Republicans often claim that voters don’t care about “threats to democracy” or their presidential nominee’s history of lawlessness, given more pressing concerns like food and gasoline prices or crime or immigration. On the other hand, they have put a lot of effort into counteracting pro-democracy Democratic messages. They claim it’s actually the Biden administration that has endangered democracy by prosecuting Donald Trump and frantically registering “illegal aliens” to vote.
This week, most pro-Trump outlets are hammering away at the claim that Biden’s withdrawal from the general-election contest and the impending substitution of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee is a “coup” and a deadly insult to democracy that has rejected the judgment of primary voters. Vox’s Andrew Prokop collected some of the wilder assertions along these lines:
Biden “has now been deposed in a coup,” Trump-backing venture capitalist David Sacks wrote. “Undermining Democracy should never be condoned,” Trump ally Richard Grenell posted. “The coup is complete,” wrote Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ).
“What you just witnessed is proof positive that when the most powerful Democrat institutions and oligarchs unite to topple an American regime, they expect to succeed,” conservative activist Charlie Kirk wrote.
MAGA conspiracy theorists got more lurid about it. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had this to say:
There’s a soft civil war happening in the deep state and the elites in power. The Democrats, the IC [intelligence community], and their activists in the media have been lying to us saying there’s nothing wrong with Biden for years. Next, they start a coup against him demanding he drop out of the race when they couldn’t hide it anymore.
Then came the assassination attempt on Trump for the crime of winning.
Senator Tom Cotton was more specific:
Joe Biden succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes.
Donald Trump took a bullet for democracy.
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) July 21, 2024
The most hilarious “coup” accusation of all came from ex-con former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich (whose corruption sentence was commuted by Trump in 2020) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:
In the old-school way of Chicago backroom politics, Mr. Obama was the conductor of the band that successfully orchestrated the removal of the presidential candidate chosen by more than 14 million Democratic primary voters—to be replaced by someone he and the party bosses choose instead. It’s classic ward-boss tactics.
This line of argument is as feeble as it is loud and insistent. If Biden could be brushed aside against his will, why did it take so long, and why did the alleged orchestrators of the “coup” insist that Biden himself make the decision? Why did the “ward-bosses” let Biden endorse a successor? Why is he avidly campaigning for Harris already?
As for the allegedly offended primary voters, why do polls show that rank-and-file Democrats overwhelmingly approve of Biden’s decision and are overwhelmingly happy with Harris as the nominee?
Even more obviously, the imputation of lawlessness to Democrats is simply ignorant. “Biden’s” delegates were never legally bound to him, and a “presumptive” nominee has no right to a place on a general-election ballot until a formal nomination has occurred.
The “coup” argument is probably little more than an expression of pique by politicians and ideologues who had the opponent they wanted and are infuriated that they may have to rethink their strategy and message. They may even be regretting Trump’s choice of a running mate. But unfortunately, the one thing we know for sure is how deeply invested MAGA-land is in justifying Trump’s past and (likely) future refusal to accept any defeat as legitimate. So in this as in so many other cases, they are projecting interest in an election “coup” onto the opposition. If you want to see an attempted coup, you need look no further than January 6.
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