The ‘Fascist’ Meme Returns:

Why the public isn’t buying this Democratic claim about Trump.

No doubt it was inevitable. As Election Day nears, and the progressive panic over Donald Trump escalates, Democrats are closing their campaign with a favorite theme: Mr. Trump is a threat to the Constitution, to democracy itself, and is even a “fascist.” But is this true, and could he really impose authoritarian rule in the U.S.?

The fascist meme is all over the place, an upgrade from President Biden’s description of the MAGA movement in 2022 as “semi-fascist.” MSNBC interviews earnest academics who draw a straight historical line between mid-20th-century Europe and the 21st-century GOP. A writer for The Atlantic takes the hyperbole prize with a headline that says Mr. Trump is talking like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. Why leave out Chairman Mao?

Kamala Harris is also hitting the theme. Mr. Trump “is seeking unchecked power,” she told a crowd this week in Pennsylvania. “Listen to General [Mark] Milley, Donald Trump’s top general. He has called Trump, and I quote, ‘fascist to the core,’ and said, quote, ‘No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.’ ”

Let’s stipulate that there are many reasons to be wary of handing Mr. Trump power again. His rhetoric is often coarse and divisive. His praise for the likes of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping is offensive, and betrays his view that he can by force of personality cut favorable deals with them. He indulges mediocrities who flatter him, and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election was disgraceful. These columns preferred any other Republican nominee.

Yet despite it all he won the GOP nomination for the third time, was headed toward victory over Mr. Biden, and is essentially tied with Ms. Harris. Are tens of millions of Americans really falling for a fascist takeover?

The answer is that most Americans simply don’t believe the fascist meme, and for good reasons. The first is the evidence of Mr. Trump’s first term. Whatever his intentions, the former President was hemmed in by American checks and balances. Democrats, the press and the federal bureaucracy were relentlessly opposed to all his works, as they would be again.

Mr. Trump’s worst attempt at stretching executive power—reallocating military construction money to build the border wall—was small beer compared with Mr. Biden’s lawless $400 billion student loan forgiveness.

Fascism historically was “national socialism”—government control over much of the economy. By that definition, Democrats today are the national socialists—using regulation, mandates, law enforcement, and trillions of dollars in subsidies to coerce Americans to follow their dictates on climate and culture. Mr. Trump was a deregulator in his first term and promises to be more so in a second.

Ms. Harris is making much of Mr. Trump’s comments on Fox last Sunday that “we have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the—and it should be very easily handled by—if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

It was a typically grandiose and self-defeating statement, but when we asked about it Thursday in an interview, Mr. Trump made clear after some rambling that he was talking about destructive riots. He said he’d “certainly not [use force] against my opponents—it’s against civil unrest.”

Even if Mr. Trump doesn’t mean this, he’d have to face the obstacles built into the American system. His own judicial nominees rejected his claims about a stolen election, and Republicans in and outside his Administration blocked his attempt to overturn the election.

JD Vance is no Mike Pence, but the Electoral Count Act makes a replay of 2020 more difficult. We have confidence that American institutions—the Supreme Court, the military, Congress—would resist any attempt to subvert the Constitution.

This gets to another reason most Americans don’t think Mr. Trump is a unique threat to democracy. They have seen Democrats break all sorts of political norms to defeat him.

Democrats exploited the Russia collusion narrative in 2016 until it was exposed as a lie financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Democrats tried to keep Mr. Trump off the presidential ballot this year. Democrats have used the law in no fewer than five cases to disqualify him—and New York’s Attorney General campaigned explicitly on a promise to find something, anything, to charge him with. This subverts a basic principle of American justice.

Democrats—including Ms. Harris—are also candid in saying they want to compromise the independence of the Supreme Court with new political rules and supervision. If they get even narrow control of the Senate, along with the House and White House, they say they will break the 60-vote filibuster rule to do it. That in our view is a greater threat to the Constitution than anything Mr. Trump might be able to do in a second term.

All of which is to say that the fear of fascism would have more credibility if Democrats didn’t abuse power themselves. If they lose the election against a flawed Mr. Trump, it won’t be because he is a wannabe Mussolini. The reason will be the Biden-Harris record.