Yet the party — very much including its leader in the White House, who ran for president warning about Donald Trump posing a potentially fatal threat to “the soul of America” — has chosen a different course. Rather than seeking to pass reforms to ensure Republicans can’t overturn election results at the state level or in Congress and then supporting a large but smaller, more tightly focused spending bill that would be widely embraced, Democrats have acted like this was an ideal time to dole out favors to every flavor of progressive activist in the party. The result has been a decline in popularity for the president largely driven by a precipitous loss of support from Democratic-leaning independents.

Now, it’s true that some on the left tilt their heads, squint their eyes, and otherwise work very hard to convince themselves that this way of proceeding is actually the best way of responding to the danger posed by Republicans — by addressing the economic problems confronting all Americans, including those attracted to Trumpian lies about election fraud. But that, again, is how you would talk and think if you considered the GOP a normal party offering an alternative slate of policies for the country. It’s not a serious response to a movement supposedly hell-bent on overturning American democracy in favor of fascism or something fascist-adjacent.

But then why continually invoke a rhetoric of alarm? Perhaps because it’s extremely effective at driving up turnout for Democratic candidates. One could say the same about most Republican invocations of voter fraud. Though telling Republicans that Democrats will inevitably cheat may convince a few GOP voters not to bother showing up on Election Day, it probably convinces far more that the party needs every single vote it can get to overcome a system rigged against them.