Over the weekend, Donald Trump effectively demanded the end of America's constitutional democracy. On his Twitter-substitute Truth Social, Trump called for "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution," escalating his long-standing demands that the 2020 election be overturned in his favor. His call to terminate the constitution earned relatively little mainstream coverage. Trump's anti-democratic views are no longer surprising, plus there's no apparent mechanism for him to get his way on this, both of which likely contributed to the unwillingness to front-page his comments. But it also likely reflects an ongoing, shaky assumption in the Beltway press: That protecting democracy is too abstract of an issue for Americans to be invested.
During the weeks leading up to the 2022 midterms, mainstream election coverage appeared to be guided by the presumption that President Joe Biden's pleas to save democracy were largely being ignored by American voters, that high inflation and gas prices would instead drive them to punish the incumbent party at the polls and hand Republicans dramatic victories. This wasn't just conjecture, either. New York Times polling showed that, while voters did say democracy was under threat, they did not rate saving democracy as a voting priority.
