Conflating their own interests with the country’s, Democrats have talked themselves into the idea that their entire agenda is synonymous with ‘democracy.’
Conflating their own interests with the country’s, Democrats have talked themselves into the idea that their entire agenda is synonymous with ‘democracy.’
R eally, who thought that was a good idea?
Leave aside the diabolical staging, which managed somehow to turn Independence Hall’s timeless Leveler aesthetic into a Riefenstahl-esque nightmare. Leave aside the presence of the two carefully placed U.S. Marines — which, had the president in front of them had an (R) after his name, would have launched a thousand Atlantic thinkpieces. Leave aside Biden’s clenched fists and his shouting and his wholly unwarranted overconfidence.
Focus, instead, on his words.
Last week, President Biden stole a trillion dollars from the U.S. Treasury. Last night, dressed as a villain from a Disney-era Star Wars flick, he had the temerity to cast himself as a defender of the U.S. Constitution. “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people,” Biden said. “This is a nation that honors our Constitution. We do not reject it. This is a nation that believes in the rule of law. We do not repudiate it.”
Well, the nation might. Donald Trump, certainly, does not. But does Joe Biden? The thing about presenting yourself as the defender of the American order is that you have to actually defend the American order. You can point out your opponent’s deficiencies all you want while you’re running, but once you win, you have to walk the walk yourself. And since he came into office, Joe Biden has done no such thing. Sure, Biden has been willing to say that he won the 2020 election (although, notably, he has not been willing to say that the impending midterms will be legitimate). But, beyond clearing that extremely low bar, he’s been a rolling disaster for the rule of law. Last year, he issued an executive order extending the federal eviction moratorium. He himself admitted the order was illegal, and designed to ensure that the inevitable litigation would “keep this going for a month, at least — I hope longer.” A month or so later, he ordered a federal vaccine mandate that his own White House had conceded it was beyond his authority to order. Now, on the flimsiest grounds possible, he is usurping Congress’s Article I power in a brazen attempt to redistribute a gargantuan sum of public money to the voters he believes he needs to turn out in November. And he has the temerity to present himself as Cincinnatus?
Sorry, that won’t fly.
Criticizing Biden’s choice to combine his defense of the rule of law per se with a defense of his personal political priorities, Damon Linker proposed that “this speech should NOT be mixing/conflating Democratic talking points with the high-minded defense of democracy and attack on MAGA. He can do both, but not in the same speech.” This, of course, is true. But what Linker misses is that, while many of the Democrats’ criticisms of Trump and his acolytes are fair, the party has transcended those specific criticisms and talked itself into the idea that its entire agenda is synonymous with “democracy.” In Biden’s mind, he didn’t make one speech about the Constitution and then another speech about his presidential aims; he made a single speech about democracy, which, in his estimation, is inextricable from Democracy.
His conflations were seamless, jarring, and self-defeating. “They refuse to accept the results of a free election,” Biden said of those “MAGA Republicans.” That’s true — and they should be called out for it. But just seconds later, he said that “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose.” Which, well, isn’t the same thing at all, is it? “Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans,” Biden had acknowledged earlier. And yet the majority of Republicans — and a healthy number of Democrats — are pro-life. So which is it, Joe? Is the problem with “MAGA Republicans” that they “refuse to accept the results of a free election,” or is it that they believe the unborn should not be killed in the womb? And if being pro-life makes one a “MAGA Republican” by definition, then surely “the majority of Republicans” are, in fact, “MAGA Republicans” — and have been since about 1980.
This habit has become so widespread as to completely undermine the Democrats’ messaging. At some point in the recent past, President Biden was told by the Center for American Progress to use the term “MAGA Republican,” and he’s followed that directive with ruthless efficiency. Everything is “MAGA” now — tax cuts, opposition to abortion, support for the Second Amendment, religious-liberty concerns, the Supreme Court. And thus, via the transitive property, everything has become “Democracy,” too. In concerned tones, Democrats have taken to saying on television that if a majority of voters choose the Republican Party in the midterms, that will be “undemocratic,” even as they spend tens of millions of dollars trying to ensure that the people they claim are a threat are nominated. In the New York Times, Thomas Edsall has written with a straight face that, this November, “the Florida election will be a referendum on democracy,” and that, because Ron DeSantis is the favorite to receive more votes than his opponent, “the odds do not look good.” And, all the while, the Democratic Party has continued to insist that when its leading lights — Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, President Biden’s current press secretary — claim a presidential election was stolen, that is somehow “different” from when Republicans claim a presidential election was stolen.
Last night’s speech represented the culmination of this trend, and, in consequence, it was a catastrophe — for the rule of law, for President Biden, and for the country itself, which, in almost every respect, deserves a far better political life than the one it’s getting.