After spending much of 2022 hysterically warning that the midterms might be the last free and fair election, MSNBC’s The 11th Hour spent Thursday that the 2024 elections will be “the last election that we can recognize” if either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis is wins.
Host Stephanie Ruhle was referencing a recent statement released by 13 presidential foundations on the importance of democracy and civility when she turned to the Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens and asked “how do we get people—how do these foundations get this to breakthrough so people understand it? They realize it?”
Stevens, who was on to hype his new book on the topic, tried to use his history as a Republican campaign manager to justify Ruhle’s hysteria:
Yeah listen, I think this is why it was so important that in the last election, the president went out and talked about democracy. Really, that is what the ‘24 race is about. Democracy is on the ballot and I say this, and it sounds alarmist but I know these people and it’s true. If Donald Trump, or a Donald Trump want-to-be like DeSantis is elected president, it'll be the last election that we can recognize as an American election.
It sounds alarmist because it is. Stevens simply asserted that a Trump or DeSantis win threatens the very concept of elections, but naturally never provided any evidence. Stevens is simply telling MSNBC progressives what they want to hear and making some money from book sales in the process.
Continuing to not provide any proof for his outlandish prediction, Stevens claimed that:
We should listen to what they are saying. The difficulty with the unimaginable is that it is hard to imagine and that's when democracy slides into autocracy. It’s why I wrote this book; it's the people who believe in democracy have a difficulty expressing imagining it will and the autocrats take advantage of that and they use the powers of the freedoms afforded in democracy to help and the democracy. And that's exactly what is playing out here.
Stevens is justifying his far-fetched claims by saying that the unthinkable can quickly become thinkable, but when the same talking point gets trotted out every election, it becomes less of a sincere warning and more of a serving of red meat for progressive audiences.
This segment was sponsored by 4imprint.
Here is a transcript for the September 7 show:
MSNBC The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle
9/7/2023
11:30 PM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: Stuart, everything Basil just said, how do we get people—how do these foundations get this to breakthrough so people understand it? They realize it?
STUART STEVENS: Yeah listen, I think this is why it was so important that in the last election, the president went out and talked about democracy. Really, that is what the ‘24 race is about. Democracy is on the ballot and I say this, and it sounds alarmist but I know these people and it’s true. If Donald Trump, or a Donald Trump want-to-be like DeSantis is elected president, it'll be the last election that we can recognize as an American election.
So, we should listen to what they are saying. The difficulty with the unimaginable is that it is hard to imagine and that's when democracy slides into autocracy. It’s why I wrote this book; it's the people who believe in democracy have a difficulty expressing imagining it will and the autocrats take advantage of that and they use the powers of the freedoms afforded in democracy to help and the democracy. And that's exactly what is playing out here.
