Evidence is mounting that the Democrats’ major campaign theme – that Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy” hurt them more than it helped them.
Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and other Democrats regularly compared Trump to Adolf Hitler as she tried to establish the idea in voters' minds that Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist.
Throughout the campaign Kamala Harris and her allies attempted to cast Donald Trump as a threat to the Constitution.
And as the campaign drew to a close, Harris increasingly focused on warning Americans about the perils of reelecting Trump and offered an olive branch to disaffected Republicans.
Harris also highlighted remarks from several former Trump officials, including his former chief of staff and retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, who described Trump as a "fascist."
As our friends at Lifezette documented, this “anti-democratic rhetoric was picked up by the more leftist elements of the mainstream media. “It’s not alarmist: A second Trump term really is an extinction-level threat to democracy”, was the headline of a Vox article published three days before the election. That, itself, wasn’t a standalone claim, with the New York Magazine repeating the Democrat argument in September. Even now the dust has settled, corporations such as the Washington Post continue to regurgitate the perceived threat to democracy.”
Obviously, the results of the election confirm that kind of campaign rhetoric didn’t work. And there’s some growing evidence that it actually hurt Kamala Harris.
NBC News reported that when voters were asked to choose among five issues, 34% of voters said democracy mattered most to their votes, while 31% said the economy. Abortion (14%) and immigration (11%) ranked as the next-most-important issues, while just 4% named foreign policy.
Men and women both said the state of democracy was their most important issue, followed by the economy. Two in 10 women said abortion was most important, compared with 8% of men. Immigration was ranked slightly higher among men (12%) than women (10%). Foreign policy lagged behind as a priority for both groups.
However, in a hilarious turn of events, among those voters who identified threats to democracy as their #1 issue, Donald Trump garnered a majority of their votes.
Roughly 3 in 4 voters said they think democracy in the U.S. today is threatened, with Trump being +4 with those who think democracy is “very threatened” and +1 with those voters who think democracy is “somewhat threatened.”
It looks very much like Harris, ignoring the impact of four years of revelations about government spying on Trump and censorship of Trump and conservatives, ended up incentivizing her opponents with all the “democracy is on the ballot” rhetoric.
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie's ConservativeHQ.com. A veteran of over 300 political campaigns, including every Republican presidential campaign from 1976 to 2004, he served as a staff member or advance representative for some of America’s most recognized conservative political figures, including Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and Jack Kemp. A member of American MENSA, he served on the House and Senate staff and on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle. Rasley is a graduate of Hanover College and studied international affairs at Oxford University's Worcester College.
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