OPINION:
For weeks now, headlines have blared about the attacks on former President Donald Trump’s ability to appear on the primary ballot in several Democratic-led states because he allegedly perpetrated an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
This coordinated effort by phony nonpartisan nonprofits has no legal or constitutional basis. To those driving the campaign, that doesn’t matter.
Freshly sunburned President Biden is kicking off his reelection bid with fresh rhetorical assaults on Mr. Trump, comparing him to Hitler and framing him as a threat to our democracy.
What most commentators are missing in all the sound and fury around these two strategies by the Democrats is that they’re not really about Mr. Trump at all.
Mr. Biden and his angry army of acolytes aren’t just attacking Mr. Trump, their preferred candidate. They are attacking tens of millions of Americans. They are training their infrastructure and dollars on diminishing every American’s faith in the entire political system.
We know socialists are doing this in our schools and universities. We know that the left-wing corporate media is complicit in it. The 2024 campaign will put it all on steroids.
Never before has a president actively and intentionally sought to demonize all of the supporters of his political opposition. It would have been thought to be political suicide and morally unconscionable to attempt to tar your opponent’s supporters as racists, xenophobes and White supremacists.
Yet that is exactly what those on the Biden campaign intend to do. They know the legal efforts to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot are likely to fail, but they don’t care.
For the left, it’s about the long game. It’s about making cultural changes in the way people think about politics, governance and America generally.
The lawsuits allow their parrots in the biased press corps the opportunity to remind everyone about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
If the liberals lose in the courts and Mr. Trump is reelected, they will have fodder right out of the gate to drive their preferred narrative that he is an illegitimate president. It worked before. Expect them to try it again.
If they win in a couple of places like Colorado and then get overturned, the strategy allows them to then attack the Supreme Court, a new favorite left-wing pastime.
If Mr. Trump loses the election, in part due to the legal onslaught he’s been facing, millions of Americans will again believe that the system was rigged against their candidate.
Confident that they can drive out their base, liberals want as many Americans in the political middle or to the right of center to be so disenchanted with Mr. Trump or the electoral process that they stay home. In a close race in a swing state, that level of exhaustion and skepticism, already evident in the polls, can make a big difference.
Add to this strategy the president’s deliberate attempts to frame not just Mr. Trump but the former president’s supporters as domestic threats and extremists.
Dividing Americans, diminishing their confidence in our system and depressing patriotism are the primary tactics employed to help socialism take hold in our society. It’s been part of the liberals’ plan for decades.
Mr. Biden and the left’s open hostility isn’t about defeating Donald Trump or defending democracy. It’s about creating a culture of hate and fear. The systemic racism charges, the constant rhetoric about pervasive White supremacy, linking conservatives to domestic terrorism, and connecting those ideologies to Republicans is carefully cultivated language.
It is intentionally inflammatory and divisive. It’s classic projection.
Just as the phony charges of insurrection are a lie, so is Mr. Biden’s constant refrain about protecting democracy. Socialists love true democracy because it is majority rule. Our Founders wisely gave us a republic for that very reason.
Democrats want the 51% controlled by a small elite to make all the rules for the other 49%. They want a top-down system that disenfranchises voters, infringes on basic freedoms and censors public discourse.
Remember, Mr. Trump may be a convenient and often unfortunate aid to this strategy. But the left’s designs are much bigger and farther-reaching.
They play the long game, and they know every pro-freedom conservative is their real target. When they attack Donald Trump, they’re attacking the system. They aren’t just attacking every Republican voter; they are attacking America.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax and is a columnist for The Washington Times.
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