President Joe Biden invoked an oath he swore “to God” to protect the country from all threats, foreign and domestic, while promoting Democratic efforts to safeguard voting rights as Republicans push sweeping reform bills across the country, on Tuesday.
Biden’s comments, delivered at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, came after progressive Democrats claimed the president wasn’t vocal enough leading up to a failed Senate vote on the For the People Act. That measure passed the House with Democratic votes, but failed in the upper chamber when all 50 GOP senators voted it down.
Despite the criticism from the president’s left, White House officials maintained that supporting Democrats’ voting rights initiatives is the “fight” of Biden’s political career.
He opened his speech Tuesday by heartily attacking former President Donald Trump’s “big lie” and the efforts of Republican states to enact election security legislation in a major speech on “voting rights.”
“Some things in America should be simple and straightforward,” Biden said. “Perhaps the most important to those things, the most fundamental of those things is the right to vote, the right to vote freely.”
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Biden denounced Trump’s claims about the 2020 election — “‘the most scrutinized election, ever, in American history,’ are just that, a big lie.”
He added that red state election laws, passed in the wake of the election, are the “most un-American thing any of us can imagine.”
Biden called on Congress to pass both the Democratic-crafted For the People Act and the John Lewis Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, claiming that he would “immediately” sign them into law.
“This is simple. This is election subversion, is the most dangerous threat to voting in the integrity of free and fair elections in our history,” the president added. “We ask you, my Republican friends in Congress or state cities and counties, to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our elections and the sacred right to vote. Have you no shame?”
Biden also called for a new “coalition” of private sector leaders to sign on to efforts launched by Democrats, including Texas state legislators expected to meet with both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris this week, to oppose Republican state election legislation.
Growing emotional during his final remarks, the president discussed the oath he “swore, not to you, to God, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” Biden closed by citing the oath he swore, “to God.”
“We have the means. We just need the will. The will to save and strengthen our democracy,” Biden closed. “We, the people, will never give up. We will not. We will overcome. We will do it together, guaranteeing the right to vote, ensuring every vote is counted. That’s always been the most patriotic thing we can do.”
The White House had previously singled out legislation passed by Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Montana, Kansas, and Arkansas as “erecting new barriers to voting.”
Despite the frame from Biden and Democrats, the Supreme Court decided in early July that two such laws passed in Arizona were constitutional on the grounds that neither violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act or were written with racially discriminatory intent.
The debate surrounding election legislation has grown increasingly partisan in recent months. Two-thirds of people now believe that democracy is “under threat,” but both parties cite opposing causes.
According to data published in July by Marist, PBS, and NPR, 85% of Democrats were “more concerned” with “making sure that everyone who wants to vote can do so” over “making sure that no one votes who is not eligible,” while 72% of Republicans answered in the opposite fashion.
Still, a senior White House official suggested to the Washington Examiner on Monday that the administration might look to the recent anti-communism protests taking place in Cuba and other Western countries as a means of currying support for Biden’s voting rights push from Republican lawmakers.
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You can watch Biden’s Tuesday remarks in their entirety below.
