The country had better hope President Joe Biden’s long-touted Scranton scrappiness shows up to override his instincts as a Washington insider. He and we will need it. One hundred scholars of democracy think “our entire democracy is now at risk.” History will judge what we do to defend it.
Biden says he will “fight like heck” to defeat Republican-led efforts to restrict voting (if not to rig elections after the fact). “Un-American,” he called them in Tulsa, Okla. on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa massacre of a Black community by a White mob.
Biden compared what happened in Tulsa’s Greenwood community to what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 this year:
“We must address what remains the stain on the soul of America. What happened in Greenwood was an act of hate and an act of domestic terrorism, with a through-line that exists today, still,” he said. “Remember what you saw in Charlottesville four years ago, on television, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the KKK [Ku Klux Klan], coming out of those fields at night in Virginia, their lighted torches, the veins bulging as they were screaming.”
“Well, [massacre survivor] Mother Fletcher said that when she saw the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, it broke her heart,” he continued: “A mob of violent white extremists, thugs, said it reminded her of what happened here, 100 years ago, in Greenwood. Look around at the various hate crimes against Asian Americans and Jewish Americans, hate that never goes away.”
Someone from the audience called out “that’s true”. Biden went on: “And given a little bit of oxygen by its leaders it comes out from under the rock like it was happening again, as if it never went away.”
“We can’t give hate a safe harbor. According to the intelligence community, terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today,” he said.
“Hate’s never defeated,” Biden said. “It only hides. It hides.”
It was not exactly FDR’s “I welcome their hatred” speech, but with Biden’s declaration about “the most lethal threat to the homeland today,” he certainly has earned it.
Biden told the crowd he was assigning Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the charge for passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The two will need all the fight they can muster. As will you.
Reviewing the flood of vote-suppressing and election-rigging legislation in the pipeline in Republican-controlled state legislatures, Max Boot wrote:
This brings us to a nightmare scenario: a Republican-controlled Congress overturning the 2024 presidential election results to install Trump or a Trump mini-me in the White House. In January, 139 House Republicans and eight Senate Republicans voted not to certify electoral college results in at least one state. Since then, the most prominent GOP opponent of the “big lie,” Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), has been purged from the House leadership. Willingness to lie about election fraud has become a litmus test for Republicans, with the implicit threat of mob violence if they don’t go along. Republicans are so scared of Trump and his fanatical followers that most of them just voted against a bipartisan investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Many congressional Republicans will refuse to certify a 2024 Democratic win in swing states. If Republicans control Congress, they could deny the Democrats an electoral college majority and throw the election to the House — where each state delegation, regardless of population, would cast one ballot. Given that Republicans already control a majority of state delegations, they could override the election outcome. If that happens, it would spell the end of American democracy.
Eric Boehlert smacked down the “scared of Trump” meme yesterday. Republicans are not working furiously to rig upcoming elections because they are afraid of Trump. “Republicans are doing this because they want to.” The fear they have is of losing power. Especially, fear of White people losing status in a changing America. Sharing power in a diverse culture is for losers, one supposes. What wimps.
Biden trotted out his folksy at the end of his speech Tuesday in way that, honestly, made me a little misty:
And although I have no scientific basis for what I’m about to say, but those of you who are over 50, how often did you ever see advertisements on television with black and white couples? Not a joke. I challenge you, find today when you turn on the stations, sit on one station for two hours, and I don’t how many commercials you’ll see, 8:00 to 5:00. Two to three out of five have mixed race couples in them. That’s not by accident. They’re selling soap, man. Not a joke. Remember old Pat Caddell used to say, “You want to know what’s happening in American culture? Watch advertising,” because they want to sell what they have.
It’s true. Advertisers are covering all their bases. It’s capitalism, man. Racists from sea to shining sea are grinding their teeth to nubs. It certainly has their conspiracy-spouting candidates panicked and fondling their guns.
“We have hope,” Biden said. “Let’s not give up, man. Let’s not give up.”
As spooked as I am about the fate of this republic — this knife edge is really sharp! — Biden’s observation about TV ads is in part where he gets the optimism to say, “It’s never a good bet to bet against the American people.”
I want to think so. And fight like hell.
Still, “I can’t breathe” may be the metaphor for our time.