By: The Editorial Board – wsj.com – August 20, 2024

There’s a reason voters don’t see Trump as a unique threat to democracy.

But then why do polls show that voters are more or less equally split on which party most threatens democracy? Partisanship is one answer. But so is the fact that over the last eight years Democrats have themselves used the imperative of defeating Donald Trump as an excuse to break democratic norms. And they are promising to break more. This record is worth recounting as Democrats portray themselves as the font of democratic virtue.

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Start with the suspicion after the 2016 election that Mr. Trump won thanks to Russian collusion. “I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now,” Rep. Adam Schiff told TV viewers shortly after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Mr. Schiff fed a frenzied three-year chase for proof of Russia-Trump collusion that found none.

The same mentality is behind the persistent Democratic claims that their losses are from “voter suppression.” Stacey Abrams repeatedly claimed that the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia was “stolen,” and “I won.” Did Democrats unite in denouncing this effort to subvert confidence in democracy? No. They kept feting Ms. Abrams—until Mr. Trump’s stolen-election nonsense made her inconvenient.

Democrats picked Ms. Abrams to give their State of the Union response in 2019, and she was floated as a potential 2020 presidential candidate or running mate for Mr. Biden. “Let’s say this loud and clear,” then-Sen. Kamala Harris told an NAACP dinner. “Without voter suppression, Stacey Abrams would be the Governor of Georgia.” Does Ms. Harris still believe this? Will any journalist ask?

Many states had loosened voting procedures in 2020 amid the Covid pandemic. Any retightening of rules, Democrats argued, is racist. “This makes Jim Crowlook like Jim Eagle,” Mr. Biden said.

Democrats want Congress to pass H.R.1 to override state laws on everything from mail-vote deadlines to ballot harvesting. “Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor?” President Biden asked in Atlanta. “Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

Passing H.R.1 is so important, say Democrats, that it’s worth nuking the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster rule. Mr. Biden says Democrats should make another filibuster “exception,” as he once put it, to reverse the Supreme Court on abortion. But doing away with the filibuster, which forces a modicum of legislative compromise, would create a winner-take-all Congress to let narrow majorities impose enormous change.

Then there are Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden’s recent calls to “reform” the Supreme Court. Democrats disapprove of how the current Justices are ruling, so they have tried to create the aura of an “ethics” crisis, via an innuendo campaign about flagpoles and fishing trips, which have nothing to do with any pending case. Mr. Biden’s Supreme Court reform commission warned about the risk of a “backslide” on judicial independence. Yet he decided to press ahead anyway.

He and Ms. Harris are now calling for term limits on the Justices, while Chuck Schumer wants to restrict the Court’s jurisdiction and impose “ethics” rules that would jeopardize its independence. This is a more extreme revision of the constitutional order than anything Mr. Trump has seriously proposed.

Democrats also broke norms by making Mr. Trump the first former President to be criminally indicted. Two of the four prosecutions were pursued by Mr. Biden’s Justice Department and special counsel Jack Smith, who was so heedless of the separation of powers that he lost at the Supreme Court on Presidential immunity. The other cases were brought by elected Democratic prosecutors, including Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who won a jury conviction using a stretch of a legal theory that might snap on appeal.

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This is a polarized country in a polarized age, and Mr. Trump is part of the story, especially his madness after the 2020 election. But Americans who will nonetheless vote for Mr. Trump aren’t aching for dictatorship. They’re looking at the alternative, and they don’t see Democrats as sinless guardians of U.S. institutions.

When Democrats lose, they have a habit of escalating by demanding to change the rules: end the filibuster; override voting laws in 50 states; abolish the Electoral College; restructure the Supreme Court; and grant D.C. statehood to add two new safe Democratic Senate seats. Don’t bet that a President Harris and a Democratic Congress wouldn’t do it.

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Source: Democrats and Democratic Norms – WSJ