Napoleon Bonaparte once said that “history is a set of agreed lies. “The challenge is that there is little agreement on what lies mean when lies attributed to one party are used through the other party to achieve the same goal.

For months, President Biden Joe Biden turned on white house props in red, white and blue to cheer on the U. S. team. He insisted that former President Trump Donald Trump, Republican Bernie Moreno suspend the Senate crusade. RNC committee proposes solution to censure Cheney and Kinzinger New revelations force Barr to testify on Jan. 6 MORE began months before the election to plant a false narrative that adjustments to election law were part of an effort to “borrow” the election. However, in recent weeks, Biden and others have pushed their own “big lie” that state election legislation is now being replaced to borrow the 2022 and 2024 elections. What is most striking is how those claims are indifferent to the legislation itself: the strength of this. pretend to be entirely founded on its repetition rather than on its foundation.

After the 2020 election, some of us express skepticism about allegations of widespread fraud, but we look forward to seeing the evidence presented in court. This evidence never materialized, and although he had predicted an effort to contest the electoral votes two days after the election, he wrote that calls to challenge the certification of the election were unfounded in fact and in law.

Now it is the Democrats and some media outlets that point to a “plot to steal” the 2024 election due to electoral adjustments in the United States. The adjustments are being used as an excuse to federalize U. S. elections, a dominance that has largely been left to the states. In fact, that legislation is described as an attack on democracy itself that the refusal to limit the Senate’s systematic obstruction rule is not a vote for the preservation of a long-protected consensus rule. , however, an accomplice of “electoral subversion”.

Biden’s adherence to the politics of rage has fueled hysteria around those laws. Last week, CNN White House correspondent Stephen Collinson denounced “a national effort across GOP-led states to make it harder to vote and avoid loan elections, which has its roots in President Donald Trump’s longtime Lies about voter fraud. “

He was revealing. In responding to Trump’s “big lie,” Democrats and many media outlets are doing something remarkably similar by claiming that such state legislation is an effort to borrow the upcoming election, claims that can fuel anger and violence similar to those noted after the election. 2020 elections.

The highlight of the relentless politics of the effort to “steal” the election is the lack of detail. In fact, when President Biden tried to give details, he won “Pinocchios” from the Washington Post fact-checkers. He has gone on and erroneously claimed, for example, that Georgian law (which he described as “Jim Crow on steroids”) was aimed at reducing voting hours. Election law does the opposite: it ensures that, at a minimum, ballot boxes remain open while allowing for extended hours commonly used on Election Day.

This month, President Biden went from the false claim of preventing other people from voting to the more Trumpian claim of whether ballots would be counted: “Not knowing who can vote, but who can count the vote, count the vote, count the vote. “— it’s about electoral subversion, not just about whether other people can vote or not. Any allegation of an error in the vote count can be (as in the case of the Trump dispute) proven through the courts. In fact, many of the provisions Democrats refer to have been reviewed and, at least temporarily, confirmed.

Requiring the voter’s identity has been cited as transparent evidence of an effort to borrow the election. However, 80% of the public supports voter identity regulations. The courts have overwhelmingly upheld those regulations as constitutional.

Yet the drumming of the Democrats’ “Big Lie” continues. This month, Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman announced Biden for confronting Trump’s “big lie” but claimed the election was stolen: “That dagger is still in the throat of democracy. “. The lie about 2020 justifies and enables everything Republicans are doing now to identify the means and the will to overthrow the next election. “

Again, Waldman does not say how elections are stolen. They are fair, he says.

What’s more appealing is how this claim is amplified through Biden and others despite all the indications that the public rarely buys it, with electoral reforms fitting slightly into some polls as the electorate’s top fear. This is the challenge of big lies. If lies are not accepted by the public, they can diminish their acceptance as truth in you rather than in elections. Friedrich Nietzsche observed: “I am not angry because you lied to me, I am angry because from now on I can no longer do so. With polls looking like the president is sinking and the electorate turning to the Republican Party, there are obviously some doubts about whether there really is a “dagger in the throat of democracy. “

There are clever religious arguments about issues like voter identity and early voting. The election bill also includes smart provisions that states must follow. Still, even the hosts of Atlantic and some of CNN have noted that some blue states have even stricter regulations (including Biden’s Delaware state), yet President Biden rarely claims that Democrats are looking to borrow the election.

Historically, states have been allowed to expand their own electoral rules. While many Democrats call for the federalization of elections as evidence of religion in democracy, those state laws are the product of democratic processes. When President Biden went to Atlanta to denounce Georgians law, claiming it was part of an effort to kill democracy, he was asking Georgians to deny a law that Georgians had created for themselves. . . in the call for democracy.

The fact is that democracy is through our courts, and through a series of laws that protect the right to vote and prohibit discrimination against minority voters. What’s intimidating is that this Democratic “big lie” becomes law through the president on the basis of fighting Trump’s “big lie. “It’s like condemning Bigfoot’s observations as the basis for creating a federal Bigfoot office.

The Democrats’ “big lie” may not convince the public, but it clearly convinces most of their party. Lies can give license to those predisposed to violence on both sides, from Antifa to Proud Boys. We already have enough lies by 2024. What we want is leadership.

Jonathan Turley holds the Shapiro Chair in Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can check their updates on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

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