A poll of swing-state voters shows that Americans rate threats to democracy as an important issue, but that the president has yet to convince them he is the one to defend it.

I’ll note that this is substantially at odds with the candidates positions and history:

Joe Biden: Mr. Biden has framed the stakes of his re-election campaign as a fight to preserve American democracy. He has forcefully condemned Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and he has pursued — but Congress has not passed — legislation to expand voting access and counter restrictions in Republican-led states.

Mr. Trump is the only United States president who has refused to accept his loss in a democratic election. He tried to overturn the 2020 election and has sought to delegitimize the electoral system. He also uses terms like “vermin” to describe his political opponents and other groups, including migrants, dehumanizing swaths of society in language that echoes Hitler and other authoritarian leaders.

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  • tea
    221·
    6 months ago

    This is not really that surprising. Trump’s line is that Biden “stole” the 2020 election. People who believe the big lie actually think that Biden circumvented democracy. There’s no clear thing to fix this, that I can think of.

    The only good thing with this in my mind is that, in their minds, they think they’re protecting democracy by voting for Trump, which means, if you take away the lies and fraud, the norms/belief/expectations of democracy including peaceful of transfer of power and regular elections are still expected to happen. Once the liars stop lying to them, our democracy should kind of self correct. The downside is they’re too far invested in Trump to recognize that democracy might be taken from them by a dictator and they’ll believe they still have power.

    Our best hope is that, once Trump dies or is out of the picture, no one else can capture their imagination the way he has and he was a one-off. However it’s a big country and I think Trump might be just a blueprint for someone with higher aspirations than just narcissistic personal benefit.