The Washington Post has been warning of Donald Trump as a threat to democracy since the 2016 campaign. So it's a little surprising when the Post's Editorial Board came together for an article titled: "Democracy in 2024 was noisy and chaotic. It was also resilient."
First, the Post editorialists were forbidden from endorsing Kamala Harris. Now they're upsetting the Left by writing democracy is resilient! Meltdown alert!
In the United States, voters chose Donald Trump for a second term with popular-vote and electoral-vote victories, despite dire warnings from his critics that his return to the White House would threaten America’s democratic norms and institutions...
Democracy, when it was allowed to function, worked exactly as it always has: It was messy and noisy and sometimes produced muddled outcomes with power divided and no clear winners and losers — in other words, a reflection of the polarized state of many modern societies.
To be sure, voters were in a foul mood this year and punished incumbents across the board. But the discontent was not ideological, as ruling parties of the left, right and center were pummeled at the polls.
The Posties referred to how the Conservative Party was turned out in Britain, while Justin Trudeau is looking like toast in Canada, and France and Germany are in flux. Trump was barely mentioned, but we've heard so much about how a Trump victory would send a horrible signal about democracy in decline. You might sense a 1/6 echo in this:
But by and large, the institutional guardrails have held. In most places where the voting was free and fair — and there are obvious exceptions — incumbents who lost accepted their defeats. Post-election violence was largely kept to a minimum
But the primary message remains:
It’s difficult to draw firm conclusions across countries and continents with differing histories and political traditions. But one is that democracy is proving more resilient than its critics — and even many of its advocates — had thought.
This is an exception. Just a week before Christmas, the Post issued results of its latest poll on Trump's next allegedly authoritarian moves:
Majority of Americans oppose Trump’s proposals to test democracy’s limits
A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds Americans split on whether Trump will try to rule as a dictator, but confident any effort would be blocked.
The pollsters asked about scenarios Trump hasn’t advocated. “An overwhelming majority of Americans across the political spectrum do not think Trump should jail reporters who write stories he doesn’t like.”Plus “a 72 percent majority of Americans oppose police using force to stop anti-Trump protests.”
Plus you have to laugh out loud at the Post asking about objections to “Having the Justice Department investigate Trump's political rivals.” If that’s dangerously undemocratic, why didn’t they ask about Biden’s DOJ?
