Republicans appear to have discovered that the surest sign of a healthy democracy is spending every election warning that democracy will end if they lose.
The sirens are already sounding. Turn on Facebook, and somewhere, somebody is warning that if Democrats win in November, America will become communist by Thursday afternoon. Your pickup will be confiscated. Your church will be converted into a gender-neutral recycling center. Your backyard barbecue pit will be nationalized. By Christmas, apparently, we will all be standing in line for government-issued tofu.
It is impressive how quickly this country can become communist every two years.
The strange part is that Republicans have been running this warning since roughly the invention of television. Medicare was socialism. Social Security was socialism. Public schools were socialism. Obamacare was socialism. Joe Biden was a communist. Barack Obama was a communist. Kamala Harris was a communist. Somewhere, somebody probably called Dwight Eisenhower a communist for building the interstate highways.
Yet somehow capitalism keeps surviving.
What has changed this year is the volume. Republican strategists are publicly warning about potentially historic midterm losses, Democrats have been outperforming expectations in special elections, and some Senate and House races Republicans expected to control are suddenly competitive. When confidence begins disappearing, the campaign message changes. It stops being, “Look what we did for you,” and becomes, “Dear God, look what they will do to you.”
That is when communism gets pulled out of storage.
It is a very convenient ideology because nobody has to define it anymore. “Communist” can mean higher taxes, lower taxes, health insurance, abortion rights, environmental regulations, immigrants, teachers, college students, electric cars, windmills, public transportation, or somebody at Starbucks who looks suspiciously educated.
The beauty of the system is that no evidence is required. If Democrats propose helping somebody, socialism. If government regulates a corporation, communism. If government gives billions in tax breaks to corporations, that is apparently capitalism.
Which brings us to Texas, where Greg Abbott can subsidize giant corporations, offer tax incentives, help build infrastructure for billion-dollar companies, and then warn voters about socialism with a perfectly straight face.
That takes talent.
The real purpose of the “communist America” siren is not ideological education. It is turnout. Republicans know fear works. A voter who is disappointed may stay home. A voter who believes the neighborhood barbecue pit is about to be seized by Marxists will crawl over broken glass to vote.
So expect the warnings to get increasingly imaginative as November approaches. Democrats will not merely raise taxes; they will abolish money. They will replace football with mandatory poetry readings. Texas brisket will be rationed. The Pledge of Allegiance will be rewritten by a committee in Vermont.
And somewhere on Facebook, somebody’s uncle will share it before breakfast.
None of this means Republicans are certain to lose. Elections are elections, polls move, and frightened voters really do vote. That is precisely why the sirens are sounding.
When politicians are confident, they tell you what they are going to do.
When they are scared, they tell you what the other side is going to do to you.
And judging from Facebook lately, the communists must be about fifteen minutes away.
