If Biden Doesn’t Run on Democracy, Who Will?
If Biden Doesn’t Run on Democracy, Who Will?
The American creed can’t be revitalized by focusing on kitchen-table issues.
PRESIDENT BIDEN OPENED HIS STATE OF THE UNION address on Thursday with a reference to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech in the same chamber on January 6, 1941: “President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary time.” Biden told the country that he has the same responsibility today. He condemned the January 6th assault on the Capitol, which took place exactly 80 years after Roosevelt’s speech, describing the insurrection and Donald Trump’s “plot to steal the election” as the “gravest threat to democracy since the Civil War.” He continued:
You can’t love your country only when you win. As I’ve done ever since being elected to office, I ask all of you without regard to party to join together and defend democracy. Remember your oath of office to defend against all threats, foreign and domestic. Respect free and fair elections. Restore trust in our institutions. And make clear political violence has absolutely no place, no place in America.
By opening his address with this direct attack on Trump’s effort to overthrow American democracy—and calling for a bipartisan pro-democracy coalition—Biden issued a powerful declaration of intent for his reelection campaign. He isn’t going to pretend like American democracy is just another kitchen-table issue that he can include in a list of talking points. No issue is as important as whether democracy or authoritarianism will triumph in 2024. This is an issue that encompasses all others, because it’s concerned with the institutions, principles, and practices that are fundamental to America’s identity and role in the world.
A dark irony of the GOP primary is that the attempts to hold Trump accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election—particularly the prosecutions by Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County DA Fani Willis—may have increased his support among many Republican voters, and in any case didn’t dampen it. As soon as the indictments started rolling in, Trump’s numbers began to surge and kept climbing over the following year. Trump has made his legal defense the mainstay of his campaign—many of his supporters believe he’s the victim of partisan “lawfare” being waged by the Biden administration, which Trump presents as part of a “deep state” plot to prevent him from returning to the White House. Meanwhile, a substantial proportion of Republican voters don’t think Biden’s 2020 victory was valid—62 percent of participants in the Iowa Republican caucuses said Biden wasn’t legitimately elected.
Previewing his emphasis on the threats to democracy at the State of the Union, Biden delivered a major speech about Trump’s authoritarianism to mark the anniversary of January 6th. “We must be clear,” he said. “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.” Biden knows it’s a political gamble to put the defense of democracy at the center of his reelection campaign. Even some critics of Trump think Biden is making a mistake. “The threat to democracy pitch is a bust,” Sen. Mitt Romney recently said. “Jan. 6 will be four years old by the election. People have processed it, one way or another. Biden needs fresh material, a new attack, rather than kicking a dead political horse.”
Romney was one of just seven GOP senators who were courageous enough to convict Trump after his second impeachment (an attempt to hold him accountable for January 6th), but he’s wrong about Biden’s “democracy pitch.” The level of collective amnesia about the attack on the Capitol and Trump’s sweeping efforts to steal the 2020 election is shocking, and Biden recognizes that Americans urgently need a history lesson. Many don’t appreciate (or have forgotten) the extent of Trump’s campaign to overthrow American democracy at the end of his first term.
Beyond the gusher of propaganda about how the election would be “rigged,” “fraudulent,” etc., Trump made the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans the central focus of his presidency for months. Trump and his team of election deniers pressured state legislators and election officials to throw out votes across the country, organized slates of fake electors, weaponized the Justice Department to launch phony election fraud investigations, ordered Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify Biden’s victory, and filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging election processes in several states. Instead of running the country, Trump spent his final months in office hatching illegal schemes to stay in power.
It would be reckless for Biden to treat Trump as a normal candidate. Trump’s refusal to say whether he would respect the results of the election in 2020 (and 2016, for that matter) should have instantly disqualified him from ever holding high office again. When the Senate failed to convict him for January 6th, Sen. Mitch McConnell and many other Republicans assumed he no longer posed a threat. They had a chance to formally prevent him from returning to the Oval Office (or occupying any other federal office), but they chose not to. That was a time when the tragedy of January 6th was still fresh in the country’s mind—when liars and demagogues like Tucker Carlson hadn’t yet been able to rewrite the history of that day and the election subversion campaign that led up to it.
McConnell accused Trump of a “disgraceful dereliction of duty” on January 6th and said “there’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” He continued:
The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president, and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.
