If. . .

Something like 73% of Republicans (I’d guess about 30% of the entire electorate) believe or falsely claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that Biden is not the legitimate president. They therefore feel, or falsely claim to be, justified in doing whatever they can to replace Democratic control of Congress and the presidency with Republican control, including instituting blatantly anti-democratic measures such as grossly partisan gerrymandering, voting suppression, concerted intimidation of election officials, and even, in the case of the presidential election, empowering Republican-controlled state legislatures to substitute Republican slates of electors for ones responsive to the will of the majority of voters. This means that about thirty percent of the electorate is willing to trash democratic norms based on false beliefs or false cynical claims in order to secure longterm entrenched Republican rule.

Many analysts have observed that democracy itself is on the ballot in 2022 and 2024 elections. It’s more than “on the ballot.” It eclipses all other issues in significance. If all voters understood that Democrats are committed to preserving democracy, and Republicans to ending it, Democrats would easily prevail in the upcoming elections.