A poll of swing-state voters shows that Americans rate threats to democracy as an important issue, but that the president has yet to convince them he is the one to defend it.

I’ll note that this is substantially at odds with the candidates positions and history:

Joe Biden: Mr. Biden has framed the stakes of his re-election campaign as a fight to preserve American democracy. He has forcefully condemned Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and he has pursued — but Congress has not passed — legislation to expand voting access and counter restrictions in Republican-led states.

Mr. Trump is the only United States president who has refused to accept his loss in a democratic election. He tried to overturn the 2020 election and has sought to delegitimize the electoral system. He also uses terms like “vermin” to describe his political opponents and other groups, including migrants, dehumanizing swaths of society in language that echoes Hitler and other authoritarian leaders.

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  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    The issue is republicans don’t base their opinions on reality, and Dems do

    And with the DNC spending years saying primaries aren’t real and they can rig and even ignore results…

    It’s hard for them to argue they’re pro-democracy just a few months after yanking NH’s delegates after the state party refused to violate NH state law.

    Especially since we all know the reason the DNC didn’t want them to go first anymore, is they keep voting progressive

    It’s not enough to just be better than Republicans if we want to win. We need a party and candidates that live up to Dem voters standards.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    God I hate the Electoral College. Without that, we wouldn’t have such absurd weak points in our democracy that we call “swing states”.

    • Pheonixdown@lemm.ee
      0·
      5 months ago

      National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is only 72 Electoral Votes away from being enacted, but it’s getting harder and harder…

  • tea@lemmy.today
    0·
    5 months ago

    This is not really that surprising. Trump’s line is that Biden “stole” the 2020 election. People who believe the big lie actually think that Biden circumvented democracy. There’s no clear thing to fix this, that I can think of.

    The only good thing with this in my mind is that, in their minds, they think they’re protecting democracy by voting for Trump, which means, if you take away the lies and fraud, the norms/belief/expectations of democracy including peaceful of transfer of power and regular elections are still expected to happen. Once the liars stop lying to them, our democracy should kind of self correct. The downside is they’re too far invested in Trump to recognize that democracy might be taken from them by a dictator and they’ll believe they still have power.

    Our best hope is that, once Trump dies or is out of the picture, no one else can capture their imagination the way he has and he was a one-off. However it’s a big country and I think Trump might be just a blueprint for someone with higher aspirations than just narcissistic personal benefit.

  • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    a little more than half of voters classified as likely to decide the presidential election say threats to democracy are extremely important to their vote for president, … Yet, more of them trust Trump to handle those threats than Biden.

    Fucking hell. Trump is that threat.

  • PorradaVFR@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 months ago

    I suppose “the media has catastrophically failed in it’s job to inform many voters” wasn’t as catchy.

    • mriguy@lemmy.world
      0·
      5 months ago

      “The media has wildly succeeded in its effort to misinform many voters” would be more correct. This has been a relentless, deliberate strategy. If they had just been incompetent it would not be this lopsidedly wrong.

      • PorradaVFR@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 months ago

        Well put - and I expect we’d agree that the worst are outlets like the NYT and WP that trip over themselves trying to appeal to a demographic that hates them by constantly pushing “both sides” or worse pretending it’s normal partisan dynamics and not an utterly corrupt SCOTUS and dysfunctional Congress let alone aspiring authoritarianism on one side. They focus on eyeballs and revenue, journalistic integrity be damned.