The dumb voters who blame Biden for the end of Roe v. Wade
So dumb. So very dumb.
Want to get angry?
Want to get really angry?
If so, then take a gander at this New York Times story about recent polling on the 2024 presidential campaign. Bottom line: 17% of voters blame Joe Biden for the end of Roe v. Wade.
No really.
Trump supporters and voters with less education were most likely to attribute responsibility for abortion bans to Mr. Biden, but the misperception existed across demographic groups. Twelve percent of Democrats hold Mr. Biden responsible, according to New York Times/Siena College polls in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin and a Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll in Pennsylvania.
“I think the buck stops with him, so he had the ability to fight that, and that’s not what I’m hearing that he did,” said Terri Yonemura, 62, an abortion rights supporter in Las Vegas who said she would not vote for Mr. Trump, but is unsure about Mr. Biden, so may not vote at all.
Listen: I try very hard to understand that I am not a normal person — wallowing all day every day in firehose of news and information. Other people have hobbies, interests, lives.
It sounds nice.
But.
This whole democracy thing does rely on a pretty simple idea. Our leaders are accountable to the people. For it to work, though, the people have to have a fairly decent idea about who should be held accountable.
Way too many people just …. don’t have that decent idea.
It’s not a majority, obviously. But it’s enough to swing an election one way or the other. And it’s more than a bit galling to think that Joe Biden could lose an election because a critical mass of uninformed voters decided to blame him for the results of choices made by Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.
They’re Republicans, by the way.
Correspondence corner
A reader actually sent me an email, taking issue with an aside about Hungary’s not-really-democratic government in yesterday’s newsletter.
Here’s what I said:
You know my thoughts: Trump is a menace to democracy. If he wins — and he might well win — we’ll be on the path to being a much bigger version of Hungary: All the trappings of democracy, but without the danger that GOP power will ever be threatened again.
And here’s my reader:
I get what you’re saying about Trump and Biden, both repulsive, but not about Hungary. GOP threatens? Trappings of democracy? Would that we had a leader like Orban, the only sensible “leader” in Europe.
What do you think you’re adding to the mix here?
I don’t have a good answer for the last question.
But I do have a pretty good answer to the other questions. Trumpist Republicans think Viktor Orbán’s government in government is pretty dandy. It’s something they want to emulate, and have said so publicly. And while that government does hold elections, it’s not really fully a democracy at this point.
Freedom House currently rates Hungary as “partly free.”
Since taking power in the 2010 elections, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Alliance of Young Democrats–Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz) party has pushed through constitutional and legal changes that have allowed it to consolidate control over the country’s independent institutions. The Fidesz government has passed antimigrant and anti-LGBT+ policies, as well as laws that hamper the operations of opposition groups, journalists, universities, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are critical of the ruling party or whose perspectives Fidesz otherwise finds unfavorable.
Orban himself has called his government “illiberal democracy.”
So now Hungary is an “illiberal democracy.” This is Orbán’s description, not a critical epithet leveled by his detractors. It is illiberal because the government openly favors, in both its rhetoric and policies, one set of beliefs at the expense of others. Christianity, or rather a specific strand of conservative Christianity, enjoys a privileged status; it is first among unequals. And this arraignment is arguably just a reflection of the will of the Hungarian people. An illiberal democracy is still a democracy, after all.
Or is it?
Probably not. Democracies are about more than holding elections. They’re about preserving rights. And on that front, Orban’s government doesn’t just fail — it actively seeks another path.
Call it “sensible” if you like. It’s not really democratic.