2020 is a choice between Democracy and Fascism

How many times, in how many elections, have Republicans framed it as a choice for or against socialism?

Democrats have never run a candidate who came remotely close to anything resembling even the center-left of other Western democracies, but that has never stopped Republicans from trying to conflate American liberalism with some sort of communism. They’ve been doing it since the 1890s, and they’ll keep doing it regardless of how much the Democratic Party moves right. FDR, Truman, JFK, Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama were all smeared as Marxist communists by Republicans.

In the first debate of the 2020 election, Donald Trump spoke directly to the far-right hate group Proud Boys and told them to “stand by.” He has spoken favorably of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old right-wing militia member who killed two people and wounded two others in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He called marching white nationalists in Charlottesville “very fine people” after one of them murdered a protester and wounded several others. And he has refused to promise a peaceful transfer of power if he loses.

It’s high time Democrats, who have been unfairly smeared as communists by Republicans for over a century, frame this election as a choice for or against fascism — because that’s what it is.