At Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and their fellow founders set the nation on a democratic path, Biden warned that his legacy of government for the people by the people was in jeopardy in one of the hardest speeches in history. given by a president.
He warned that Trump and his fellow ideologues represent a dark and dangerous force bent on using lies and violence to crush the will of the majority.
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said in another spirited and impassioned speech that belied the low-powered tone of much of his tenure so far.
It was a comment on the fractured political times of this era that the leader of the world’s most powerful democracy would feel compelled to deliver such a speech. Given the events of recent years, his comments cannot be considered alarmist. And Biden left no doubt that he sees the purpose of his presidency as once again defeating Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement, which he warned was already poisoning the 2022 midterm elections and the race of the 2024 White House.
“They look at the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, brutally attacking law enforcement, not as rioters who put a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they (the ) as patriots,” Biden said.
“They see the failure of their MAGA to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 elections as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections. This time they are determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.”
Biden addressed a nation whose politics have been transformed by Trump’s false claims that he was cheated out of power in 2020. It’s a lie that has nonetheless won over millions of Americans and is the platform of ‘countless campaigns by GOP midterm hopefuls trying to mount ex. -Base of the president in power, some of whom could win and be in a position to influence future elections.
Still, Biden’s speech should not be viewed in isolation. While speaking as an American head of state, his remarks also sounded like a campaign speech, delivered in a critically important battleground state that he will have visited three times in the space of a week before the Labor Day He left no doubt that he was targeting his predecessor, and potential future rival, who will also be in the Keystone State this weekend.
And it seems Biden was right. Hours before he spoke, Trump appeared to validate the president’s warnings about the threat he poses.
Trump raised the possibility that if he regains the presidency, he would consider full pardons for members of the mob that crashed into the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to thwart the legal certification of Biden’s presidency.
“He’s looking very, very hard at pardons. Full pardons,” the former president told Wendy Bell Radio. “I mean full pardons with an apology to many,” he said.
His comment at this point is hypothetical and depends on a long and complex path to power. But it was also a stark reminder that he often crushed the principles of democracy and the rule of law in office. Here, as before, Trump sees the presidency as a tool of personal power that is used to reward his allies and to punish his political opponents. In effect, Trump would pardon supporters who called in Washington and incited violence in an attempt to overturn an election he lost. Had he succeeded, he would have replaced America’s 250-year experiment with democracy with strongman autocratic rule.
And Trump’s showdown with the Justice Department over classified documents he brought to his Florida resort, which was playing out in a Florida courtroom early Thursday, is fundamentally rooted in his view of the presidency as an all-powerful office that bestows its absolute power in power. In another sign of how the Trump movement has worked to try to compromise the will of voters, it emerged Thursday that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pushed state lawmakers to Wisconsin, as well as Arizona, to overturn Biden’s election victories in those states, according to emails obtained through a public records request and shared with CNN. The Washington Post first reported the text of those emails, which were obtained by the watchdog group Documented.
The development followed weeks of televised hearings by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 uprising that have painted a damning picture of Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election and then incite violence when his efforts failed. Several courts and Trump’s own Justice Department found that there was no evidence that 2020 was marked by massive fraud.
That’s exactly the kind of one-man vision of autocratic power that the founders, who signed their names to history in the room that formed Biden’s backdrop Thursday night, parted ways with two and a half centuries
Biden defines the political battle of the modern age
Biden’s speech and the intense whirlwind of attacks on the electoral system from Trump’s world underscore how the most critical divide in politics right now is not the age-old duel between liberalism and conservatism. Those fights have been intense and often unsettling in a deeply divided nation, but mostly between two parties that fundamentally respected the electoral system.
Increasingly, the political battle of our time is between leaders who see democracy under attack (mostly Democrats, but increasingly recruiting conservative dissidents like Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney) and the Trump machine, which is ready to use any method, including non-democratic ones. to gain power.
Biden’s aides had insisted that his speech at Independence Hall was not about the former president. But that in itself was false, as he repeatedly did about Trump. His appearance came just two days after an earlier campaign-style appearance in Pennsylvania, where he blasted Republicans who applauded rioters who beat police on Jan. 6. And less than a week ago, Biden compared the philosophy of Trump supporters to “semi-fascism.” .” Biden is clearly using Trump’s return to the spotlight in recent months as a springboard to advance Democrats in the midterm elections, which typically give first-term presidents a blow. He appears to be trying to turn the election into a face-to-face confrontation between him and the former president, ground where he won in 2020.
So far, Biden’s tactic appears to be working, as he grafts that strategy onto Democratic attempts to highlight the Supreme Court’s nullification of constitutional rights to abortion, which has galvanized liberal voters and the enthusiasm at the base of his party, and the recent passage of an important climate and health law. This is all an attempt to turn the election from a referendum on his low approval ratings and the worst inflation crisis in 40 years into a choice between him and Trump, which alienated moderate and suburban voters in the election from 2018 and 2020.
Democrats tried something similar in an off-year election in 2021, but collapsed when Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin emphasized education and rising prices and won the governorship in one state which Biden had won by 10 points a year earlier.
But this year, Trump is effectively on the ballot given his endorsement of many candidates whose main calling card is total loyalty to his bogus claims of voter fraud. And even outside the White House, he’s in the news every day in the wake of the FBI’s search of his Florida home, which reminds voters of the chaos and fury of his presidency as he and his allies threaten and try to intimidate institutions. like the FBI
Biden’s bid is an attempt to rethink the midterm elections
Still, the unanswered question in 2022 is whether voters will be won over by an argument that democracy is at risk, a somewhat esoteric concept outside of Washington, or whether they will try to punish the president for the pain many feel over the bills of groceries that receive the budget. .
Conventional wisdom has often favored the latter conclusion. However, perceptions could be changing. A CBS News poll this week found that 72 percent of Americans believe democracy and government are under threat. However, whether this is the most salient factor when they enter the voting booth is another matter.
Biden’s approach is not without risks. With his comments about fascism last week and his relentless attack on “MAGA Republicans”, he is in danger of labeling all Republicans as extremists. Millions of people voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 because they embraced his anti-establishment credo or his hostility to globalization. Some liked his blunt speech. But this does not mean that they have given up on democracy.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to play into that lane with his own speech in Pennsylvania on Thursday, trying to paint Biden as a snub to millions of patriots.
“President Biden has chosen to divide, degrade and belittle his fellow Americans. Why? simply because they disagree with his policies,” McCarthy said. “That’s not leadership.”
“The first words out of his mouth should be to apologize for defaming tens of millions of Americans as ‘fascists,'” the California Republican added.
Biden tried to shield himself from McCarthy’s criticism by insisting that not all Republicans are radicals. But the distinction is unlikely to be heard in the pandemonium of a national election campaign. McCarthy, of course, is guilty of his own transgressions against democracy. Shortly after the Capitol uprising, he said Trump had some responsibility. But he soon flew to Florida to make amends with the former president on whom he seems to believe the GOP’s hopes for a House majority and his dreams of becoming president depend.
If nothing else, Biden’s speech ignited the midterm election campaign. His recently hardened rhetoric and Trump’s…