Joe Biden’s speech in Philadelphia on Thursday evening was a full-blown attack on Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans that “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”
Despite White House suggestions that the address would not be political, it’s hard to not see how it would not be seen through a partisan lens, or that it even makes any difference.
Just as the midterms kick into high gear, Biden turned the attention on his 2020 rival, Trump, who, by endorsing candidates like Dr. Oz and Blake Masters, has given Democrats new hopes of avoiding a wipeout by highlighting their opponents’ weaknesses and wild statements.
Biden’s pitch was that, while he’s worked with plenty of Republicans when he was in the Senate and during his presidency, the driving force of the party is Trump, with an agenda of denying the results of free and fair elections and, if they don’t get their way, threatening violence.
“We must be honest with each other and ourselves,” Biden said. “Too much of what is happening in our country today is not normal.”
Biden even echoed warnings from J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative who testified before the January 6th Committee, and presented this moment in American history as an “inflection point.”
As fragile as democracy is, Biden suggested that most Americans recognize the threat.
“This is a nation that honors our Constitution. We do not reject it,” he said. “This is a nation that believes in the rule of law. We do not repudiate it. This is a nation that respects free and fair elections. We honor the will of the people. We do not deny it. And this is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool. We do not encourage violence.”
In a “pre-rebuttal,” delivered about an hour before Biden’s address, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that Biden should apologize for referring to MAGA philosophy as “semi fascism” when the president spoke at a fundraiser last week. Biden didn’t apologize, but he tried to make a distinction between MAGA Republicans and the mainstream GOP.
Broadcast networks skipped the speech, as they have shied away in the past from giving up time in primetime for overt political rallies and other campaign events.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain argued on Twitter that the speech defended freedom, equality and democracy. “They are as ‘political’ as Ben Franklin, saying in 1787, that the framers had given us ‘a Republic, if you can keep it.’ ”
Yet Biden also ran through his administration’s accomplishments, something that has given D.C. Democrats new optimism over the party’s prospects. One CNN commentator quickly labeled the speech like one that Biden would give at the next Democratic Convention, what with its repeat of his 2020 theme of “the battle for the soul of the nation.”
The immediate commentary after Biden delivered the speech, to little surprise, was his forceful attacks on Trump and the MAGA movement. Whether that is out of lofty principle or hard partisanship or both, Biden set up a contrast and, come November, a stark choice.
