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Biden’s Message Shifts From Compromise to Combat Ahead of Midterms


WASHINGTON – President Biden likes to say that there’s nothing America can’t do if the country is united and their rival parties are willing to work together.

But with only two months until midterm electionsMr Biden purposefully spent less time praising the virtues of compromise and more time calling out the dangers to democracy – using some sharp and combative language. during his presidency.

He has accused Republicans of embracing “semi-fascism” by avenging former President Donald J. Trump. He blasted the party for being “full of anger, violence, hatred and division”. And he has warned that the danger from Republicans loyal to Mr. Trump goes beyond differences in policy.

“They are a threat to our democracy,” he said of a party with which he has spent half a century working to find common ground. “They do not accept the will of the people. They accept political violence.”

After weeks of internal White House strategy sessions, the president and his aides devised a head-to-head election season approach that focused on Biden’s record along with a primary attack. positive values ​​on the GOP, including the term tested in the poll he started using this spring. : “The Radical Republican Party MAGA.”

Now, with Mr. Trump at the center of a criminal investigation again, this time through his handling of classified documents, Mr. Biden has seized the moment to highlight a case in which voters cannot impersonate. dangerously returning to a party during the former presidents war.

As the campaign season gets more intense, Mr. Biden plans to offer a golden hour speech on Thursday in Philadelphia, in which aides said he would argue that Americans are in a “battle for the soul of the nation,” returning to the subject he often uses to describe the dynamics of the nation. potential to become a presidential candidate. Recent events have made the president’s speech more urgent, but a Democratic official said Mr Biden had been thinking about giving the address since early summer.

“After a few successful months over the past few months, the president and Democrats have effectively made this midterm session the choice,” said Stephanie Cutter, a veteran Democratic strategist. when it’s usually a referendum on the party in the White House.” “The president is now articulating that option, pretty well and at the right time.”

She added, “The choice couldn’t be clearer – a reminder of what everyone turned down just two years ago.”

The speech will also be an opportunity for Mr. Biden to focus on falling gas prices, a booming job market and legislative victories on climate change, drug prices, infrastructure improvements and care. veteran health.

But Mr. Biden is leaning more towards political attacks, aides and allies say, in part because of what he sees as a growing number of violent Republican political speeches and a threat to the democratic process of the government. Aides say he is frustrated by the number of Trump-backed election deniers who have won Republican primaries for governor or secretary of state on across the country.

Mr. Biden, whose own approval rating has begun to improve slightly since lows earlier this summer, is hoping that his party can maintain control of Congress and deliver his word. a strong rebuke to Mr. Trump and his followers.

One adviser said it was a moment to make sure people understood what was at stake.

“With everything going on right now, I have to imagine that this is happening,” said Symone D. Sanders, who served as Vice President Kamala Harris’s lead spokesperson and now hosts a new MSNBC show. weighed on him. “He feels as though he needs to ring the alarm, sound the alarm like he did all through 2019, throughout 2020 before the election.”



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Republicans have taken notice of the new tone. Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said Wednesday that the president is “a divisive man and the epitome of the Democratic Party’s current state: one of divisive, disgusting and hostile towards half the country.”

Mr. Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Saturday, just two days after Biden’s scheduled speech in Philadelphia and four days after the president made his own visit to Wilkes-Barre. Pennsylvania, a revolving state, is home to key races for the House and Senate as well as the closely watched gubernatorial race.

This aggressive approach follows a shake-up in the president’s communications team that includes the return of Anita Dunn, a longtime strategist, and the arrival of a host of new faces in the press office. Presidential.

Mr. Biden and his aides for weeks declined to comment on the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate or the Justice Department’s investigation into whether the former president broke the law. when taking very sensitive documents when he left the White House or not. . But aides said Mr. Biden was particularly offended by Attempts to infiltrate the FBI office in Cincinnati and other threats against federal agents by people who say they support Mr. Trump.

“He and Democrats support middle-class families and orthodox American values, while congressional Republicans,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman. MAGA extremists are on the side of extremism,” a White House spokesman said.

The president has pursued Republicans before. In his speech on the first anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Mr. Biden vows to “stand on this breach” and to defend the nation against the former president’s violent followers. He pledged that he would allow “no one to put a dagger in the throat of our democracy.”

In a speech about voting rights Days later, Mr. Biden drew scorn from Republicans when he asked if they wanted to “stay with John Lewis or Bull Connor,” comparing Republican lawmakers to the commissioner. responsible for public safety in Birmingham, Ala., in the age of civil rights.

But in the months that followed, Mr. Biden largely withdrew from that kind of language. He focused his attention on global crises like the war in Ukraine and Congress’ efforts to enact parts of his agenda to slow climate change, lower drug prices, support veterans and compete with China.

The direct political battle with his predecessor and the Republicans has mostly taken the back seat – so far.

At a rally in Maryland last week, Mr. Biden posed a challenge to Americans, saying that “in this moment, the people who love this country – the Democrats, the independents… , mainstream Republicans – we have to be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving America than the MAGA Republicans are destroying America.”

For the White House, Mr. Biden’s intensifying language is half the tough balancing act. After a string of legislative successes, the president is determined to use the next two months to remind voters of the promises he has made. At the same time, Mr. Biden wants to keep voters focused on the Republican party and their agenda.

Bates, a White House spokesman, said the goal was to do both at the same time.

“We have empowered Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, but they want to put Medicare and Social Security in a difficult position,” he said. “We are standing up for women’s basic rights while they push for a nationwide ban on abortion. We’re fighting to protect communities from gun crime with an assault weapon ban while they sided with the gun lobby and proposed undermining the FBI.”

Some of Mr Biden’s allies said they were pleased the president continued to make the case against Mr. Trump and his followers, as he did on Tuesday during a visit to Wilkes-Barre.

The President attacked a friend and one-time colleague, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who ominous warning that prosecuting Mr. Trump over his handling of classified documents would lead to “riots in the streets.”

“The idea you turn on the TV and see senior senators and congressmen say, ‘If that happens, there’s going to be blood in the streets,'” Biden said. “Where the hell are we?”



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