Joe Biden's 'Threat to Democracy' speech
The president makes partisan use of basic American principles.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argued on Saturday that the Biden administration doesn't believe there is a real threat to democracy and that the president was using the "threat" as "leverage" with swing voters.
"You may believe that American democracy is threatened as at no point since the Civil War, dear reader, but they do not. They are running a political operation in which the threat to democracy is leverage, used to keep swing voters onside without having to make difficult concessions to the center or the right," Douthat wrote.
Douthat said President Biden's speech on Thursday could have been given by any Democrat in the Trump era and noted that it came just as Democrats had planned to throw millions in to the New Hampshire Senate primary in an effort to boost a candidate they deem to be unelectable.
"The president could have acknowledged, for instance, that his own party has played some role in undermining faith in American elections, that the Republicans challenging the 2020 result were making a more dangerous use of tactics deployed by Democrats in 2004 and 2016," Douthat wrote.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a rally hosted by the Democratic National Committee (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The New York Times columnist also argued that Biden could have condemned the 2020 rioting or the recent wave of vandalism at crisis pregnancy centers in addition to condemning "MAGA threats."
He wrote that the president also could have "played the statesman" when it came to the Dobbs decision and abortion. He said Biden could have "invoked his own Catholic faith and moderate past, praised the sincerity of abortion opponents and called for a national compromise on abortion — a culture war truce" if it was "for the greater good of saving democracy itself."
During Biden's speech on Thursday, the president said "MAGA Republicans" were threats to democracy and that democracy was "under assault."
Former President Trump stressed the importance of restoring law and order in America in his first speech in Washington D.C. since leaving office. (Getty Images)
"If Jan. 6 and its aftermath made it easier to imagine a Trumpian G.O.P. precipitating a constitutional crisis, they did not make it more imaginable that it could consolidate power thereafter," he said. "Which in turn makes it relatively safe for the Democratic Party to continue using crisis-of-democracy rhetoric instrumentally, and even tacitly boost Trump within the G.O.P., instead of making the moves toward conciliation and cultural truce that a real crisis would require."
Douthat wrote that "in their hearts," Biden and other Democrat leaders think he is "right."
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U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on climate change and renewable energy at the site of the former Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts, U.S. July 20, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
Fox News' Peter Doocy asked the president on Friday if he considered all Trump supporters to be a threat to democracy.
"You keep trying to make that case. I don't consider any Trump supporters a threat to the country," Biden said. "I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence, refuses to acknowledge an election…changing the way you count votes, that is a threat to democracy."
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