2020 is a choice between Democracy and Fascism

How many times — and in how many elections — have Republicans framed the choice as one between freedom and socialism?

Democrats have never nominated a candidate even remotely close to the center-left politics of other Western democracies. Yet that’s never stopped Republicans from conflating American liberalism with communism. They’ve been doing it since the 1890s — and they’ll keep doing it no matter how far right the Democratic Party drifts.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was called a socialist. So were Truman, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, and Obama. Each one, in his time, was branded a Marxist, a communist, or an enemy of American freedom. The script never changes.

But the danger now runs in the opposite direction.

In the first debate of the 2020 election, Donald Trump addressed the far-right hate group Proud Boys and told them to “stand by.” He has publicly praised Kyle Rittenhouse — the 17-year-old militia member who killed two people and wounded two others in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He called the white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville “very fine people” after one of them murdered a protester. And he refused, point blank, to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost.

If Democrats have spent more than a century being falsely smeared as communists, it’s long…