Here Is Everything Democrats Claim Is ‘A Threat to Democracy’
BY: THE FEDERALIST STAFF | OCTOBER 27, 2022
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/27/here-is-everything-democrats-claim-is-a-threat-to-democracy/

THE FEDERALIST STAFF
Updated on Oct. 27.
It seems like every day Democrats and their cronies in the corrupt corporate media concoct a new, bogus “threat to democracy” that they use to intimidate Americans out of voting for their political opponents.
These “threats” aren’t just overused, they are overexaggerated in an effort to cover up Democrats’ hypocrisy, mask their incompetence, and justify the targeting of their ideological enemies. Meanwhile, it’s the blue party that’s working overtime to erode and replace the actual democratic processes responsible for keeping our nation running.
Here is a list of everything Democrats claim is “a threat to democracy.”
Donald Trump
Americans think corporate media are a bigger “threat to democracy” than former President Donald Trump yet not one day goes by without a Democrat, talking head, or corporate media outlet asserting the Republican is responsible for the downfall of the nation.
The “threat to democracy” accusations began before Trump won the 2016 election, have continued throughout his presidency, and repeatedly make headlines more than a year after the end of his first term.
Republicans
What could possibly be a bigger “threat to democracy” than Democrats’ top Trumpian foe? According to President Joe Biden, it is “MAGA Republicans.”
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said during a doom-and-gloom speech in Philadelphia earlier this year.
Whether it’s Republican voters, Republican governors, Republican members of Congress, Republican-controlled legislatures, or even Republican grandmas, Democrats and the media say anyone associated with the GOP could destroy our nation and deserves punishment.
Ted Cruz
Brookings, a left-leaning think tank, described Republican Sen. Ted Cruz as one of many “copycat candidates who parrot Trump’s moves and endorse his anti-democratic tactics” in a piece titled, “Trump is not the only threat to democracy.”
Josh Hawley
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley earned the same judgment from Brookings as Cruz. Additionally, when he objected to certifying the 2020 presidential election results, he (along with Cruz and other GOP senators) was smeared by The Washington Post as one of “the Constitution’s most dangerous domestic enemies.”
Ron DeSantis
According to Democrats, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a raging, extreme “threat to democracy” for simply governing as a Republican.
“Ron DeSantis Would Kill Democracy Slowly and Methodically,” one article in New York Magazine warned.
Dr. Oz
“An impaired Fetterman who does not pose a threat to our democracy is better than a polished Oz who does. Remember what’s at stake here,” a senior adviser at The Lincoln Project tweeted shortly after the political opponents’ debate.

Tudor Dixon
Tudor Dixon, the Republican woman brave enough to challenge Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, was classified as “a huge threat to our democracy” by her incumbent opponent for raising questions about election irregularities.
Ron Johnson
For the crime of being an effective Republican lawmaker, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has also been deemed a “threat to democracy.”

Legitimately Conducted Elections
Speaking of Republicans, did you know that Americans choosing to elect GOP candidates is a threat to Democracy? That’s what several of the nation’s top propaganda publications want you to believe.
“American Democracy Can’t Survive Unless the Far Right Is Marginalized. Here’s How to Do It,” Time Magazine warned in 2021.
The push to classify GOP wins as threats especially expanded ahead of the 2022 midterms.
“Should [Republicans] win, they will certainly attempt to end democracy as we know it in their states,” MSNBC Opinion Columnist Ryan Cooper wrote three weeks before Election Day 2022. “The effort will probably look like an updated version of Jim Crow.”
Questioning Elections
Nevermind that Democrats are known for rejecting election results and objecting to every presidential Republican victory this century — anyone who dares mention that U.S. elections are not perfect is smeared with the ill-fitting term “election denier,” and considered a “threat to democracy.”
This “threat,” according to media, Democrats, and the ever-vague “experts,” is so big that it needs to be taught in schools. Less than two weeks before the 2022 midterms, The New York Times published a “Lesson Plan” titled “Explore How the Election Denial Movement Threatens Democracy.”
“What can happen in a representative democracy when politicians and a significant portion of the electorate question the legitimacy of elections?” the subtitle asks.
The Events of Jan. 6, 2021
Democrats say Americans’ actions on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, proved to be as big a “threat to democracy” as Pearl Harbor or 9/11, both of which resulted in thousands more deaths than the Capitol riot.
Not only was the Capitol riot an existential threat, leftists claim, but New York Magazine says “Americans’ Indifference About January 6 Is the Real Threat to Democracy.”
Election Security Legislation
The New York Times is also one of the many corporate media outlets and others that have expressed concern with Republicans’ voter integrity measures following the chaotic 2020 election.
“Many top Republican Party officials and lawmakers have spent the last two years striking back, and drawn the most attention for their efforts to pass ‘voter integrity’ laws that aim to make voting more onerous under the guise of preventing fraud. … These are pernicious laws, and they undermine Americans’ hard-won rights to vote. But just as important is the matter of who counts the votes, and who decides which votes count and which do not,” The New York Times editorial board wrote last month.
“The real threat to America’s electoral system is not posed by ineligible voters trying to cast ballots. It is coming from inside the system,” the board concluded. “All those who value democracy have a role to play in strengthening and supporting the electoral system that powers it, whatever their party. This involves, first, taking the threat posed by election deniers seriously and talking to friends and neighbors about it. It means paying attention to local elections — not just national ones — and supporting candidates who reject conspiracy theories and unfounded claims of fraud. It means getting involved in elections as canvassers or poll watchers or precinct officers.”
Poll Watchers
It’s ironic that The New York Times wants voters to be poll watchers — especially since corporate media recently deemed those who sign up to monitor ballot boxes as “threats to democracy.”
As documented by The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood, the propaganda press is repeatedly “hitting the panic button over Republican poll watchers legitimately overseeing the conduction of elections, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.”
Elon Musk
When Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced plans to acquire Twitter and welcome free speech back to the Big Tech platform, Twitter’s pampered employees, the corporate media, and pro-censorship politicians threw a fit.
“He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less,” The Washington Post’s Max Boot tweeted.

