Even Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, thinks President Joe Biden’s horrible speech on voting rights this week went “a little too far.”
Biden’s speech in Georgia was meant to drum up support for Democrats’ proposed voting rights legislation, the purpose of which is to remove critical election integrity measures at the state level and make it easier for Democrats to win elections, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently admitted.
Instead, Biden managed to insult half of the country, label anyone who disagrees with him as traitors and racists, and strengthen centrist Democrats’ resolve not to help him abolish the Senate filibuster.
“Do you want to be on the side of Dr. [Martin Luther] King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” Biden asked.
Biden failed to win a single person over to his side — big surprise. But his strident, disgraceful rhetoric is now forcing the people who do agree with him on the merits to distance themselves from his approach.
Durbin, for example, admitted that Biden’s statement that those who oppose his voting rights bill are domestic “enemies” was “stark.”
“Perhaps the president went a little too far in his rhetoric,” Durbin said. “But the fundamental principles and values at stake are very, very similar.”
Even if Biden were correct that the very principles of democracy are at stake, which they are not, it is reprehensible to suggest that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is on par with Confederate traitor Jefferson Davis because he opposes Democrats’ efforts to abolish the filibuster. After all, this is the very position Biden himself held not long ago. The suggestion that Republicans who oppose Biden’s bill because of what it would do to states’ constitutional powers are really just racists undermines the president’s credibility.
But that’s Biden for you: arrogant, disparaging, and politically incompetent. Surely, Durbin and the rest of Democratic leadership must realize that.
