Democrats’ commitment to the democracy message could cost them the election

Since January, Democrats have sounded the alarm that the number one issue at stake in the 2024 election is the preservation of American democracy. 

Last week Biden told supporters that Trump is  “a genuine threat to our democracy” and that “we’ve got to lock him up.” Similarly, Harris said that Trump, who she calls a fascist, is seeking “unchecked power.” Her official campaign website proclaims “If we're going to win this election and save democracy, we need you on board.” 

Voters aren’t buying it; they see democracy — a term so vague its projected disappearance is hard to imagine — as immaterial, and Trump’s threats to it implausible.

This might seem a harsh evaluation of voters, but they are likely evaluating the landscape quite rationally. As David Axelrod pointed out, “People sitting around the table talking about democracy. It’s probably because they don’t have to worry about the food they have on the table.” 

That assessment remains true, supported by polls that continually show the economy to be the top priority of voters of both parties. Democracy does not rank in the top 10 issues in the latest surveys.

Trump and Harris are neck and neck. Trump, after Jan. 6, two impeachments and 91 criminal counts, is performing better in polls now than he was in 2016 and 2020. That says a lot about how voters weigh his anti-democratic tendencies in relation to other issues.

Most voters feel they were better off under his administration.

Democrats have also failed to define what the loss of democracy actually means, making it easy for both parties to frame the other as the more menacing force. Trump and Vance have seized on this ambiguity, claiming it is Harris and her allies, not Trump, who are the true threat to democracy. 

“We actually do have a threat to democracy in this country… it is the threat of censorship,” said Vance during the vice presidential debate. 

“Only one candidate in this election has been shot at twice, and it’s not Kamala Harris,” the Trump campaign said recently. 

“She’s a fascist,” Trump said of Kamala Harris at a Georgia rally.

What would it mean, for example, to the average family of four making the current median income of $75,000 if the civil service shrank or if a president were to refuse the peaceful transfer of power, two possibilities Trump himself has actually floated? The economic consequences would be devastating, but Democrats have not articulated those downstream effects nor connected democratic stability to the issue voters care the most about. 

Instead, voters are left to conceive of the end of democracy themselves, piecing together the chaotic messages of elites. Does the end of democracy mean a loss of separation of powers? A police state? A monarchy?

To be sure, one of the strongest arguments Democrats make when citing Trump’s dangers to democracy is that he tried to overturn the results of a democratic election the last time he was in office. He did so publicly and unapologetically, for years, and still denies the results of the 2020 election. 

But Americans also saw those attempts end in an embarrassing unquestionable failure at the hands of Trump’s own supporters and co-partisans, judicial and military appointees and vice president. Congress and the bureaucracy constantly thwarted Trump during his first term, and are more on guard and prepared to deal with his flirtations with authoritarianism than ever before. 

Simply put, Trump lacks the discipline, credibility and knowledge to implement most of the policies he explicitly endorses, let alone those Democrats accuse him of planning. It’s reasonable for voters to question Democrats’ dire warnings based on what they have seen with their own eyes. 

Which is it: Is Trump inept or is he dangerous? Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) famously said Trump “doesn’t collude with his own government” when explaining his doubts about the Russia investigation.

Experts have also conditioned Americans to ignore their warnings — many of which Democratic elites have leaned on to back up their own claims of Trump’s threats. Some have loudly and consistently predicted fascism since the 2000 election. In the current election, many alarmist claims — predicting spirals of organized violence, a failed state or civil war — have come from our colleagues in social science, public trust in whom has been at an all-time low post-pandemic. 

The same experts who told Americans that democracy would end in 2016 and 2020 are again predicting the end of the republic in 2024. Their having been wrong in the past matters when citizens evaluate their new predictions. Even if experts regain esteem, shaming voters for the misdeeds of their party does not effectively or durably persuade voters to defy their party.

An important lesson from the first Trump presidency is that our democratic system is strong and resilient. If Trump wins, he could appoint efficient and competent allies to run the government, lead a Republican majority in the House and Senate, and control the courts through appointments, and use these assets to implement an authoritarian agenda. But his first term shows just how unlikely this scenario is. 

Trump hires poorly, squanders Republican allies in Congress, and lacks loyalty from the judges he himself appointed. Trump dreams of destroying the status quo, but he is tilting at windmills. Many voters worry about what Trump says, but they are willing to tolerate his rhetoric because they don’t see his bluster as credible, and they are more concerned about issues germane to their daily lives.

Democrats may ultimately be successful in spite of their insistence on democracy as a central issue of the campaign. Their simultaneous focus on abortion, for instance, is resonating to some degree. It is a policy plank that makes sense in the eyes of the average voter. Roe v. Wade was overturned under a Republican president and by a conservative Supreme Court appointed in large part by Trump. 

But likely outcome of the upcoming election is that Trump wins and the republic does not cease to exist. What will Democrats say then? Voters ought to remember their cheap projections.

Lauren A. Wright is an associate research scholar and lecturer in politics and public affairs at Princeton University. Sean Westwood is an associate professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College and director of the Polarization Research Lab.