President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election were brazenly antidemocratic. Yet Trump and his supporters nonetheless justified their actions under the dubious pretense of preserving American democracy – as a matter of getting the vote right, of reversing voter fraud.
There’s a good reason they took this approach. Authoritarianism has long been rejected across the political spectrum. Democrats and Republicans routinely lob insults like “dictator” or “fascist” to describe politicians of the other party who are in power.
