Who is Really a Danger to American Democracy?

 By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

This coming November, Americans will be voting in mid-term elections for numerous local, state, and national offices, including both chambers of Congress. And in their opposition to the hated President Donald Trump, the Democratic Party is waging uninterrupted ideological and political warfare against him, even as the country is involved in a Middle Eastern war.

Insisting that the president and his MAGA movement is an existential danger to America, the idea of “restoring democracy” after Trump is eliminated is widespread on the left. Various scholars in fact contend that the U.S. is already governed by an authoritarian regime. 

Much of the evidence they cite, like Trump appointing “loyalists,” consists of the president exercising his duly constituted authority. Other issues, such as the investigation of Trump’s opponents, is retaliation for similar activities by Democrats between Trump’s two election victories. And unlike genuine dictators, Trump keeps getting stymied by many federal judges, include the justices of the Supreme Court, who block many of his initiatives.

It is in fact the Democratic Party that is testing and trying to overturn democratic norms. Most central has been the denial of Trump’s legitimacy.  Hillary Clinton in 2019 described him as an “illegitimate president” who stole the 2016 election.  Trump, perhaps understandably, in turn denied Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, pointing to easily manipulated mail-in voting and non-citizen participation, encouraged by the Biden administration’s open-border policies, which allowed upwards of 20 million people into the country.

Democrats advocate for making Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia states, guaranteeing four more Democrats in the senate. They want to strip states of the power to draw electoral boundaries and to insist on in-person voting by actual citizens. One example: the recent Proposition 50 in California, advocated by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and passed by the state’s Democrat majority, which will limit the representation of Republicans in a state where Democrats already control the entire government. 

It will redraw the state’s Congressional map to favour Democrats, a major victory for the party in a high-stakes national redistricting fight that could determine who controls the House of Representatives. If Virginia voters approve a redistricting plan April 21, theirs will also be a more Democrat-friendly House delegation.

The left has been targeting those members of the Supreme Court who were appointed by Trump. Angry at their position on an abortion issue before the court in 2020, Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declaimed: “I want to tell you, (Neill) Gorsuch, I want to tell you, (Brett) Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.” The party would like to pack the Supreme Court with liberal judges to guarantee control there. 

Then there is the use of mass mobilization against government, notably in the Women’s March occupations of the Capitol and Senate complexes in 2018 and the months-long riots against local police and courts during the first Trump term in the summer of 2020. More recently, there are the multicity efforts to obstruct immigration enforcement and the massive “No Kings” protests in the second term. Democrats want to expand “sanctuary” cities and an amnesty for “undocumented” migrants, whom they rightly assume will vote Democratic as citizens. And while the riot of Jan.  6, 2021 at the Capitol can be blamed on Trump, it was in the context of the violence by the left throughout the previous year.

Perhaps the most insidious threat to democracy is the partisan press and its unholy alliance with the Democratic Party.  With few mainstream exceptions, the media is overwhelmingly aligned with Democratic narratives, agendas, and policies. The overwhelming percentage of professional journalists in the national “legacy” media identify as Democrats. Public broadcaster National Public Radio self-reported that its Washington D.C. editorial staff consists of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans.  The most vaunted news authorities such as the New York Times lean left not only in their opinion sections but in the framing of their news coverage.  The Washington Post has been even worse.

That’s how journalistic malpractice like the coverage of Clinton/Obama-spawned “Russiagate” conspiracy theory was foisted upon the public to discredit Trump. There was also the concerted media censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 presidential election. Most egregious was the way the media insisted Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, and never fitter to run for a second term in 2024. This probably cost Democrats the White House.

Then there is academia, where instructors overwhelmingly identify as liberal Democrats, outnumbering conservative Republicans as much as ten to one, depending on department and campus.  And of course, there is Hollywood and its leftist cultural influence.  Look no further than California for one-party Democrat rule.

Finally, former president Barack Obama continue to interfere in America’s politics in ways no previous officeholder did. His predecessor, George W. Bush retired to his Texas ranch once he left the White House. Obama by contrast kept a home in Washington after 2016 and it’s been an unofficial headquarters for the Democratic Party ever since. He still calls the shots in many ways. Yet no journalist in the city reported on this despite it happening right under their noses.

 So -- just who is the threat to American democracy now? Is the appellation “Democratic” for the party perhaps a misnomer?