Democracy as the MacGuffin

One of the signs that the Democrat political machine in America is running out of palatable ideas is the fact that they have resorted to using democracy itself as the MacGuffin for the 2022 Midterms. Despite positive responses in a focus group setting, taking this approach is not ideal. They are, in essence, ceding the opportunity to run on substantive issues while telling voters that for democracy to continue, they only have one choice.

Michael Malice @michaelmalice

I was wondering why Democrats kept harping about "threats to our democracy" as a mechanism of winning on Tues I didn't understand why they didnt just run a focus group to pick the slogan to run on--and then I looked it up. They did exactly that:

If that rings a bell, then you are probably familiar with how Soviet elections were run. Soviet candidates were hand picked by the Communist Party, eliminating any need to worry about silly things like substantive issues, and voters were given the choice to vote for a single candidate who was the only option on the ballot.

Obviously, there will be more choices on the ballot come midterm time, but consider what Americans are being sold by the propaganda racket. There may be more than one option, but there is only one democratic option because all other candidates are anti-democratic. This is just one of the mental cartwheels required to believe that ‘democracy is on the ballot’.

Rob Reiner @robreiner

Our closing argument: If we want to continue down the path our Founders have laid down for us, if we want to preserve our right to vote and continue our 246 year experiment in Self Rule, we must vote now. And that vote has to be for a Democrat.

The other problem with going all=in on the Republicans being a threat to democracy is normie voters can literally see the failure of democratic institutions (notably, the rule of law) accelerating since the bad orange man left office. On the one hand, Democrats need to convince people that these institutions would be failing regardless of the outcome of the last election. Otherwise, people might point the finger at Democrats on issues like crime, illegal immigration, executive overreach, judicial intimidation, corruption, the suspension of rights (ie., for the unvaccinated), et cetera. On the other hand, they have to convince people that the outcome of the next election is the only way to save these failing institutions.

It’s a circle that simply cannot be squared, but it beats the alternative of actually talking about issues like crime, illegal immigration, executive overreach, judicial intimidation, corruption, the suspension of rights, et cetera. By using a MacGuffin like democracy as their #1 issue, they are unironically hoping to prey on the stupidity of the electorate.

In a strange way, it reminds me of the movie Escape from New York (something many people can relate to these days).

The plot is simple, the President’s plane has crashed in New York, which has been made into a penal colony due to rampant crime. Snake Plissken, the anti-hero protagonist, is asked to rescue the President while ensuring he also brings back a tape (the MacGuffin) he is carrying. When Snake asks what’s on the tape, he is told that the tape will ensure the “survival of the human race”.

In the process of rescuing the President, Snake switches the tape with a copy of Bandstand Boogie by Les Elgart. After they escape, the President is preparing for a live press conference in which he will play the contents of the tape to the world. Snake asks the President how he feels about all the people that died rescuing him, to which the President dismissively replies that they did a great service “for their country”.

Disgusted, Snake walks away and destroys the MacGuffin as the President plays the tape with Bandstand Boogie live on the air. If you switch “survival of the human race” with “survival of democracy” and “for their country” with “for the Party”, then you’ll arrive at the Democrat election strategy. The only question is whether the normie voter, too, will walk away in disgust.