Beauchamp uses academic jargon to disguise the weakness of his premise. He can’t call Trump an outright authoritarian because Trump gives press conferences, is for gay rights, tries to keep America out of wars, and tries to remove regulations on businesses. Trump can also be an infantile crybaby, but that’s petulance, not authoritarianism. Instead, Beauchamp warns of “powerful political factions in established democracies” that “worked to alter the very fabric of the democratic system” and “were able to replace democracy with something altogether different: a system that appeared democratic at first glance but was fundamentally rigged in favor of the ruling party.” This, Beauchamp declares, is “competitive authoritarianism.”

Competitive authoritarianism “maintains formal democratic rules but breaks those rules in order to protect a special class.” They also “gerrymander, rig campaign-finance rules, control the media, politicize the justice system, and harass opposition parties — all quietly enough to maintain the veneer of democracy, but effectively enough to rig elections in their favor.” The result? “Restrictions on the free press, crackdowns on civil rights groups, politicization of courts and law enforcement, repression of ethnic or religious minorities … all examples of ways that democracy can be eroded.”

Again, with Obama’s war on the press, his contraception mandate, his drone strikes, and now Biden’s lawfare against Trump, with the stifling wokeness that puts boys in girls locker rooms and forces journalists to censor themselves, with chaotic voting regulations and an all-out assault on the Supreme Court, what Beauchamp is describing is the Left, not the Right.