Biden’s Defense of Democracy Devolves Into a One-Sided, Get-Out-the-Vote Speech

President Biden is hoping that his Tuesday night speech will be ringing in voters’ ears on Election Day, having described an America where “MAGA Republicans” threaten democracy and Democrats alone stand as a bulwark to ensure our liberties.The address at a Democratic National Committee event opened with a condemnation of the attack on Speaker Pelosi’s husband, Paul. Then it moved on to the January 6 riot at the Capitol by supporters of President Trump. Both events were shameful, as Mr. Biden stated that all Americans save a small fringe agree.This delivered a measure of the unity the president promised in the campaign, but he soon betrayed how little confidence he has in the intelligence of the American people — growing a little bit in office at last, but still needing help reaching the pedals.The president’s partisanship emerged when it became apparent that any act of Democratic-inspired violence was expunged from the teleprompter — even that of James Hodgkinson, who worked on Senator Sanders’ campaign for the 2016 Democratic nomination and attempted to massacre House Republicans at baseball practice in 2017.Prior to opening fire, Hodgkinson asked if all the players were Republicans. Inspired by a long list of left-wing grievances, he shot and wounded the GOP House whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and four others.Mr. Biden’s tone was of a man above politics. Yet he made no mention of this, the most serious assassination attempt in generations, although the gunman’s question was as ominous as Mr. Pelosi’s assailant allegedly asking, “Where’s Nancy?”The American people remember that dark day, and more recent attacks such as the murder in September of a North Dakota teenager who, his killer believed, was part of a Republican extremist group, and the man who, in July, tried to stab the GOP candidate for governor of New York, Congressman Lee Zeldin.Also missing was left-wing would-be assassin Nicholas Roske, apprehended outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home, intent on “shooting for three” conservative justices to stop the overturning of Roe v. Wade.Here, Mr. Biden might also have mentioned the Democratic majority leader, Senator Schumer, threatening justices by name. “You have released the whirlwind,” he said, whipping up an angry crowd, “and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”Likewise, there was no name check for Secretary Clinton, who last week championed a conspiracy theory about a GOP plot to steal the 2024 election. When Mr. Biden said, “It’s estimated that there are more than 300 election deniers on the ballot,” viewers were left to wonder if he counted the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams, who refused to concede defeat in 2018.Examples like these will be dismissed as “whataboutism,” but that doesn’t invalidate the point that Mr. Biden undermined his stated goal of safeguarding democracy by closing his eyes to violence against his political opponents.It might be true that, as Mr. Biden said, “recent polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe our democracy is at risk.” Yet how could the polls reflect anything else when Mr. Biden has joined Mr. Trump in shouting that message for two years? “[I]nstead of waiting until the election is over,” Mr. Biden said of challenging results, “they are starting well before it,” by which he meant to condemn Republicans — not, say, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s $10 million “Defend the Vote” program and, as the Washington Post reported, its “hundreds of people on the ground inside voting locations and a large-scale program to ‘cure’ rejected ballots.”The dire warnings about voter suppression were also undercut by his mention of “record turnout all over the country.” With so many casting ballots, how does it follow that our democracy hangs by a thread?“What we’re doing now is going to determine whether democracy will long endure,” the president said, invoking President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but another line from that speech seems more fitting: “The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here.”What fleetingly started as a defense of democracy devolved into a hackneyed campaign speech, reducing legitimate concerns about political violence to just another get-out-the-vote speech for Democrats — and unlike Lincoln’s address, a forgettable one at that.

Biden’s Defense of Democracy Devolves Into a One-Sided, Get-Out-the-Vote Speech

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