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Opinion | Biden Is Telling You That Trump Is a Threat, and the Proof Is Everywhere


President Biden was right. The so-called MAGA movement, led by Donald Trump, is a direct threat to the autonomous democratic government in the United States.

“So much of what is happening in our country today is not normal,” as Biden said in Philadelphia last week. “Donald Trump and the Republican members of MAGA represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”

The proof is everywhere you look. Of the 540 Republican candidates in this year’s nationwide vote, 199 denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight. An additional 62 candidates cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election and 118 candidates did not answer the question. Republican-led insurgency candidates in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania – key presidential pivot states – and Trump-aligned Republican activists are targeting election officials across the country with harassment and threats of violence.

On the more venerable, more relevant side of the MAGA movement, the Claremont Institute and the right-wing Honest Elections Project (the latter project is the product of Leonard Leo, a former vice president of the Federalist Association, a man influential conservative law group) sent a brief about amicus to the Supreme Court on the side of North Carolina Republicans in a case that could give state legislatures the power to unilaterally change election laws without being bound by state courts or even the constitution state.

The goal, as made clear when lawyers from the Trump campaign pushed this “independent state legislature” theory before and after the 2020 election, was to create a path that the Republican state legislators can deliver results they don’t like. It is not without reason that the author of the Claremont summary is none other than John Eastman, one of the legitimate architects of the plan to keep Trump in office against the will of voters. “When performing federal functions, the legislatures of some states do not act under the authority of the states,” Eastman wrote“But rather is subject to federal jurisdiction, and cannot be bound by anything in state law or even state constitution to the contrary.”

As Biden says, a large part of the Republican Party is working to ensure that the next time Trump is on the ballot, he can’t lose. For Biden’s critics, however, nothing – not even overwhelming evidence of MAGA’s subversion – justify his sweeping condemnation of Trump and his followers. “I was surprised at how divisive this speech was last night,” Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia saida Republican who kept his distance from Trump even when he campaigned for candidates in Michigan and Nevada who believe the 2020 election has been stolen or who questions the results.

One view in Biden’s speech said that if the president is serious about the threat to American democracy, he should sacrifice political, policy and ideological goals for the sake of unification with Trump’s conservative opponent. Another, similar view says that Biden should have delivered Lincolnesque’s appeal to the better angels of MAGA Republican voters, rather than condemning the entire movement as essentially anti-American .

Neither argument really worked out. Advance concessions on key issues may appeal to a handful of conservative Republican dissidents, but they will infuriate and demoralize Democratic voters at a time when when Democrats have a meaningful chance to hold a majority in Congress. The simple truth is that the best way to undermine and undermine the MAGA movement at the moment is to win elections. So it doesn’t make sense for Biden to intentionally undermine the Democrats’ ability to do that.

Should Biden use more conciliatory rhetoric? No. He’s divided – just like he was he called MAGA Republicans were “semi-fascist” last week – but this is a time that calls for a perfect contrast between the two. If Trump is leading an attack on the institutions of the US government, and if that attack involves a majority of Republicans, there is no way Biden can defend his constitutional order without do not divide people.

What is important is the nature of the division. Dividing against a radical minority that can attack and undermine a self-governing democratic government is to divide along the most inclusive lines possible. It is to do a version of what Franklin Roosevelt did when he condemns “Organized money”, “economic royalists” and “selfish forces and lust for power.” It’s also a version of what Abraham Lincoln did when, in his first inaugural address, he targeted those who would subject the country to minority rule. The majority, constrained by constitutional tests and limitations, and ever-changing easily with deliberate shifts of popular opinion and sentiment, is the only real sovereignty, he said. of a free people,” he said. “Whoever rejects it inevitably becomes anarchist or autocratic.”

Lincoln added: “You take no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I will take the most solemn oath to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’ “

If there was one criticism to be made about Biden’s Philadelphia speech, it was that he didn’t say enough about the sentiment behind the MAGA movement’s disdain for democracy. In that sense, it was a missed opportunity.

Trump is the candidate of choice among reactionary billionaires and fanatical opponents of racial and gender equality for a reason. Get rid of the thin shell of “populism” and what you have in the Trump-Trumpized Republican Party is an outdated movement to limit democratic self-government for the sake of capital and a decentralized system. grant.

That’s why anti-democratic ideas like Peter Thiel yes pour millions of dollars supporters of Trump and his allies who hope to turn MAGA into something that will last and last longer than the former president.

Not that Trump and the Republican Party oppose voting and elections in and of themselves; that is, they oppose a more equitable distribution of wealth and status, which a strong democracy – and only a strong democracy – can achieve. They oppose anything that could undermine the dominance of people like them over others.

Biden and the Democrats should make this clear – much more clearly than they’ve done so far. Fighting for democracy is fighting for equal human rights, fighting for a fairer economy, fighting for workers’ rights and workers’ dignity. And if the enemies of democracy are fighting their war on every possible front, so should its defenders.





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