Biden wants Trump angry, and loud, and silencing every other voice but his own. It’s not an accident that Biden’s rise and the Democratic enthusiasm surge has come in tandem with Trump once again at the top of the American news agenda over the past six weeks. Biden knows he won in 2020 by successfully making the election a referendum on Trump. Nothing would make him happier than having the 2022 election continue in that vein.
For that to happen, he needs Trump and his Trumpies to be seduced into yelling and screaming and tweeting and arguing that the 2020 election needs to be re-run and that people who stormed the Capitol need to be apologized to and whatever other damn-fool argle-bargle comes out of their mouths and fingers.
That ludicrous blather excites them in unseemly ways even as it scares other Republicans — those who just want to have a normal midterm in which the party in power is made to answer for the condition of a country in which seven-in-ten people say we’re on the wrong track — into silence and toadiness. It also reminds the independents who voted for Trump in 2016 and then ran the hell away from him in 2018 and 2020 why they ran.
And nothing fires them up like getting a chance to slam Trump. If the president can make Democrats think a vote in November 2022 is a vote against Trump he can eliminate the enthusiasm gap between the parties (which almost always favors the one out of power), reverse political gravity, and win a most unexpected triumph.
Trump has said forever that his greatest political lesson came from Roy Cohn — never allow an attack to go unanswered. That’s exactly what Biden is counting on. And that’s the real reason he stood in front of Independence Hall and pretended to be the great defender of democracy he has no right to claim to be. This is the hypocrite who said in January 2022 that he “easily” believed the 2022 election “could be illegitimate.” Hypocrite Biden's speech was about one thing only -- trying to bait Trump (nypost.com)
Since Biden is deeply underwater in the polls, this administration must be defining the “majority” differently.
“There is no place for political violence in America. Period,” Biden said, adding that “the blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.”
Of course, Biden wasn’t so vociferous and animated when the “mostly peaceful protests,” turned riots destroyed large sections of American cities in 2020. That’s different, of course. When riots happen in the name of Black Lives Matter or when Antifa—which Biden defined as no more than an “idea”—smashes businesses, well that’s just people getting a little carried away.
In his denunciation of political violence, Biden also said nothing about the abortion activist who tried to murder Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He also said nothing about the dozens of churches and crisis pregnancy centers that have been vandalized and attacked in the last few months.
Biden spent much of his time saying that those who question elections are basically against democracy. Almost laughably, he said that his political opponents are against the Constitution. It’s a remarkable contention given that he just unilaterally declared student loan forgiveness, spending billions of dollars, with dubious constitutional authority.
Ignoring the Constitution is only bad when other people do it, I guess.
“Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very republic,” Biden said. “Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated.”
Is that so? What an interesting take from the leader of a party that’s had a significant faction question the electoral legitimacy of every Republican presidential win since 2000.
In fact, this was the president’s own press secretary after the 2016 election.
And again, more recently.
Is the press secretary a threat to democracy or is it just the president’s opponents?
As caustic and at times unhinged Biden’s speech was, it was important in understanding what this administration defines as extreme and intolerable: Basically, anyone who opposes them.
It was a fiery speech delivered to activists in his base. His attempts to inject words about unity came off as entirely unserious.
“MAGA Republicans have made their choice, they embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies,” Biden said.
You heard that? Biden isn’t just saying that his former electoral opponent is bad, he’s saying those who supported him are bad and that they’ve “made their choice.”
It’s as if the words of unity were sprinkled into the speech to justify punitive actions toward political opponents.
While most Americans may not have heard Biden’s speech—many were probably watching college football instead—it nevertheless summed up much of what the administration has stood for and will now lean into.
Extremism in the name of moderation, condemnation in the name of unity, petty politics in the name of leadership.
Biden said during his speech that his opponents “promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence.”
On Thursday night, it was Biden who sounded like an authoritarian.
Biden’s after-speech Tweet sums things up.
If you stand in opposition to his regime, Biden defines you as a threat to the country. So, now what will he do?
What a healer.
Biden certainly isn’t an Abraham Lincoln, who called on Americans to embrace the better angels of their nature. He’s not even a Jimmy Carter, who was simply an ineffective micromanager.
Increasingly Biden’s looking like a James Buchanan, pushing his country to the brink while insisting that only his opponents are extremists.
Given that context, Biden used a primetime “soul of the nation” speech on Thursday night to deliver the starkest warning of his long career about the danger of Trump – whom he did name this time, – extremist “Maga” (Make America great again) Republicans and political violence. “This is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool,” he said. “We are still, at our core, a democracy. Yet history tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and the willingness to engage in political violence is fatal in a democracy.”
It was pugnacious talk that many progressives, worried that Biden is trapped in a rose-tinted past, have been urging for a long time. It was also sure to enrage Trump and his allies although Biden, who recently called the Maga philosophy “semi-fascism”, did not repeat that F-word. But the speech also, perhaps understandably, tried to err on the side of optimism by drawing a distinction between Maga Republicans and mainstream Republicans. Biden cast the former as a weird rebel sect that opposes the rule of law, seeks to overturn elections and revels in violence. Maga has, he implied, imposed minority rule on a party of otherwise reasonable people.
“Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. Now, I want to be very clear up front: not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, are Maga Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know, because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.” He continued: “But there’s no question that the Republican party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans and that is a threat to this country.”
Perhaps. The point is at least debatable after the past seven years. Numerous mainstream Republicans have retired or been purged, most recently Congresswoman Liz Cheney. Polls show a majority of Republicans believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, both extremists, are the two leading contenders for the party nomination in 2024. There is no moderate alternative with any reasonable chance. In what may be a triumph of hope over experience, Biden still wants to believe that Maga is being enforced from the top down. But there is a case to be made that it comes from the bottom up, with millions of grassroots Republicans willing to buy into false conspiracy theories and vote for extremist midterm candidates. As Trump may discover to his cost, the base has taken on a life of its own.
If Biden, with elaborate stagecraft at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the nation’s founding documents were written, was striving to isolate Maga and bring Democrats and democrats together to reject it, he may have more work to do. The right was bound to compare his critique to Hillary Clinton’s infamous 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment anyway.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News network did not show the full speech and, when it did, questioned why Biden spoke against a dramatically lit “blood red” backdrop. Far-right host Tucker Carlson, the most watched primetime figure on cable news, sneered and deployed chyrons such as: “This is by far Biden’s most shameful moment.”
The network’s 9pm bulletin added, “Biden vilifies millions of Americans”, “Biden uses primetime address to fuel more division” and “Clueless Biden spews hate in dark, dismal speech”. Biden has evolved a long way from the man who suggested that he could turn back the clock to a golden age of Democrats and Republicans debating together, dining together and respectfully agreeing to disagree. But in November’s midterm elections, or in 2024’s presidential poll, his harshest lesson may yet be to come." Biden’s stern
warning on extremism shows the rose-colored glasses are off | Joe Biden | The Guardian
George Burns
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