How Trump’s Lies Undermine Democracy

Jonathan Bernstein: “To the extent a party just makes up stuff, it tends to undermine the most minimal claims about democracy.”

“There are lots of answers to the question of how democracy works, and some of them are very complicated. But the simplest one, and in a way the most basic, is that democracy “works” by giving the in-party strong incentives to produce good policy outcomes and the out-party strong incentives to find and exploit bad policy outcomes, and even to formulate alternative policies.”

“That doesn’t work if one of the parties flat-out lies about things. It’s less about what voters believe than what politicians believe. Trump when he was in the White House acted as if it didn’t matter what he did because he would just say everything was perfect; when Trump has been out of office, he has rarely bothered to make reality-based criticisms, and as the campaign goes on he seems less and less anchored by actual events.”