09/03/2022
In case you missed President Biden’s speech, here it is and worth your time to read.
Biden’s core message last night was clear. American democracy is under attack.
But today’s media coverage is just more he-said/she-said reaction quotes. The New York Times published a piece that quoted Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who said Democrats are the ones “dismantling Americans’ democracy.” The Times failed to point out that this claim is inaccurate, and that McCarthy himself was one of 139 House Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election even after the attack on the Capitol. Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, was quoted in the same article calling Biden “the divider in chief” and accused him of exhibiting “disgust and hostility towards half the country.” The Times also characterized a more general Republican objection to Biden’s speech: that he “was maligning the 74 million people” who voted for Trump in 2020.
Let’s be clear: We are in a battle for the future of democracy.
If Trump has broken the law – by attempting a coup, by instigating an assault on the US Capitol, by making off with troves of top-secret documents – he must be prosecuted. If found guilty, he must be penalized, including by prison.
Yes, such prosecutions might increase tensions and divisions in the short term. They might provoke additional violence.
But a failure to uphold the laws of the United States would be far more damaging in the longer term. It would undermine our system of government and the credibility of that system – more directly and irreparably than Trump has already done.
Not holding a former president accountable for gross acts of criminality will invite ever more criminality from future presidents and lawmakers.
It is also important for all those in public life who believe in democracy to call out what the Republican party is doing and what it has become: not just its embrace of Trump’s big lie but its moves toward voter suppression, takeovers of the machinery of elections, ending of reproductive rights, book bans, restrictions on what can be taught in classrooms, racism and assaults on LGBTQ people.
While today’s Republican party does not have its own paramilitary, such as the Nazi’s Brownshirts, Republicans are effectively outsourcing these activities to violent fringe groups such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and others who descended on the Capitol on January 6 2021 and who continue to threaten violence.
With the notable and noble exceptions of Liz Cheney and a few other courageous Republicans – most of whom are being purged – the Republican party is rapidly morphing into an anti-democracy movement.
The essential political choice in America, therefore, is no longer Democrat or Republican, left or right, liberal or conservative.
It is democracy or authoritarian fascism.
There can be no compromise between these two – no halfway point, no “moderate middle”, no “balance”. To come down squarely on the side of democracy is not to be “partisan”. It is to be patriotic.
Yet Democrats cannot and must not take on this battle alone. They must seek common ground with independents and whatever reasonable Republicans remain.
We must continue to appeal to truth, facts, logic, and common sense. We must be unwavering in our commitment to the constitution and the rule of law.
We must be clear and courageous in exposing the authoritarian fascist direction the Republican party has now chosen, and the dangers this poses to America and the world.
It is also important for Democrats to recognize – and to take bold action against – the threat to democracy posed by big money from large corporations and the super-wealthy: record amounts of campaign funding inundating and distorting our politics, serving the moneyed interests rather than the common good.
The two threats – one, from an increasingly authoritarian-fascist Republican party; the second, from ever-larger amounts of corporate and billionaire money in our campaigns and elections – are two sides of the same coin.
Americans who know the system is rigged against them and in favor of moneyed interests are more likely to give up on democracy and embrace an authoritarian fascist demagogue who pretends to be on “their side”.
The battle to preserve and protect democracy is the most important battle of our lifetimes. If we win, there is nothing we cannot achieve. If we lose, there is nothing we can achieve.
