an action and, as Dolgin detailed, sounds like, “This behavior is bad, and being undemocratic is bad; therefore this behavior must be undemocratic.” The second process, democratic evaluation, happens when people expand the definition of democracy and think about it more abstractly, such as, “This behavior will create a bad outcome for our country, our country is democratic; therefore this behavior must be undemocratic.”
How people perceive and decide what is and isn’t democratic behavior also relies heavily on conscious reasoning, which, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote in The Righteous Mind, “functions like a press secretary who automatically justifies any position taken by the president.” Pick a conclusion, and conscious reasoning will make it appear sound because “we ask, ‘Can I believe it?’ when we want to believe something, but ‘Must I believe it?’ when we don’t want to believe. The answer is almost always yes to the first question and no to the second.”
Few people, if any, are immune to this mental trickery. Everybody has biases and inclinations. Many people shape their beliefs according to how their political party thinks.
Misguided Perceptions
“Democracy” has become a catch-all phrase for Dems. Perhaps they’re using it to cause alarm to get more people to the polls. Not a stretch. Liberty Nation News’ Senior Political Analyst Tim Donner succinctly detailed this phenomenon: “Democracy has replaced terms like white supremacist and fascist as the hottest item in the left’s virtue-signaling lexicon as they attempt to convince the American people that Donald Trump will morph into Joseph Stalin upon assuming office for a second time.”
All the left has to do is make enough people believe the threat is real, which seems to be their primary strategy. Repeating the phrase “Our democracy is at stake” is not only a good start but can be effective. People tend to believe what is familiar to them because, as Daniel Kahneman, a psychology professor, wrote in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, “[F]amiliarity is not easily distinguished from the truth.” One doesn’t even need to echo the same phrase. Just pepper statements with “risk” or “threat.” Any words related to the many forms the phrase “Democracy is at risk” has taken will drill the idea into many minds.
Maybe this is how Democrats have led so many left-leaning voters to believe that if Trump wins in November, he will be an authoritarian ruler. However, Liberty Nation News’ Chief Political Correspondent Graham J. Noble expressed earlier this year the unlikelihood of that happening: “For him to do so, Trump would have to ignore Congress and the Supreme Court, disarm the American people, and eliminate their free speech, along with many other constitutional rights. Anything less would not rise to the definition of tyranny.”
Not an easy feat. To see an example, though, of what attempted authoritarian behavior might look like, all one has to do is reflect on the last four years. Noble explained:
“The Biden administration has largely chosen to rule by regulation. The current White House occupant has bypassed Congress on certain matters and flatly refused to cooperate with it on others. He has defied the Supreme Court by continuing to offer student loan debt cancellation despite an explicit ruling, ignored the rule of law when it comes to immigration and the vast flood of humanity crossing the border illegally, and … has bullied social media companies into suppressing any news or opinions posted online that it doesn’t like or that exposes its failures and corruption. Denying the public access to ‘unapproved’ information and limiting people’s ability to discuss political matters [are] fundamental and existential threat[s] to democracy.”
Left-wing voters would have to take some giant mental leaps to unsee Biden’s undemocratic actions and still have the nerve to point across the aisle and call foul. Self-deception is a useful tool. “[B]elieving that the other party does not adhere to democratic values,” according to Hank Rothgerber of Psychology Today, “emboldens individuals to sacrifice their own democratic ideals to counter the perceived threat — subverting democracy in the name of saving it.”
There’s no way to know how those surveyed in the AP/NORC poll defined democracy or whether they conflated or rationalized to achieve their conclusions. No doubt, how each political side perceives the government’s role is drastically different. But there’s only one definition of democracy and only one presidential election this year. Will voters fabricate alternative realities to choose a candidate, or will they vote with America’s future in mind, for what might improve the country and not the self?