Since then, the Trumpist right hasn’t just normalized January 6th—it has embraced the insurrection as an act of patriotism. A Trump campaign event in March 2023 opened with a recording of the National Anthem sung by 20 prisoners serving time for attacking the Capitol. The event took place in Waco, Texas, which has long held symbolic value for far-right militias and extremists in the United States who regard the 1993 siege there as an example of government tyranny. It’s no mystery why Trump chose Waco—during his speech, he told Americans that their own government is the gravest threat they face:
I was asked the other day, and I took a little heat for it, they said: “Who’s our biggest threat? Is it China, sir? Or is it Russia?” I said, no, our biggest threat are high-level politicians that work in the United States government, like Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, [the] Justice Department. Because that’s poisoning our country.
None of this prevented McConnell from endorsing Trump last week, shortly after he announced that he will be retiring from the Senate leadership. In his valedictory speech on the Senate floor, he reminisced about his experience as a senator and expressed his reverence for the institution: “After all this time, I still get a thrill walking into the Capitol.” Yet he endorsed a former president who celebrates the criminals who invaded and desecrated the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. The near-total surrender of the GOP to Trumpist authoritarianism is all the more reason for Biden to build his campaign around the defense of democracy. Biden should also tout the exceptionally strong economy, his success in working with an extremely hostile Congress (to pass the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, for instance), and other achievements, but the central focus of his campaign should be on the growing threats to democracy.
BIDEN IS RIGHT TO MAKE his pro-democracy pitch bipartisan. Trump alienated many Nikki Haley voters when he declared that anyone who contributed to her campaign “will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We don’t want them, and will not accept them.” After Haley dropped out, Biden issued a statement which welcomed her supporters: “Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign.” Biden’s statement emphasized the shared commitment to “standing up for the rule of law” and “preserving American democracy.” An Emerson College survey conducted last week found that Haley voters support Biden over Trump 63 percent to 27 percent.
Despite the alarming signs of democratic decay in the United States—including the one-third of Americans who believe the January 6th attack was an expression of “patriotism” and 39 percent who don’t consider Biden the legitimate winner of the 2020 election—many Americans are well aware of the real threats to their democracy. According to a recent AP/NORC survey, over two-thirds of American adults think the 2024 election will be “very” or “extremely” important for the “future of democracy in the U.S.” (the economy was the only issue that ranked higher). A majority of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the assault on the Capitol, while 62 percent recognize that it was an effort to “overturn the election and keep Donald Trump in power.”
But too many voters still aren’t behaving as if this is the case. Since the summer of last year, Biden’s approval rating has fallen while Trump’s favorability has risen. Biden and Trump are evenly matched in the latest head-to-head polls. While 70 percent of Americans believe democracy is in danger, more Republicans than Democrats hold this belief—a testament to the effectiveness of Trump’s propaganda about the “stolen” election.
Trump is running a campaign against democracy. It would be irresponsible for Biden not to run a campaign for democracy. Trump has already convinced millions of Americans that the election was stolen in 2020, and he will start the cycle of preemptive election denial all over again as November draws near. As long as Trump remains a major political force in the United States, he will continue to spread toxic conspiracy theories about the integrity of American democracy. Biden must forcefully resist these lies at every available opportunity.
When a New York Times/Siena poll asked voters which candidate is better on democracy a year out from the election, Biden was only 3 points ahead of Trump. As Trump continues to peddle hysterical lies about how the 2020 election was “fixed,” “corrupt,” and “fake,” Biden can distinguish himself with a positive message about the integrity and redemptive possibilities of American democracy. This won’t just appeal to independents, Haley supporters, and other Republicans who are disillusioned by Trump’s attacks on our democracy—it will also help Biden reinforce his support among Democrats. In the December AP/NORC survey, 76 percent of Democrats said the 2024 election will be very or extremely important for the health of democracy. No issue ranked higher in importance.
At the beginning of his State of the Union address, Biden said Americans “face an unprecedented moment in the history of the union.” The decision voters make this November will set a course for American democracy—as well as democracy around the world—for many years to come. Trump’s long campaign to subvert American democracy is a crisis that was difficult to imagine a decade ago. But crises can be clarifying. Millions of Americans have been galvanized around the democratic idea like never before. They no longer take democracy for granted because they can see that it isn’t self-sustaining—it can be rolled back and even snatched away.
When Americans are confronted with this stark reality as they go to the polls this year, Biden is betting that they will vote to preserve democracy. Let’s hope this is a safe bet, because there’s no other wager to make.
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