In the years leading up to the 2024 presidential election, the Democrats and establishment Republicans who wanted to see Joe Biden, and later Kamala Harris, remain in office went all in on one overarching narrative above all: that Donald Trump represented an existential threat to American democracy. Biden’s team and their allies in politics and media repeated this claim day after day, essentially trying to convince millions of Americans that elections would literally stop happening in this country if Trump won.
Taking a step back, Trump was framed as the domestic enemy in a broader international fight that saw “autocratic” leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and others facing down a coalition of “democratic” governments.
Democracy versus autocracy was meant to be the defining dynamic of the day. Meaning everything from the war in Ukraine to the fight over climate change was framed as one big battle where the “good guys” were defined purely by their commitment to the democratic process.
And, in that global fight, no effort was more important—we were told—than keeping Trump out of the White House.
But then he won.
Despite the establishment’s efforts, a majority of American voters were not swayed by the “democracy-versus-autocracy” narrative. Or, at least, they demonstrated that they preferred the candidate who promised to close the border, wind down the war in Ukraine, cut down the extremely bloated federal bureaucracy, investigate the weaponization of the DOJ in recent years, and roll back federal climate policies while celebrating and vowing to continue the appointment of conservative judges and justices—among other campaign promises.
Now, President Biden—and, really, all the people around him who are actually running things—are in their so-called lame-duck period. And what are they doing as they wait to hand power over to the next administration? They’re doing whatever they can to make it harder for Trump’s team to implement the very policies voters just sent them to the White House to carry out.
Last week, we learned that the Biden administration is moving unassembled border wall material away from the southern border and selling it at an auction. Groups allied with the president are also calling on him to close immigration and customs enforcement detention facilities before leaving office to hamper Trump’s plans to deport illegal immigrants.
After losing the election last month, the Biden administration escalated the war in Ukraine by helping Ukrainian forces shoot long-range American missiles further into Russia. Now, the president’s team is rushing to send another $725 million to Ukraine before Trump is sworn in on January 20.
Earlier this year, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a ruling that makes it much harder for Trump’s team to overhaul the federal workforce. While Trump could still carry out this campaign promise, he now cannot do so through executive order. He is required to propose a new rule, which will likely bring years of legal battles.
Biden pardoned his son Hunter after he was facing prison sentences for federal felony gun and tax convictions. Now, the president is reportedly considering “preemptive pardons” for numerous allies that his team expects to be investigated by Trump’s DOJ.
Members of the president’s cabinet are rushing to spend as much money as possible in the various departments they oversee, EPA officials are hurrying to implement as many new environmental and climate policies as they can, and the president and Senate Democrats are racing to fill as many federal judicial positions as they’re able to before losing the White House and Senate.
Depending on where you stand on Trump’s agenda, you could see these efforts as heroic or disgraceful. But because the president and political establishment are ramming through policies that a majority of Americans just voted against, it’s impossible to seriously label these actions as anything other than explicitly undemocratic.
As someone who does not believe democracy is an ethical system or the best way to organize society, this alone does not bother me. But the hypocrisy is still important to call out.
Because, with their actions, the political class has again revealed that they do not actually care about democracy. They only use the fact that much of the public does care about democracy to try and serve their own ends.
The same goes for human rights abuses and crackdowns on dissent carried out by foreign governments that Washington wants to overthrow. When true, these are totally legitimate criticisms to level at these state leaders. But our government officials have demonstrated a complete willingness to ignore, support, and even partake in the same abuses when it’s useful to them. So, again, they are only using the fact that decent people care about these issues to serve their own agenda.
It is important to have principles. But it’s also important to recognize when people who do not share your principles are using your commitment to those principles to manipulate you. The political establishment in recent weeks has shown, yet again, that they do this. It’s time we stop falling for it.
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