I finished it for him.
This was the opening speech of Biden’s campaign and he is making it clear how he sees the stakes and he is 100% right.
Unfortunately, we are clearly going to have to fight much of the media at the same time we will have to fight Trump and the MAGA cult. CNN’s commentary after the speech was dismal. Gloria Borger complained that it was “very personal” ignoring the fact that it’s a presidential campaign and Biden is running against Trump! Of course it’s personal. And all he did was use Trump’s own words. (He didn’t even call him old or fat or make fun of him, which I think is the actual definition of “getting personal.”)
Then former Republican Charlie Dent said that people are sick of all the “extremistm” and are looking for something different than Trump who they think is crazy and Biden who is too old. Then he brought up No Labels at which point I changed the channel.
*sigh*
Some more highlights:
Some other highlights:
There’s a lot of work to do to get people to pay attention to what Trump has in store if he gets elected again. This was a good start.
Update –— I thought this piece in Politico Playbook framed the issue well:
BIDEN SETS THE STAKES — One way to think about the last three years of American politics is as an ongoing effort to hold DONALD TRUMP accountable for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
It started as a bipartisan effort that treated Trump as a pariah, but then it quickly polarized into just another red-blue issue, one that rehabilitated Trump among Republicans while generally benefitting Democrats electorally. Ever since, the accountability effort has pingponged through different branches of government, the states, and other legal and political institutions.
First up was Congress with Trump’s post-riot impeachment, which was ultimately rejected by Republican senators, including Leader MITCH McCONNELL, who argued that there were better ways in other parts of the government to seek accountability.
Next was the House Jan. 6 committee, which had no power over Trump but served as a catalyst for the next two forums of accountability: the 2022 midterms, where Republican candidates who supported election subversion were generally defeated, and the Justice Department, which indicted Trump.
Then came the GOP presidential primaries, the Republican Party’s internal system of candidate accountability. By then Jan. 6 had so fully matured into a partisan issue that trying to use it against Trump strengthened him and damaged the attacker. Trump will spend the anniversary on Saturday at two rallies in Iowa.
As the AP reminds, Trump “has called it ‘a beautiful day’ and described those imprisoned for the insurrection as ‘great, great patriots’ and ‘hostages.’ At some campaign rallies, he has played a recording of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ sung by jailed rioters — the anthem interspersed with his recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.”
The Jan. 6 accountability project will dominate 2024, as the issue is taken up by the states deciding whether Trump is an insurrectionist and should be allowed on the ballot, juries in Georgia and Washington, D.C., deciding two criminal cases, and the Supreme Court which seems poised to decide three major issues related to these efforts.
But all of these efforts — the GOP primaries, the 14th Amendment movement, the JACK SMITH and FANI WILLIS indictments — might sputter out, just as impeachment did three years ago.
That would leave President JOE BIDEN and his reelection campaign as the last tool of accountability.
So it is no surprise that Biden is kicking off the 2024 election today with a speech reminding voters of Jan. 6 and alerting them to the threat he believes Trump poses — one he prepped for by meeting with a group of historians at the White House.
“Using the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection to frame the stakes of the 2024 campaign, the president will draw upon the history of the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, setting Friday to argue that his likely rematch with Donald Trump will be a seismic test of the republic’s foundation,” Jonathan Lemire writes this morning, citing senior Biden advisers who offered a preview of the speech.
“‘Democracy is not a sideline issue: It is a sacred cause,’ said one of the advisers, granted anonymity as part of the ground rules during a call with reporters. ‘When major events occur, people render the judgments in national elections. Voters won’t forget Jan. 6.’”
The content of the speech will be studied carefully by Democratic strategists who are in the middle of the same electoral debate they had in 2022: Should the party emphasize Jan. 6 and the threat to democratic norms, or should it focus on traditional policy issues?
There was a cottage industry of pundits ahead of the midterms who argued Biden was making a mistake by emphasizing the former, which was allegedly not as important to voters, at the expense of the latter.
But post-election analysis suggested that Democrats prevailed in places where they convinced voters to take “the MAGA threat” seriously, and suffered in places where that message didn’t break through. It’s not a strict binary choice, of course, but a question of emphasis. Biden will use the MAGA and Jan. 6 as an umbrella threat that affects numerous policies.
As Lemire writes, “Biden will extend the concept of freedom to other issue areas during his remarks on Friday, aides said. That includes access to vote, abortion rights and economic fairness.”