Standing for freedom not merely its symbols
“Where the hell is the Democratic party?” Howard Dean asked. “You’ve got to stand for something if you want to win.” His party had just taken a beating in the 2014 midterm elections:
“The Republican message was, ‘We’re not Obama.’ No substance whatsoever,” Dean said. But after rhetorically asking himself the message from Democrats, Dean answered sarcastically “Oh, well, we’re really not either.”
Democrats realized last week that they are President Joe Biden. Biden realized he is too.
There is a new spring in Democrats’ steps. They exhibit growing confidence they can minimize the losses Obama saw in 2010 and 2014:
After months of gloomy predictions, Democrats are investing anew in flipping Republican seats. They are also directing more money to protect a roster of their own endangered incumbents — a list party officials said noticeably shrank since the spring. And they are trying to frame contests around abortion rights, putting Republicans on the defensive for strict opposition to the procedure in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Leading a phonebank call with abortion, one volunteer reported, yields the shortest conversations ever: “I’ll be there with my family. Thank you.”
Stand for something
The assault on reproductive freedom is as much about freedom as it is about women’s reproduction. “Your right to choose is on the ballot this year,” Biden told rallygoers in Rockville, Maryland last week. But more still.
“The Social Security you paid for from the time you had a job is on the ballot.”
“The safety of your kids from gun violence is on the ballot.”
“And it’s not hyperbole, the very survival of our planet is on the ballot.”
“Your right to vote is on the ballot. Even the democracy. “
Biden closed saying:
We’re at a serious moment in our nation’s history. The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security, they’re a threat to our very democracy. They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace — embrace — political violence. They don’t believe in democracy.
This is why, in this moment, those of you who love this country — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving America than the MAGA Republicans are to destroying America.
Are you ready to fight for these things now?
Democrats need to take back the word freedom that’s been appropriated by nihilists wrapped in red, white and blue and preening as self-anointed patriots itching for a second civil war.
It is perhaps ironic that I mentioned last week a high school friend who said that, raised a good Baptist, “We couldn’t cuss in the house. Except you could say ‘damn Yankee,’ because that’s just what they were.” Biden called out MAGA Republicans for what they were, “semi-fascists” threatening the union. Last week, Democrats quit pulling punches.
“You’ve got to stand for something if you want to win.”
Heather Cox Richardson sets Biden’s defense of the union in historical context:
A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee called the comment “despicable,” although Republicans have called Democrats “socialists” now for so long it passes as normal discourse. Just this week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) called Democrats “radical left-wing lunatics, laptop liberals, and Marxist misfits.”
Biden’s calling out of today’s radical Republicans mirrors the moment on June 21, 1856, when Representative Anson Burlingame of Massachusetts, a member of the newly formed Republican Party, stood up in Congress to announce that northerners were willing to take to the battlefield to defend their way of life against the southerners who were trying to destroy it. Less than a month before, Burlingame’s Massachusetts colleague Senator Charles Sumner had been brutally beaten by a southern representative for disparaging slavery, and Burlingame was sick and tired of buying sectional peace by letting southerners abuse the North. Enough, he said, was enough. The North was superior to the South in its morality, loyalty to the government, fidelity to the Constitution, and economy, and northerners were willing to defend their system, if necessary, with guns.
Burlingame’s “Defense of Massachusetts” speech marked the first time a prominent northerner had offered to fight to defend the northern way of life. Previously, southerners had been the ones threatening war and demanding concessions from the North to preserve the peace. He was willing to accept a battle, Burlingame explained, because what was at stake was the future of the nation. His speech invited a challenge to a duel.
Southerners championed their region as the one that had correctly developed the society envisioned by the Founders. In the South, a few very wealthy men controlled government and society, enslaving their neighbors. This system, its apologists asserted, was the highest form of human civilization. They opposed any attempt to restrict its spread. The South was superior to the North, enslavers insisted; it alone was patriotic, honored the Constitution, and understood economic growth. In the interests of union, northerners repeatedly ceded ground to enslavers and left their claim to superiority unchallenged.
At long last, the attack on Sumner inspired Burlingame to speak up for the North. The southern system was not superior, he thundered; it had dragged the nation backward. Slavery kept workers ignorant and godless while the northern system of freedom lifted workers up with schools and churches. Slavery feared innovation; freedom encouraged workers to try new ideas. Slavery kept the South mired in the past; freedom welcomed the modern world and pushed Americans into a new, thriving economy. And finally, when Sumner had spoken up against the tyranny of slavery, a southerner had clubbed him almost to death on the floor of the Senate.
Was ignorance, economic stagnation, and violence the true American system?
For his part, Burlingame preferred to throw his lot with education, morality, economic growth, and respect for government.
Burlingame had deliberately provoked the lawmaker who had beaten Sumner, Preston Brooks of South Carolina, and unable to resist any provocation, Brooks had challenged Burlingame to a duel. Brooks assumed all Yankees were cowards and figured that Burlingame would decline in embarrassment. But instead, Burlingame accepted with enthusiasm, choosing rifles as the dueling weapons. Burlingame, it turned out, was an expert marksman.
Burlingame also chose to duel in Canada, giving Brooks the opportunity to back out on the grounds that he felt unsafe traveling through the North after his beating of Sumner made him a hated man. The negotiations for the duel went on for months, but the duel never took place. Instead, Brooks, known as “Bully” Brooks, lost face as a man who was unwilling to risk his safety to avenge his honor, while Burlingame showed that northerners were eager to fight.
Forgotten now, Burlingame’s speech was once widely considered one of the most important speeches in American history. It marked the moment when northerners shocked southerners by calling them out for what they were, and northerners rallied to Burlingame’s call.
Humorist Sarah Vowel writes, “the United States in 2022 feels more 1850 to me than 1861.” She isn’t far off.
Democrats this time are the ones running on freedom and on preserving the union from open rebellion. Minority Republicans are running on their fealty to Donald Trump. Yeah, that guy.
Bring it on.
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