The modern Democratic Party has a new sales pitch, repeated with the breathless urgency of a late-night infomercial host. The product? “Saving democracy.” The price? Your critical thinking.
The entire strategy hinges on a single, shaky claim: that they are the noble guardians of the republic, protecting it from the existential threat of Donald Trump.
But according to historian Victor Davis Hanson, if you pull back the curtain on this political theater, you find a startling truth. The people screaming loudest about the house fire are the ones holding the gasoline can.
In a brutal takedown, Hanson lays out the core contradiction:
“The problem with all of this is they are destroying democracy to destroy Donald Trump.”
It’s not a bug; it’s the feature. The mission to stop one man, he argues, has justified a scorched-earth campaign against the very institutions they claim to defend.
And he brought the receipts.
WTF Is Going On?: The Projection Playbook
Before Democrats started shrieking about threats to democracy, they were busy perfecting the art of subverting it.
Take gerrymandering.
Hanson points out that for years, the Left has been the undisputed master of carving up congressional districts into absurd, puzzle-piece shapes to secure power. Sophisticated studies, he notes, show that based on the national vote, Republicans are short about 6 to 10 seats in the House thanks to this creative map-making.
Now that states like Texas are recalibrating their own districts, the outrage is deafening.
The unspoken message from Democrats is clear: “We’ve already gerrymandered our states to the maximum. Don’t dare try to emulate us.”
When Republicans play by the same rules, it’s suddenly a five-alarm fire for democracy. The hypocrisy is thick enough to cut with a knife.
Why It Matters: The “Get Tougher” Gaslight
In response to their slipping grip, political fossils like James Carville are bellowing a new mantra: Democrats need to “get tougher.”
Hanson’s response is a masterclass in amused dismissal. Tougher?
He argues they’ve been anything but restrained. This is the party of:
- Cory Booker’s weekly Senate floor meltdowns.
- Hakeem Jeffries posing with a baseball bat.
- “The Squad” dropping F-bombs for viral clips.
- Jasmine Crockett hurling insults that can’t be repeated on air.
This isn’t tough. It’s a performative tantrum. But the real “toughness” was happening behind the scenes, in a series of unprecedented attacks on the democratic process itself.
Deeper Dive: The Three Great Scandals
Hanson identifies three earth-shattering scandals orchestrated to cripple Trump that make Watergate look like a minor clerical error.
- The Russia Collusion Hoax: Prompted by the Hillary Clinton campaign and facilitated by the outgoing Obama administration, this narrative almost destroyed Trump’s campaign, sabotaged his transition, and consumed nearly two years of his presidency with a complete fabrication.
- The Laptop Lie: Just before the 2020 election, 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. Hanson states they lied directly to the American people to influence an election, knowing the FBI already had the laptop and had authenticated it.
- The ‘Non Compos Mentis’ President: Hanson’s third great scandal is the one that played out in plain sight: the Democratic party and what he calls the “obsequious media” knowingly hid the fact that Joe Biden was not cognitively fit for office. They propped him up until the debate stage, where he “melted into a non-entity” before the entire world.
Wait, what? The guy who ran on restoring norms used the intelligence community to push a lie to win an election? It’s one of those quiet parts you’re not supposed to say out loud, yet here we are.
This pattern of behavior wasn’t an anomaly. It was a strategy. Hanson catalogs the onslaught of actions for which there is no historical precedent:
- Two impeachments.
- Trying an ex-president as a private citizen.
- Raiding the home of a former president.
- Attempting to remove him from the ballot in 25 states.
- Trying to get him “debanked” so he couldn’t write a check.
- Two assassination attempts during his campaign.
So when Carville says it’s time to “get tough” by packing the court or adding states to get four more senators, Hanson just scoffs. That was always the plan. They just failed to secure the power to do it.
Mic Drop: The Boomerang Is in the Air
The irony is brutal. The party that deployed every tool—legal, political, and institutional—to stop one man is now facing the consequences of its own overreach.
They are furious, Hanson says, because they are on the losing side of every major issue, from the border to the economy. They don’t have the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court. Their institutional power in the media and academia is under assault.
They are, in a word, impotent.
And so, Hanson delivers the final, devastating indictment, a truth so sharp it leaves a mark:
“You have been the most vicious and the most abject subverters of democracy all for the short term gain of destroying Donald Trump.”
Now, the boomerang is coming back. What they did to Trump is now happening to them, and they don’t like it one bit.
There are many names for it: Karma. Payback. Retribution.
Hanson’s diagnosis is simpler. It’s what happens when you create a false narrative that you are saving democracy, while you are, in fact, the one actively trying to destroy it.