(While life goes on and we confront the issues and challenges before us at any given moment, our minds are troubled and hearts broken because of the tragic killings in Maine. Just needed to say so.)
In a recent column Steve Schmidt reported these poll findings:
In the latest Emerson College Poll, released on Thursday (Oct. 5), Trump leads Biden in a hypothetical poll by 2 points, 47 to 45 percent, with 8 percent undecided. That’s up two points for Trump over the past month, while Biden’s support remained the same. It also found that, among 18- to 29-year-olds, Trump leads by about 2 points, 45.2 percent to 42.9 percent. He also leads among 30- to 39-year-olds by about 11 points, 49.6 percent to 38.5 percent…Trump also leads Biden by 4 points in a CNBCAll-America Economic Survey poll from Wednesday. And, he leads by 4 points in a Bloomberg/Morning ConsultPoll of seven key swing states from Thursday.
Reading polls is a tricky business, to be sure, precisely because they are influenced by numerous factors, but they do give us a picture of a particular moment, and what these survey results tells us is that at the time these polls were taken a majority of Americans said they were willing to vote to kill our democracy.
None of these people believe that is what they would be doing if they voted for Trump in 2024, but they are in denial of the fact that Trump tried to kill our democracy once, and, if given the chance, will do so again.
The truth about what he did is no longer in doubt for people who take facts seriously. Not only was the “big lie” proven false in 2020 in more than 60 court cases, it was again this week when three of Trump’s election denying lawyers admitted in separate plea deals that they were lying when they said the election was stolen.
Yet, most Republicans say they plan to vote for Trump again in 2024, confirming the warning Heather Cox Richardson makes in her must read book, Democracy Awakening: “Democracies die more often through the ballot box than at gun point.”
If there is any doubt that the polls noted earlier should alarm us, consider what just happened in the House of Representatives this week.
Republicans elected Mike Johnson from Louisiana as Speaker of the House, rejecting Tom Emmer from Minnesota who was nominated earlier. Let me put the Johnson election in context.
Tom Emmer is an ultra- conservative who replaced the equally radical conservative Michele Backmann when she chose not to run for re-election in 2014.
Emmer, long viewed as among the most conservative members of the MN state legislature before he was elected to represent Minnesota’s 6th conservative district, was rejected by voters state wide when he ran against Mark Dayton for governor in 2012.
What cost him the Speaker’s gavel was his vote to certify the 2020 election of Joe Biden for the simple reason, as he said at the time, that to refuse to do so would mean he was denying his own election on the same ballot in the same election.
Mike Johnson did just the opposite. He accepted his own re-election, but not only denied Biden’s victory, but helped Trump come up with legal strategies to illegally undermine the Electoral College vote for Biden. On that basis House Republicans chose him over Emmer.
If Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee and loses, we will see a repeat of his 2020 effort to subvert the election results, only this time the Speaker of the House will be someone who will go along with it.
That prospect becomes more alarming by another factor that is more astounding than Republican support for Trump.
It is the indirect support Democrats and independents are giving Trump by refusing to stand behind Joe Biden’s reelection bid.
Based on 2020, we know Trump cannot win if non-Trump voters turn out for Biden, but at the moment close to 20% of Democrats and a slightly higher percentage of independents are unwilling to say they will, especially younger voters.
What they fail to see is that their failure to vote for Biden IS a vote for Trump, thereby helping Trump voters end our democracy.
The question is why, or as Richardson puts it, “Why would voters give away their power to autocrats who inevitably destroy their livelihoods and sometimes execute their neighbors?”
Actually, it doesn’t really matter. Whether it is simply being naïve, cynical, or blind to what is happening, the result will be the same.
I have always believed that most Americans are moderate, sensible people who at the end of the day choose right over wrong, good over evil.
But, alas, every day believing that is still true gets harder and harder.
Richardson says that the work of American Democracy is never finished. I suppose that means the choice in 2024 is both clear and worrisome. Will we do the work of Democracy in our own time in history or will we end American democracy itself.
Whichever way it goes, Richardson says, “will rest, as it always has, in our own hands.”
linnposts.com 