The New York Times published a front-page article on Saturday predictably identifying Republicans and Republican-appointed judges as “twin threats” to democracy.
Pulitzer Prize-winning (and we all know just how meaningless that label is) writer David Leonhardt did not mention the fact that two successive Democratic administration have sought to govern by executive order rather than working through Congress; that the Department of Justice and other agencies have become politicized; that Democrats sought to undermine the previous administration with a false “Russia collusion” conspiracy theory; that Democrats back limits on free speech; or that Democrats indulged unrest across the country in 2020.
“The first threat is acute: a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — to refuse to accept defeat in an election,” Leonhardt wrote. That’s rich, considering the Democrat Party’s long history of election denial; they have refused to accept every Republican presidential victory this century, whereas there is overwhelming evidence that the 2020 election was stolen through massive Democrat voter fraud.
He went on to complain that the Supreme Court does not make its decisions based on “popular opinion”:
The run of recent Supreme Court decisions — both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular — highlight this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees seems poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades. And the court is only one of the means through which policy outcomes are becoming less closely tied to the popular will.
In Leonhardt’s view, the problem is that America is not a true democracy in which the majority rules. He backs Democratic voting reforms; granting statehood to the District of Columbia (and hence two virtually permanent Senate seats to Democrats); limiting the Supreme Court’s power; and other Democrat-friendly proposals. So much for the constitutional role of checks-and-balances, and the Bill of Rights, in restraining the potential tyranny of a temporary majority.