The Basic Feeding of a Family: Why Donald Trump and the Biden Demonstration of 2020 Are Not as Important As Trump’s Bounds
Defense of democracy has been an animating feature of Biden’s thinking this political season and has emerged more abundantly in his off-camera conversations with Democrats. Biden had warned a group of Democratic donors in Florida that democracy is on the ballot the day before he spoke in Washington.
Biden delivered blocks from the US Capitol in January 2021, when Donald Trump’s mob attacked the place, to be a strong election-closing argument. But for an election other than the one taking place next week.
“You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden said. The president is correct that the essence of democracy depends upon the loser in an election accepting the verdict of the people. It is why Trump behaved so badly in 2020 since his refusal to admit defeat messed with the election. It tore at the fundamental principle of the political system that made America great two-and-a-half centuries before Trump’s political career and caused damage that will long outlast the shockwaves of one administration.
Biden told voters that the fate of the nation and of America lies with them.
Elections should be about more than one thing. Voters are able to chew gum at the same time. In Washington, where a glimpse of the towering Capitol dome reminds politicians of the January 6 horrors, the threat to democracy is very real.
But in the heartlands of Pennsylvania, the suburbs of Arizona and cities everywhere, the gut check issue is less the somewhat abstract and age-old concept of self-government. The basic feeding of a family is what it is. This is an election more about the cost of a cart full of groceries or the price of a gallon of gasoline than America’s founding truths.
The Price of Everything was Good During Trump: The Path to Anarchy in the U.S. Why President Biden and the Republican Party Don’t Worry
As Scottsdale, Arizona, retiree Patricia Strong told CNN’s Tami Luhby: “The price of everything was better during Trump,” adding, “We were looking forward to retirement because everything was good.”
The Fed raised its short-term borrowing rate by just over a percentage point on Wednesday, even though the stock market was down and retirement accounts were hurting. One of the great aspects of the Biden economy is the low unemployment rate and many people fear the Fed’s strategy will ruin that.
Biden’s argument is implicitly that while inflation will fall, and economic damage can be repaired, the current election – and its legions of anti-democratic Republican candidates – could cause political wreckage that is beyond mending.
It is very difficult to make a case in such an doom-laden political environment. The millions of Republicans who believe Trump’s falsehoods about the last election don’t listen to Biden and his call for national unity anyway. His low approval ratings don’t help. According to a new CNN/SSRS survey, inflation and the economy was the most motivating factor for people to vote in the upcoming elections. Democrats hoped the Supreme Court’s decision would save them next Tuesday, but polling showed 15% of likely voters were worried about abortion. And voting rights and election integrity – the focus of the president’s speech on Wednesday night – polled at only 9%.
“As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America – for governor, for Congress, for attorney general, for secretary of state who won’t commit to accepting the results of the elections they’re in,” Biden said. That is the path to anarchy in America. It is unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And it is un-American.”
It’s not that Biden hasn’t been also talking about high prices. He claims that the billions of dollars spent on his domestic agenda will lower the cost of health care, lift up working families and create millions of jobs. Things that could happen in the future are not enough to help with the pain being felt right now.
Throughout history, inflation has often been a pernicious political force that breeds desperation in an electorate and seeds extremism as a potential response. It is so curious that the Biden White House initially didn’t take the surge of prices seriously, and that it is so obvious that politicians fear it so acutely.
The president has talked about the threat posed by Mr. Trump in previous speeches, but he decided to make a televised address just six days before election day to give more attention to it.
“He has abused his power and put the loyalty to himself before loyalty to the Constitution. And he’s made the Big Lie an article of faith in the MAGA Republican Party – a minority of that party,” Biden said, being careful not to insult every GOP voter as he did when referring to “semi-fascism” earlier this year.
He has stayed away from such a formulation since then, recognizing that it provided ammunition to Republicans looking to justify their continued adherence to Mr. Trump’s lies about 2020. The press secretary was asked if the president expected the elections to be legitimate after he said that before the speech. “That is a yes,” she said.