Not only is Musk’s purchase considered by the left a “threat to democracy,” Salon writer Matthew Rozsa said Musk’s “attempted takeover of Twitter is a threat to the free world.”
Freedom of Speech
Some of the same media personalities whose livelihoods revolve around rights granted by the First Amendment say that free speech, especially online, is “a threat to democracy.”
‘Misinformation’
The pro-censorship party and its allies say “misinformation” and “disinformation,” which means any information about hot topics like Covid, elections, and biology that they deem inconvenient or contra the narrative they are trying to sell, is a threat to democracy.
Parents at School Board Meetings
If it wasn’t already clear that the National School Boards Association and Attorney General Merrick Garland think concerned parents are “domestic terrorists” who threaten our nation and deserve to be prosecuted, it was certainly made clear by members of the media.
“Attacks on school boards are a threat to democracy,” an opinion editorial in the Mercury News said.
Pro-Lifers
Garland also considers peaceful pro-life protesters to be a threat to the nation. That’s why his Department of Justice has publicly indicted 22 people who oppose killing babies in the womb instead of prosecuting the people responsible for the destruction, vandalism, and arson of dozens of pregnancy centers.
The U.S. Supreme Court
Democrats have long insisted that the Supreme Court’s decisions are the “law of the land” but when the court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year, that philosophy was quickly replaced with the left’s favorite excuse for hypocrisy.
“The US supreme court poses a real threat to Americans’ democracy,” one headline in The Guardian blared.
Even before that, media, upset with the prospect of Trump exercising his presidential power to nominate yet another justice to the court, felt the need to explain “Why the Supreme Court is one of the biggest threats to American democracy.”
At one point, New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz threatened that “If the Court’s right-wing majority finds that it can continually push the boundaries of conservative judicial activism without undermining its own popular legitimacy, then the consequences for progressivism and popular democracy could be dire.”
Clarence and Ginni Thomas
The left believes that not only is the Supreme Court a “threat to democracy,” but so are Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife.
“Ginni and Clarence Thomas are the duo we wish we didn’t have to constantly talk about, but here we are. Their actions surrounding the insurrection are a threat to our democracy and the public’s trust in our courts,” Citizens for Ethics, a leftist watchdog group, tweeted.

