The Democrats are cognitively dissonant

Believe it or not, I planned to write the gist of this column before Saturday night. However, a caveat. Unlike the newly christened Republican VP pick, J.D. Vance, I don’t directly blame hyperventilating Democratic rhetoric for last weekend’s attempt on Trump’s life. Responsibility rests with the would-be assassin.

Nevertheless, the party’s off-the-charts argumentation has rankled me for the past year. From the get-go, Biden has framed his campaign as a defense of “our democracy.” For Democrats, what’s at stake in this election is nothing less than the perpetuation of America’s form of government. Donald Trump’s threat is “existential.” Trump will revoke the Constitution. Re-elected, he’ll crown himself president for life.

They tend to forget that Trump has already been president and the world didn’t end

Biden supporters in the media, in the days when Biden had supporters in the media, have snatched snippets of Trump blather out of context, as the president did in his unreassuring (“Look…! Look…!”) Monday night NBC interview. Trump asserted he wouldn’t be dictator “except on day one,” when he’d “close the border” and “drill, drill, drill!” This was clearly tongue-in-cheek posturing to taunt his critics. But Dems took the bait, claiming ever since: “See! He’ll be a dictator! He even said so!” In kind, Biden again cited Trump’s threat of a “bloodbath” should he lose, conveniently overlooking the fact that Trump was referring to the grim fate of the American auto industry in any second Biden term.

Who’s commonly the king of hyperbole? Trump himself, who compulsively resorts to superlative and exaggeration. A proportion of the “lies” that Trump told in last month’s debate were fact-checked as untrue because the guy can’t help but couch any statement in terms of the “best,” the “greatest” and “most wonderful” or the “worst” and “most horrible.” But Democrats haven’t countered Trump’s bloviating with sedate common sense; they’ve bloviated right back. For months there’s been a contest over which party can sound more hysterical.

In this febrile political atmosphere, a sense of proportion is for suckers. It’s become nearly impossible to hold a medium view of January 6 — either a close call with governmental overthrow or a stroll through one of DC’s popular attractions by bovine domestic tourists. Ditto Trump’s graceless refusal to concede in 2020, which did truly shake American confidence in the peaceful transfer of power. Still, in January 2021, did Trump chain himself to the Oval Office desk? Did he attempt to mobilize the army and declare martial law? No, he left the building without being hauled out in handcuffs. He sought and was denied redress through the courts. He’s hawked his “stolen election” routine on the traditional campaign trail.

I reckon that most Democrats who adopt this over-the-top line genuinely believe that if Trump regains the presidency it really will result in the end of “our democracy,” in American terms the end of the world. A bit bizarrely, they tend to forget that Trump has already been president for four years and the world is still here. Furthermore, while I doubt they mean to undermine the US in the process of defending it, such overblown rhetoric portrays their country’s institutions as hanging by a thread, thereby emboldening American antagonists.

No form of government is impervious to demagoguery, but it’s faith in institutions that sustains them. People go through the motions of due process and in majority obey the law because they believe the system’s superstructure is solid. Polls may document a poor popular opinion of Congress and the Supreme Court, but most Americans are still living their lives as if the center is holding. They may be cynical in conversation, but what most Americans do — go to work, pay electric bills — still indicates a gut belief in the robustness of the country’s order.

It’s on this ordinary-life level that Democrats seem to be experiencing cognitive dissonance. That is, they sincerely believe Trump II would demolish the US down to its foundations — a warning that on Monday Biden continued to brandish — and they don’t believe it. The likelihood of a Trump victory has risen since the debate and ratcheted up again last Saturday. So I hear the usual threats from blue voters, often blue in another sense, that they’ll decamp to Europe if Trump wins. But I never hear anyone express defeated consternation after having done ten minutes of online homework, thereby discovering how infernally expensive, complex, bureaucratic and time-consuming applying for legal residency in nearly every European country has become. Why, I’d take these people more seriously if they were ordering inflatable dinghies on Amazon.fr.

Should they concede to staying put, how many Democrats are building bomb shelters, stocking up on tinned food and buying firearms to protect their families in the inevitable post-election anarchy? Are they organizing militias to resist the coming dictatorship? I bet they’re still planning to pay their November electric bill. I bet they still expect to get up on November 6, put the coffee on, throw bread in the toaster, and — if glumly, should the polls and pundits be right — read the paper.

Having to put a sock in the hysterics will hobble a campaign conceived as hysterical. For the time being, threatening Americans with the end of the world won’t cut it, because the hyperbolic approach will risk sounding like ginning up more inspiration to political violence. But Dems might also can the hyper-hype for sound political reasons. Wild threats wear out. In short order, your inured audience doesn’t get terrified; they get bored. (Try calling anyone a racist these days. They’re more likely to yawn than cry.) As climate fanatics demonstrate daily, overkill apocalypticism conveys impotence, childishness and intellectual impoverishment. When you’re comparing your opponent to Hitler, you’ve hit your head on the ceiling, because there’s nowhere to go, and further huffing and puffing — “I mean, Trump will really, really, really destroy democracy!” — only makes you more ridiculous.

Yet rest assured that any “lowering of the temperature” that Biden called for after what Democrats call merely “a shooting” will barely last through the week.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.