Biden also hinted at a lack of understanding of Trump’s MAGA supporters, who have embraced his anti-democratic, populist, nationalist appeal to mainly White voters, which grew out of a backlash to the first Black presidency of Barack Obama. The 44th president has been making his defense of democracy and criticism of Trump on the campaign trail.
Biden blamed his predecessor, Donald Trump, for the dire state of the nation, because he had cultivated a lie that has spread into a web of conspiracies that resulted in targeted violence.
The speech, hosted by the DNC and not the White House, highlighted the points Biden had been making for weeks. Yet it diverged from the central focus of Democrats’ closing midterm message, which has been a brighter portrait of economic recovery.
Biden’s message Wednesday was anything but optimistic, even as he remained hopeful that Americans would reject the menacing forces he described. Aides said Biden was propelled to deliver the address after an attack last week on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by an intruder who, according to his social media, wallowed in right-wing conspiracies, including about election fraud.
Biden made sure to point out that most Americans would not resort to violence. But he said those who would have outsized influence.
The calls for violence and intimidation are a minority in the US, according to Biden. They are determined and loud.
Biden and his team had been contemplating giving a speech on the topic of democracy for some time, but their decision-making in recent days had been shaped by what they’ve viewed as a surge in anti-democratic rhetoric and threats of violence. But the attack on Paul Pelosi deeply alarmed Biden and his top advisers; the shocking home intrusion and attack on Pelosi landed the 82-year-old in the hospital for surgery and he has since been recovering from a skull fracture, among other injuries.
You can’t say that you care about democracy if you deny a win. The only way you could win is either you win or the other guy cheated,” he said at the event, held in an oceanfront backyard of a mansion in Golden Beach, Florida.
What Makes America America? The Campaign against Extreme Magogia in the Light of Biden’s Book And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
Biden’s Civil War reference hardly appeared coincidental; he was seen this week carrying a copy of historian Jon Meacham’s new book, “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle,” which explores how America’s 16th president confronted secession and threats to democracy.
ExtremeMAGA Republicans aim to question the legitimacy of the past elections in the future, because elections are currently being held. The majority of the Republican Party is a group of people who believe in a certain form of conservatism called MAGA, but it is its driving force. It’s trying to succeed where they failed in 2020, to suppress the right of voters and subvert the electoral system itself. It means denying you your right to vote and deciding whether your vote counts.
They’re starting before the election so that they won’t be late. They are starting now. They’ve emboldened violence and intimidation of voters and election officials. It’s estimated that there are more than 300 election deniers on the ballot all across America this year. The impact this is having on our country is too great to ignore. It’s damaging, it’s corrosive and it’s destructive.
And I want to be very clear, this is not about me, it’s about all of us. What makes America America is the topic. Our democracy is about being durable. For democracies are more than a form of government. They are a way of being, a way of seeing the world and how they affect who we are and what we do. It is that fundamental that democracy is.
We must, in this moment, dig deep within ourselves and recognize that we can’t take democracy for granted any longer. We must remember the first principles of democracy when we choose to cast a ballot. The rule of the people, not the rule of monarchs or money, is what democracy means.
The opposite of democracy is autocracy. It means the rule of one, one person, one interest, one ideology, one party. To state the obvious, the lives of billions of people, from antiquity till now, have been shaped by the battle between these competing forces, between the aspirations of the many and the greed and power of the few, between the people’s right for self-determination, and the self-seeking autocrat, between the dreams of a democracy and the appetites of an autocracy.
Biden’s teasing of the 2020 presidential election: Why he should have stayed in the U.S. longer, but not so bald
Mr. Biden also expressed concern about Republican tactics that might intimidate voters in the name of election monitoring. A federal judge banned a group from taking pictures of voters, openly carrying firearms, and posting information about voters online because they were near a polling place.
This will be “the first election since the events of Jan. 6, when the armed, angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol,” he said. “I wish, I wish I could say the assault on our democracy ended that day. But I cannot.”
An investigation by The New York Times has found that many Republicans questioned the results of the 2020 election in order to deny evidence to the contrary. Mr. Trump made a point of agreeing to his false claims about litmus tests for Republican support.