Presidential historian Michael Beschloss on Wednesday night bemoaned to MSNBC's Chris Hayes the bleak future of American democracy should Republican candidates win their races next Tuesday, claiming a GOP victory would bring "a brutal authoritarian system" and end "our rule of law."
On MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes, Beschloss, one of President Joe Biden's favorite historians, echoed Biden's rallying speech earlier Wednesday evening, claiming the most important issue on the ballot is Republicans' threat to democracy, not inflation or other concerns. Numerous polls show that voters think otherwise. Beschloss is among many liberals trying to shift voters' focus away from skyrocketing inflation and the rising crime rates in Democrat-led cities.
"A historian 50 years from now—if historians are allowed to write in this country and if there are still free publishing houses and a free press, which I'm not certain of," Beschloss said. "But if that is true, a historian will say, what was at stake tonight and this week was the fact whether we will be a democracy in the future, whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed."
Before introducing Beschloss, Hayes played a clip of Biden's speech in which the president said electing MAGA Republicans is a "path to chaos," a claim with which Hayes agreed.
"Whether we take that path to chaos, whether we continue to march down it, is one of the major choices—if not the major choice—voters face this coming Tuesday," said Hayes.
Beschloss—who is in Biden's elite circle of historians and has compared Biden to former presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson "in terms of transforming the country in important ways in a short time"—also agreed that the president was "absolutely right."
"We could be six days away from losing our rule of law," Beschloss said. "We're on the edge of a brutal authoritarian system, and it could be a week away."