The Electoral College
Our nation’s Electoral College was designed to best represent Americans no matter where they lived but the left says that constitutional design is a “threat to democracy.”
The left-leaning Aspen Institute blared that “The Electoral College Is a Threat to 21st Century Democracy,” adding that while “our founders felt we needed a brake against ‘mob rule,’ it is incompatible with our current national credo that every vote counts.”
Our Bicameral Legislature
According to Vox, though, the Electoral College “poses a smaller long-term threat to American democracy than the Senate,” because “the Senate undermines principles of equal democratic representation.”
“The Senate will continue to give small states, which tend to be rural and conservative, far more clout than their size deserves. That’s not just a problem for democracy in the abstract,” the Brennan Center’s Zachary Roth agrees.
Democracy Itself
As documented by The Federalist’s Elle Purnell, Democrats and the media also consider an elected majority in the U.S. Senate a threat to democracy.
This became very apparent when West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, “determined not to pass President Joe Biden’s Build Back Bankrupt plan.”
“Manchin is killing the Biden legislative agenda, and perhaps the future of American democracy too,” tweeted MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan.
Religious tests for holding public office are banned in the Constitution and go against the very core of the American tradition. But you wouldn’t have learned that listening Wednesday to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as he questioned Russ Vought, the nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
His questioning of Vought was nothing less than theological interrogation, and in the end, excoriation.
Here’s what unfolded when Sanders took the mic.
In a disjointed line of questioning that had nothing to do with budgetary issues, Sanders veered into the theology of salvation, singling out an article Vought had written for a conservative publication in 2015 that outlined basic Christian doctrine about God in contrast to the Islamic view.
Here’s the heart of the exchange (transcript courtesy David French of National Review):
This exchange spotlights comprehensive ignorance on the part of Sanders—ignorance of the American tradition, of religious toleration, and even of what religion is. It’s unlikely that Sanders doesn’t realize religious tests for public office are banned in the Constitution. I suspect he would applaud that ban as much as the next person, at least in the abstract.
Yet his line of questioning seems to show an ignorance of Article VI of the Constitution, which states that “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
Traditional Believers Need Not Apply
The implications of Sanders’ questioning are far-reaching. If taken to its logical conclusion, Sanders’ view would exclude all orthodox followers of an Abrahamic faith from holding public office.
Every Abrahamic religion—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, in their historic forms—believes that some people either will, or may be, condemned in eternity. This is Abrahamic Religion 101.
But for Sanders, such mainstream beliefs demonstrate bigotry and racism. Just read the statement his office released after his exchange with Vought:
This statement crystalizes the problem. Sanders wants public officials to have religious freedom, except when their religious views contain something he might consider bigoted, such as a view of hell or condemnation.
What Sanders is really pushing for, whether he knows it or not, is a “Universalists Only” policy for those
who would serve in public office. You can believe what you want, as long as your theology doesn’t teach that others might one day be judged.
And with that brush stroke, Sanders excludes historic Christianity, Judaism, and Islam from the public square. Ironically, his view of religion makes little room for some of the most devout followers of religion.
What’s at stake here is meaningful diversity in the public square. As Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., noted in a statement:
Such beliefs have always been part of the fabric of American public life.
But that doesn’t deter Sanders. Religion that is pure and undefiled in the eyes of Bernie Sanders is progressive, nonjudgmental—in a word, unorthodox. Instead of a government that is truly of and by the people, Sanders’ logic would give us government of and by the unorthodox—a kind of theocracy of the heretical.
Have an Imagination, Bernie
But what is perhaps most tragic here is Sanders’ complete lack of imagination for how people with deep differences in worldview can coexist with each other. In Sanders’ view, if you think others will be condemned in eternity, you cannot possibly love or respect them, let alone live in peace with them. Your belief that they might be condemned is proof enough that you hate them.
But how is that logical? That’s as absurd as saying Joe sees a man in the street who is going to get hit by a bus, and therefore, Joe hates him.
Perhaps Sanders has only encountered hateful examples of religion in his 75 years of life. Perhaps the reason he can’t fathom true religious coexistence in the midst of deep disagreement is that he’s never seen it happen.
Yet it does happen, all the time.
To see a beautiful picture of this, Sanders need look no further than the conservative movement. Conservatives are a diverse smattering of evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and secular Americans. We believe all kinds of things about each other’s eternal fate that Sanders would probably find abhorrent—yet here we are, arm in arm, working for a common political cause.
Sanders’ total lack of imagination here is tragic at a time when America’s ideological center is splintering. We’ve reached a critical time of polarization in which coexistence in the midst of profound disagreement is becoming more necessary than ever.
Yet it seems that only conservatives are prepared to deliver that kind of tolerance. The American left pays lip service to diversity, yet in practice routinely shuns the most important kind of diversity: diversity of viewpoint.
The left is very good at respecting diversity at the level of externals: skin color, religious tradition, ethnicity, etc. But when it comes to actual viewpoints, the left is a seamless monolith and wishes to stay that way.
Sanders is proof of this. He seemingly couldn’t care less whether Vought identified as Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, or Hindu. Those are just externals.
What he really cares about is the substance of Vought’s views. That’s the deep level of disagreement that the American left has not learned to coexist with.
Learning to Practice Actual Tolerance
Sanders’ line of questioning shows an alarming disregard for the Constitution’s ban on religious tests, but it also highlights the deeper problem of our cultural moment. Chiefly, it shows that the left needs to develop a greater imagination for how people with stark differences in worldview—including about other people’s eternal fate—might actually respect one another and live in harmony.
Until the secular left soaks this in, its lip service to diversity and tolerance will remain hollow and vacuous, constantly undermined by its own actions.
Disclosure: Russ Vought’s wife, Mary Vought, works for The Heritage Foundation, the parent organization of The Daily Signal. Russ Vought was formerly employed by Heritage Action for America, the think tank’s lobbying affiliate.
Commentary By
Daniel Davis/ @JDaniel_Davis
Daniel Davis is the commentary editor of The Daily Signal.