Not an American either but I think it's more like democrates threatens the voters that if they don't vote for them, republicans are gonna kill them. Republicans are definitely making things worse, and democrates are blaming leftists that didn't vote for them.

It has been the Democrat's major strategy to gain political power in this country since 2016 when Trump first took office to advocate for a certain type of negative politics that isn't the Republicans, rather than advocating for a positive politics focused on what makes the Democrats.

Establishment Dems use the existence of MAGA Republicans to try to persuade voters that they're at least not as bad as MAGA, when they should be spending the time between elections persuading voters with all the good policies that defined the Dems for decades: positive immigration, civil rights, social safety nets, etc.

Establishment Dems have a politics of what are we against, while new sects of the party like Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have a politics of what are we for. The latter are seeing amazing success across the country.

It refers to the last 20 years or so, where the democrats platform has been so terrible, that the only way they get elected, is because they are not Republicans.

Obama only got elected because of how terrible Bush was, then Biden got elected because of how terrible Trump was.

The problem is this strategy only works with recency bias and people are starting to ignore it.

The Democratic party largely runs on a platform based more on counteracting the Republican party less than substantially improving anything. Despite claiming to be progressive, they have slowly shifted to the right over decades, and manage to bungle easy wins again and again.

Its more like gop are far worst than dems in mostly every regard. So not voting for dems is voting for the greater evil. So the gun is just the representation of the threat of more damage by madmen if you dont vote for dems.