Is democracy on the ballot tomorrow?

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Oliver Wiseman

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Is democracy on the ballot tomorrow?

https://thespectator.com/newsletter/is-democracy-on-the-ballot-tomorrow/

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Is democracy on the ballot?
Joe Biden has chosen to make his final pitch to voters all about democracy. That was the subject of his speech in Washington last week. The hastily scheduled event bore all the signs of being the president’s own idea. He returned to the democracy theme on the campaign trail this weekend, including at a big rally in Philadelphia with Barack Obama on Saturday.

“Democracy is on the ballot,” Biden said on Thursday. In California yesterday, he said “you can’t call yourself a democracy or supporting democratic principles if you say, ‘the only…

Is democracy on the ballot?

Joe Biden has chosen to make his final pitch to voters all about democracy. That was the subject of his speech in Washington last week. The hastily scheduled event bore all the signs of being the president’s own idea. He returned to the democracy theme on the campaign trail this weekend, including at a big rally in Philadelphia with Barack Obama on Saturday.

“Democracy is on the ballot,” Biden said on Thursday. In California yesterday, he said “you can’t call yourself a democracy or supporting democratic principles if you say, ‘the only election that is fair is the one I win.’”

There’s a lot not to like about Biden’s democracy rhetoric. From his party’s point of view, it seems inadvisable to focus on the rules of democracy when voters are more worried about inflation, the economy and crime.

Then there are the valid rebuttals to his finger-wagging, like the fact that Democrats spent money in Republican primaries boosting some of the very election-deniers now poised to win. Or the Democrats’ shamelessly exaggerated rhetoric about election laws in the last eighteen months. Or the fact that some prominent Democrats have a track record of quibbling with election results when they lose.

The paradox of Biden’s rhetoric is that it often fails his own test. His message, that if you don’t vote for his party, democracy will be on its deathbed, isn’t far from the “the only election that is fair is the one I win.” A president who meant what he said about democracy would be a little less reckless with his language.

But lost in this overblown, highly partisan back and forth about democracy is the basic fact that these midterms really are an important test for US democracy. Even before the January 6 riot, the weeks that followed the 2020 election were a national embarrassment. You don’t have to believe MSNBC-style death-of-democracy disaster porn to hope that America’s election system performs better this time around. And so don’t let the bad faith use of the D-word from upon high distract you from the basic truth that how candidates, election officials and citizens conduct themselves really does matter.

The proof of a system’s health is how well it functions, and so this week will be a check-up on American democracy. Can losers acknowledge the legitimacy of the victors’ win? Can poll workers get the job done without harassment and violence? Can state officials get votes counted quickly and accurately? And, if his party has a bad night, can the president pass his own test, recognizing triumphant Republicans as legitimate opposition rather than The End of America As We Know It?

Perhaps most importantly, if things go reasonably normally this week — the most likely outcome — can America’s histrionic political class acknowledge as much? Because what worries more than any individual candidate’s cynical refusal to accept defeat is both parties’ addiction to catastrophizing. Thankfully, though, most Americans know better, and roll their eyes at hyperbole, whether it’s a Mike Lindell slideshow about “election fraud” or a Stacey Abrams speech about Jim Crow 2.0. And if that healthy skepticism isn’t an advertisement for democracy, I don’t know what is.

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‘DeSanctimonious’

America was given a taste of what is likely to be the most important political showdown of 2023 on Saturday night, when Donald Trump took a shot at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, likely his biggest 2024 primary rival.

At a rally near Pittsburgh, Trump said: “We’re winning big, big, big in the Republican Party for the nomination like nobody’s ever seen before. Let’s see, there it is: Trump at seventy-one. Ron DeSanctimonious at 10 percent. Mike Pence at seven — oh, Mike’s doing better than I thought.”

The next day, Trump and DeSantis held separate rallies in Florida, and an unnamed Republican consultant told Politico that the Trump team “did not invite Ron, which I do think was stupid. Why not try and avoid the appearance of a fight? But in their defense, I don’t know that he would have come even if he was invited.” In DeSantis’s backyard, Trump behaved himself.

Also Sunday, GOP megadonor Ken Griffin said he is ready to back DeSantis in 2024. Griffin, who recently relocated his family and investment firm Citadel from Chicago to Miami, urged Trump not to run. “For a litany of reasons, I think it’s time to move on to the next generation,” he told Politico.

All the signs indicate that DeSantis will be a tougher primary opponent for Trump than anyone he faced in 2020. The Florida governor is popular among both establishment conservatives and the MAGA faithful. And so Trump, even with his instinctive sense of what his audience wants to hear, will have to be careful to get the tone right when it comes to taking on the other Florida Man.

Follow election night with The Spectator

The Spectator team will be live-blogging the midterms. As votes are counted tomorrow evening and in the days that follow, visit our site for a sane guide to the results and what they mean.