Not so sleepy now, is he?
Look, Joe Biden is a decent man, a thoroughly experienced Washington insider, and a man with heart that he’s not afraid to show in public. What his party has needed in the Executive Mansion, though, is someone willing to punch back against the anti-democracy, authoritarian cult that was once America’s conservative party. Last week, Biden came out of his corner swinging. Democrats cheered.
We reviewed Sunday some of what Biden said last week about “semi-fascists” threatening to tear down the republic.
Jennifer Rubin brings more receipts (Washington Post):
No one should be shocked by the president calling the movement — one that tried to overthrow a democratic election, continues to threaten violence, spews the racist Great Replacement theory, operates in a universe of delusion and disinformation and seeks to redefine America as a White Christian nation — semi-fascist. (Pro-fascist or just fascist would have worked as well.)
A party that celebrates Hungary’s illiberal Viktor Orban, embraces Russian propaganda and grovels before Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot complain when it is held accountable for its right-wing nationalism and authoritarian hero-worship.
Biden spent most of his first year and a half as president trying to advance a sweeping legislative agenda over obstructionists from his own party. With his focus there and his poll numbers sinking, his party seemed almost leaderless and his base dispirited.
After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning half a century of abortion rights, and after a remarkable series of legislative achievements on drug prices, gun safety and climate change, Biden fulfilled (somewhat) a campaign promise to forgive student debt. Now he has turned his attention to helping his party hold its ground against right-wing nationalists in the 2022 midterm elections. And not a moment too soon.
“When he gets his dander up, he can be an effective campaigner,” as Rubin sees it. Trumanesque even.
No more talk that “Biden was elected to lower the temperature.” No more blather that “voters want to stop the partisan fighting.” After ceding rhetorical ground to an unhinged opponent never interested in “unity,” Biden has decided to tell the truth — and let the GOP think it’s hell.
Democrats and weak-kneed pundits need not fret about Biden free-ranging on the campaign trail. As vice president and then as presidential candidate in 2020, he was at his best when fighting against special interests and their right-wing pets. Republicans have to date paid little price for opposing a minimum tax on big corporations that pay nothing, opposing middle-class relief from high health-care and energy costs and, most of all, opposing widely held views on contraception, a woman’s right to choose, free speech and LGBTQ equality.
Biden’s message now is simple: Republicans’ free ride is over. Let’s call them out for what they are. That Joe Biden is the one who could recapture the hearts of Democrats as he considers a second term. Certainly, helping Democrats pull off an expectations-defying midterm election could help as well.
Democrats’ hopes are buoyed not just by Biden’s rebound but by Republicans high on their own supply, explains Charles Blow (New York Times):
Some of what is helping Biden is not his success but that of Republicans. The overturning of Roe v. Wade was monumental and is still stuck in voters’ minds. Many feel they are stuck in a nightmare and Democrats hold the only possibility of salvation.
This decision, this victory by the forced-birth zealots, wiped out the progress Republicans were making by pushing the anti-wokeness canard — this idea that they had to fight back against racial indoctrination, against people who would redefine what a woman is and against health regulation.
The War Against Woke now looks silly in light of the escalated War Against Women.
Also, Trump has resurfaced as a foil.
Just in time, Biden has resurfaced as the Democrats’ standard bearer.
Republicans’ failing War Against Women
Silliness has not been a deal-breaker for conservative voters for decades. Republicans’ obsession with not showing weakness leads them almost invariably not to back down when wrong but to double down. That reflex is itself a weakness. They cannot shut up when they are losing. Or refrain from showing everyone just how ignorant they are when it comes to women’s anatomy.
They might have learned from Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, but nah.
Dahlia Lithwick shakes her head at Republican men’s gabbiness about things they clearly don’t know (Slate):
Long after the time had passed for male GOP officials to stop, to just stop, pretending they know or understand anything about female anatomy, reproductive organs, medical emergencies and basic preventative health care, they have continued to talk. They have continued to talk and talk and talk even when the massive blowback after the Dobbs decision proved it was an error; Kansas proved it was an error; and after the surprise election of Pat Ryan in a New York special election proved it was an error. Every time a Republican man opens his mouth to talk about women’s bodies, ten new female voters get their wings. Yet somehow, they cannot seem to stop themselves!
Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, that could come back to bite them this November, Lithwick observes:
One analysis of the Kansas’ voter registration list showed that in the week after Dobbs, more than 70 percent of newly registered voters in that state were women. Those numbers, according to an Upshot analysis of 10 states with available voter registration data, show consistently higher registration for women after the Dobbs leak in May. As Jennifer Rubin recently noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, “62 percent of women registering since Dobbs registered as Democrats, 15 percent as Republicans and that 54 percent were younger than 25.” And a Pew Research Center poll indicates that “a majority of registered voters (56 percent) say the issue of abortion will be very important in their midterm vote, up from 43 percent in March.” Tom Bonier, CEO Of TargetSmart recently posted on Twitter: “We are seeing early signs of what could lead to a huge increase in women voting in November. …This surge is young and female.” Both Mitch McConnell and RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel are panicking about the GOP’s odds in Congress, directly connected to fundraising around abortion.
“Nobody should be surprised,” writes Lithwick, “that women are friggin’ furious right now.” And the more Republicans open their mouths to reveal their underlying cruelty, the more women they’ll not just alienate but motivate to vote this fall. “It says so much about where we are just now that this simple connection must be explained as if it were string theory.”
Suddenly threats to democracy stand atop voters’ concerns at a time Republicans keep signaling that democracy and women’s freedoms are of no concern to the GOP.
When you are repeatedly being told by those in power that your preferences don’t matter and when those in power believe that saying the quiet parts out loud is electorally costless, they aren’t just saying that women don’t matter. They’re saying democracy doesn’t matter either. But it turns out they don’t get to decide that. You do
Make them pay.
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