Donald Trump is often boastful, frequently coarse, even vulgar. He is not a model of virtue, or decorum, or even good manners. As a result, many people who have voted for Republican presidential candidates in the past plan on voting for Joe Biden. This impulse is certainly understandable. But it may not be wise.
The Democrats have given many signals that they view this election as the chance to secure political power for a generation. They are contemplating increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court to make it less conservative. FDR was the last President to consider doing this, after he had annihilated Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon by winning every state except Maine and Vermont. Despite this overwhelming victory, and Democratic control of both the House and the Senate, FDR was forced to back down from his plan to “pack the court” because there was a strong consensus that changing the structure of the Court in order to make it more amenable to the President was broadly inconsistent with the spirit of republican govermance.
Then there is the filibuster. Although not part of the Constitution, the requirement of a supermajority to end debate in the Senate has long acted as a check on the power of what might be a fleeting legislative majority to enact radical legislation. But a few months back Barack Obama denounced the filibuster as a relic of Jim Crow.
The fun and games don’t stop there. Democrats are talking about conferring statehood on the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The main reason for this is that Democrats figure that putting these two new stars on the flag means four additional Democratic senators for many years to come.
The Democrats are also broadly committed to giving citizenship to the great majority of illegal aliens living in America and to lessening, even eliminating the sanctions for unauthorized entry into the United States.
These proposals may sound altruistic, but they have a political basis. The Democrats have benefited greatly from the demographic change brought about by mass immigration. That is the chief explanation, for example, for why California is now a reliably Democratic state. From 1952 through 1988 California chose the Republican candidate for President every time, except in 1964. Since 1992, the Democrats have won the Golden State’s electoral votes every single time. For all intents and purposes, California is now a one party state. The Democrats would dearly love for mass immigration to turn the entire country into a one party state, too.
The Democrats now openly support measures that were beyond the pale not long ago. They believe in second graders being able to change their sex, as Joe Biden explained in the townhall meeting that took the place of the second debate. They want Christian organizations to set aside their religious convictions and to follow today’s secular morality instead, even when that secular morality is no more than a decade or two old. They believe that American society is shot through with “systemic racism” and that all whites, no matter how modest their circumstances, benefit from an unfair “white privilege.” And they believe, as Kamala Harris explains in this new video, that government should ensure that everyone ends up at the same level. Such a belief is antithetical to a belief in freedom, as Americans have always understood it:
The choice is stark. And maybe more is at stake than manners, decorum, or even personal virtue.
