Sixty-three percent of Americans believe that Joe Biden legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency in 2020; while the doubters number only 36 percent,
78 percent of Republicans cast Biden's victory as illegitimate.
This finding, based on CNN polling, represents a five-alarm fire for democracy.
Republicans overwhelmingly have embraced Trump's Big Lie. Few Republican officials -- who are unlikely to thrive in upcoming primary elections in 2022, should they chose to run (for anything from precinct committeeman to president) -- have pushed back against this litmus test for politicians and activists who wish to remain in good standing in Trump's party. Fox News Channel, it's wannabe imitators, rightwing talk radio, Breitbart, and other outfits that comprise the conservative media universe have fed the Big Lie. Republican-dominated state legislatures across the country continue to conduct fraudulent "audits," impose restrictions on voting (aimed squarely at Democratic constituencies), and replace independent, nonpartisan election officials with Republicans who will be authorized to overturn actual voting results based on the conviction that the only legitimate elections are those that the GOP wins.
Several generations of Republican voters have been taught to discard mainstream sources of authority (journalists, research scientists, doctors) and instead take their cues from those who hew to the party line. And the party line in today's GOP isn't guided by tradition, or values, or principle, but by a fierce dedication to stoking fear and hate of its political opponents. Even lifesaving vaccines -- which Fox News Corporation has embraced as corporate policy -- have been wrenched into weapons of the culture war by the star personalities on FNC, the right's most influential disinformation network.
Republican voters overwhelmingly believe the Big Lie. (Just as they have accepted other lies -- from the sources where they have placed their trust -- told to advance the culture war. Note the survey responses among the unvaccinated in the table below.)
The Big Lie, the disinformation channels, the voter suppression, the hijacking of election procedures, and the counterfeit audits all serve to undermine faith in our democratic institutions, the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and confidence in American elections going forward. Republicans, in states where they are in control, are poised to steal the next close election under cover of the baseless doubts they have deliberately generated.
American democracy is under attack. That should concern everyone who opposes this anti-democratic campaign. And yet, the poll results show something concerning:
Three-quarters of Republicans -- under the spell of the Big Lie -- embrace the idea that American democracy is under attack. Upon brief reflection, that's hardly surprising since they believe that Trump, not Biden, won the election. That fact should scare the daylights out of all Democrats -- whose party is the base for the vast majority of small-d democrats in the country. We've had plenty of evidence of what is going down among Republicans. We watch and hear the fabrications, distortions, and misdirection from Republican media. We observe elected officials in Washington and across the country stampeding to snuff out traditions and norms that have preserved our democracy. We see Trump's continuing dominance of the Republican Party and the Republican base.
(And we should recognize, if we've paid more than passing notice to the vocal opposition to public health measures to combat COVID, how powerful lies can be for the swath of Americans who, in great part, comprise the Republican base: folks who trust FNC, Facebook quacks, and governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, while shunning evidence-based medical and scientific information.)
We have had more than ample warning.
"Trump-ism is going to survive Donald Trump, and he has unleashed a set of forces, anti-democratic -- small-D democratic -- anti-democratic forces that are going to plague American democracy for years to come," warned Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine. "I think we're in grave danger."
We have watched mostly from the sidelines as remedies, such as the Freedom to Vote Act, have been proposed.
Everything we've seen should alert us to the threat (and keep us from underestimating it). And yet: less than half, less even than a plurality, of Democrats believe that our democracy is under attack.
That's disconcerting.
Democratic leaders must step up. An all-out campaign for the Freedom to Vote Act is overdue.