Are Americans Taking Democracy For Granted?

I wasn’t planning to pen another “end of democracy” article this week. Really I wasn’t.

That I so often find myself engaged in laments for democratic backsliding across the developed world speaks to the peril. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t just write to “hear” myself talk, although I readily admit to enjoying my own editorial voice.

Authoritarianism — autocracy — is en vogue, particularly the sort that’s creeping and insidious rather than all-at-once and overt. The threat to American democracy isn’t a coup that installs Donald Trump as an out-and-out dictator, it’s the GOP project to institute a Viktor Orbán-style illiberal “democracy.” Or Erdogan-style one-man rule disguised as a constitutional republic.

Of course, Trump’s working-class support base doesn’t know the first thing about Hungary under Orbán other than what Tucker Carlson’s told them — so, good things. During a 2023 interview with Carlson, Orbán declared Trump “the man who can save the Western world.”

In truth, Orbán’s an autocrat and Hungary’s a cautionary tale, not a model.

I bring all of this up again (which is to say for the second time this week) because Trump’s succeeded in flipping the proverbial script on Joe Biden’s messaging: To Trump voters, Biden‘s the threat to democracy.

According to a poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason, a slim majority of key voters (“Deciders,” as the poll calls them) in half a dozen swing states Biden carried in 2020 identified threats to democracy as an extremely important issue for them. And yet, the share who trust Trump to handle those threats (nearly four in 10) exceeds the share who trust Biden (fewer than three in 10).

Part of that (a lot of it) is just partisanship. If you’re a Republican, and particularly if you’re a so-called “MAGA Republican,” you likely believe “the deep state”‘s out to get “the Donald,” in which case the real threat to democracy isn’t the guy who tried to overthrow the government three years ago, but rather the government itself, which is trying to preserve “the swamp.” Or whatever.

But it’s not just that. There are external threats to American democracy too, and despite Trump’s avowed affinity for the world’s authoritarians (including Orban), some voters believe having a would-be strongman in the White House might deter those external threats. (It won’t. Especially not if the man in the Oval Office invites the foxes into the henhouse. Or the Putin into the White House.)

Almost all committed Biden voters (more than nine in 10) expressed confidence in US elections in the poll. By contrast, nearly eight in 10 committed Trump voters said they don’t trust the ballot. Among the Post‘s “Deciders” (no W. jokes, please), around half said the electoral process is fair.

Tellingly, nearly three quarters of “Deciders” (defined as Americans who voted in just one of the past two presidential elections and/or are between 18 and 25 and/or registered to vote over the past two years and/or didn’t necessarily plan to vote for either major party candidate this year and/or switched their support between the last two elections) said Trump won’t accept a loss in November. Almost half said he’d “try to rule as a dictator” if reelected.

The problem for Biden, though, is that not everyone’s buying the whole “democracy under siege” bit, Trump win or not. Voters, Justin Gest, a George Mason professor, told the Post, are “taking [the] system of checks and balances for granted.” Many voters are willing to gamble on Trump because they believe America’s institutions — the country’s hallowed Constitution — are a sufficient firewall to dictatorship. What could go wrong, right?