It is regular election-year politics to claim that the other side is scary, but there’s something extra creepy about a president who declares that it’s undemocratic for the wrong party to win. It is, frankly, a bit undemocratic.
President Joe Biden and his party have spent a decade saying that if their favored politicians don’t win, it’s an undemocratic result. The perversity of that statement doesn’t need explanation.
THESE STATES SHOW HOW SENATE CAMPAIGN MAP IS CHANGING LATE IN THE GAME
Take a few minutes and watch this video of Democrats claiming the 2016 election was stolen, hacked by Russia, and that Donald Trump was an illegitimate president.
Democrats have no leg to stand on when it comes to defending democracy. Their single largest issue in the 2022 election is Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Democrats hold as sacrosanct Roe, which was one of the most anti-democratic rulings of all time, removing abortion from the reach of Congress, state lawmakers, and voters. Dobbs returned abortion to the democratic realm.
Biden points to the victory of Giorgia Meloni in Italy as a threat to global democracy. “You just saw what’s happened in Italy in that election,” he told a crowd of fellow democracy-worriers.
Pres. Biden raised threats to global democracy last night — pointing to Italy.
“You just saw what’s happened in Italy in that election. You’re seeing what’s happening around the world. The reason I bother to say that is you can’t be sanguine about what’s happening here either” pic.twitter.com/A1ZSidzILC
— Matt Viser (@mviser) September 29, 2022
Well, what happened in Italy in that election? Was there fraud? Voter suppression? Shenanigans? Were ballot boxes stuffed?
No, it’s just that the wrong candidate won. Well, from Biden’s perspective.
Biden doesn’t try to make the case that Meloni will take steps to erode democracy. The closest anyone comes to making that case is by pointing out that her party has its roots in pre-World War I fascism. I don’t think Biden wants to play the “what are the historical roots of your party?” game.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The establishment case against Meloni often focuses on her Euroskepticism. She spoke out against the concentration of power in the European Union and the EU’s tendency to try and overturn the will of voters in member states. It is worth pointing out that she doesn’t even want to leave the EU — she just views it as too powerful.
But the EU, like Roe, is an elitist, anti-democratic undertaking. You can prefer giving more power to the elitist, anti-democratic EU to democracy — and I’m sure Biden does — but you can’t also call yourself the champion of democracy. Instead, you’re just trying to paint your opponents’ political participation as illegitimate, which isn’t exactly a democratic way to behave.
