President Biden’s unofficial campaign event emboldens radical fringe

U.S. President Joe Biden gave a prime-time speech last week ostensibly to battle for the soul of the nation. There is a real threat from those who are willing to practice violence in the name of politics, but the nature of the threat was obscured by a thinly veiled partisan appeal to his base to Vote! Vote! Vote!

The blandly neutral C-SPAN announcer was obliged to add a bit of context at the end of the speech, saying “this comes nearly two months before the 2022 midterm elections, however, the White House has said that tonight’s speech was not to be seen as an official campaign event.”

Okay, fine – call it an unofficial campaign event with terrible optics. Multiple stairs in dim light apparently required an escort on and off stage for the elderly president. The red lighting on a podium positioned in front of Constitution Hall inspired comparisons to staging for Nazi rallies. The meme generators had a field day. Even if you didn’t watch the speech, images abound online of a brooding Biden in front of a blood-red backdrop with two U.S. Marines at attention in the shadows. Ooh, spooky.

Whatever. As radio host Erick Erickson analyzed it, the speech was never meant to be watched. Most of the nation didn’t, since only CNN and C-SPAN carried it live, and the college football season had just kicked off. Arguing about the staging is a distraction from the economy. Republican and independent voters are overwhelmingly worried about the ongoing challenges of inflation and its impact on every purchase, every day. The timing of the speech was an attempt to head off a Democrat purge in the midterm elections.

From a conservative perspective, it was a carefully crafted political speech overflowing with irritatingly blatant hypocrisy. Disrespect for the “rule of law” was emphasized five times as a threat to the nation. That’s an accurate statement taken at face value, but not when coming from the mouth of a man who recently claimed authority to transfer repayment of debts from student loan borrowers to all taxpayers, based on a law that was intended to apply “in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.” Does anyone want to bet that survives a constitutional challenge?

But back to the staging and the background audio in urban Philadelphia. The frequent sound of sirens was a reminder of voter concerns over rising crime. Eastern Washington is not immune: Spokane was recently ranked 72 out of 73 Washington cities for safety by the National Council for Home Safety and Security. And that was based on 2018 FBI data, before the impact of the Washington Legislature’s micromanaging of law enforcement and the 2021 Blake decision tossing out the state’s felony drug passion statute.

Ostensibly the speech was a warning about threats to democracy from “only” MAGA Republicans, but the definition of a MAGA Republican was a little vague. President Biden did plainly say, “Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. ” On the other hand, he also said MAGA Republicans are “determined to take this country backwards – backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”

The phrasing made it sound like a MAGA Republican includes anyone who is pro-life (with or without nuanced choice), respects the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, or has ever questioned the wisdom of alternatives to heterosexual marriage. That’s a pretty big basket of deplorables.

Fear-mongering about losing access to contraception is progressive activist bait while the staging is graphic incitement to over-reaction on the radical right. Biden’s speech potentially emboldened extremes in both blue and red America with raw meat to feed the already angry.

The threat of violence is not confined to a single party but thankfully not widespread in American politics, or at least not yet. According to research at BrightLineWatch.org, among Republicans who identify strongly with their party, 9% expressed support for Jan. 6 violence. Republicans reported slightly higher acceptance than Democrats when asked about using violence if their side loses in 2024, but numbers were still under 9% for both parties. Radical fringes exist on both ends of the political spectrum, and we need to face them.

Disrespect for the rule of law indeed emboldens those with an urge to anarchy and violence. BrightLineWatch.org reports, “35% and 13% of Democrats who do not identify strongly with their party support non-violent misdemeanors and non-violent felonies respectively compared to 29% and 7% of those who do identify strongly.” We all saw how those “mostly peaceful” nonviolent protests in 2021’s “summer of love” were twisted into violent attacks, arson and murder by a radical fringe. A fringe that doesn’t identify as MAGA Republicans.

In this hyperpartisan election atmosphere, both Democrat and Republican candidates will be cautiously navigating what James Madison described in the Federalist papers as “the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.” If the speech writing team wanted to tame that factious spirit to save the soul of the nation, they utterly failed.

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com