“In our bones,” President Joe Biden said, “we know that democracy is at risk.”
A serious statement. But Biden’s prime-time speech, delivered days before the midterm elections, and broader approach to this issue are anything but serious.
Undoubtedly Biden is sincere in his horror and indignation at the events that unfolded on Jan. 6, as well former President Donald Trump’s actions and inaction on that day. Many people were traumatized by seeing the Capitol attacked and ransacked.
BIDEN SNUBS MORE THAN HALF OF KEY SWING STATES IN LONG-SHOT WAR AGAINST DESANTIS
But invoking democracy to get out the vote for one side in a democratic election is not only a cynical ploy. It fans the flames that Biden claims he wants to see cooled.
First, Biden is suggesting that there will be a widespread rejection of the 2022 election results by the party that is heavily favored to win. (Though Biden is on the record saying that he expects the Democrats to hold both houses of Congress.)
This seems implausible at best. At worst, it looks like a shot across the bow to Republicans who might end up in contested races after Tuesday night. There are at least six Senate races within the margin of error, some of them taking place in states with automatic recount provisions or recall elections. Is following through with these processes going to be painted as election denial when done by Republicans but making sure every vote is counted when engaged in by Democrats?
Biden has said that there are more than 350 election deniers on the ballot Tuesday running on the Republican ticket. He has not cited his source for this number or defined the criteria for appearing on this list. The White House did not respond when the Washington Examiner asked.
Certainly, there are Republicans running who sowed doubt about the 2020 election results or worse. They face legitimate questions from the voters, especially when they are candidates for secretary of state.
But Biden has often failed to distinguish such people from Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), who rejected Trump’s election claims but had a different viewpoint than the White House on how to ensure voter integrity. Indeed, Biden smeared Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R-GA) as the architects of “Jim Crow 2.0,” only to hold firm after the state’s maligned voting law proved compatible with high turnout.
Biden has been slippery about whether MAGA Republicans are a minority of the party, as he repeated Wednesday night, or if ultra-MEGA MAGA is a generic term of abuse for the GOP that extends to Supreme Court justices whose tenure predates Trump’s political career by decades.
Kemp’s Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, who questioned the legitimacy of her defeat in the 2018 gubernatorial election, is Biden-endorsed and one of his party’s top candidates. Hillary Clinton, who questioned the legitimacy of her 2016 loss, has reemerged as a top Democratic surrogate.
No, their supporters did not attack the Capitol. But that should not be the only bar to clear.
Biden and the White House stood silent as Democrats poured tens of millions of dollars into helping Republicans who did not accept the 2020 election results win their primaries this year on the grounds that they would be easier to beat this November. In one case, this led to the defeat of a Michigan Republican congressman who voted to certify Biden’s election and to impeach Trump for his conduct on Jan. 6.
In fact, Biden has been baiting Trump to run again in 2024 for the same reason. He has said he would be “very fortunate” if Trump ran again. The Washington Post reported he has “suggested that he will be more eager to run if Trump gets into the race,” and he has indicated as much himself publicly.
Clinton should tell Biden to be careful what he wishes for. He leads Trump in a hypothetical rematch by just 0.2 of a percentage point in the RealClearPolitics polling average. In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, they are tied. In a New York Times/Siena College survey, Trump leads, albeit within the margin of error.
Ultimately, Biden is saying you can’t only love your country when you win while at the same time contending “democracy is on the block” if the opposition party wins a free election. He is calling on people to refrain from political violence while associating opponents with fascism, which in the 20th century was not defeated by moral suasion. He is urging one side to be careful with its rhetoric while exercising no such caution himself with the presidential bully pulpit.
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None of this is to deny that Republicans, and the wider political discourse, have some serious problems.
It is just not clear whether anything Biden is saying will solve rather than further inflame them.
