Democracy is under threat — the wrong candidates could win more votes than their opponents in hotly contested free and fair elections.
That’s the worry of progressives insisting “Democracy is on the ballot” in the midterms. This trope, repeated endlessly on the center-left, is offered as a reason voters of conscience should cast aside their other concerns and vote Democrat up and down the ballot.
If this argument seems a touch self-serving — indeed functionally indistinguishable from run-of-the-mill partisan salesmanship — it’s because it is.
