President Biden’s Attack on Democracy
When Republicans declare that an upcoming election may not be legitimate it's an unprecedented "attack on democracy," but when Democrats do the same it's... nothing at all
When former president Donald Trump declared that the 2020 presidential election may not be legitimate if he lost to Joe Biden for various reasons the left erupted with claims that Trump was attacking, undermining, and possibly trying to overthrow American “democracy” itself.
In a rambling press conference on January 19 to commemorate his first year in office, President Biden made the claim that the upcoming midterm elections where the Republican Party is expected to do very well may not be fair or legitimate. If you’re waiting for a list of tweets from Sanders et al. condemning Biden’s attack on democracy I’d suggest you start breathing again.
From Biden’s press conference:
Q: Thank you, sir. I just wanted to clarify: A moment ago, you were asked whether or not you believed that we would have free and fair elections in 2022 if some of these state legislatures reformed their voting protocols. You said that it depends. Do you — do you think that they would in any way be illegitimate?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yeah, I think it easily could be — be illegitimate.
Imagine — imagine if, in fact, Trump has succeeded in convincing Pence to not count the votes.
Q: Well, I —
THE PRESIDENT: Imagine if —
Go on.
Q: In regard to 2022, sir — the midterm elections.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, 2022. I mean, imagine if those attempts to say that the count was not legit. “You have to recount it and we’re not going to count — we’re going to discard the following votes.”
I mean, sure, but — I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit. It’s — the increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these — these reforms passed.
But I don’t think you’re going to see — you’re not going to see me and I don’t think you’re going to see the Democratic Party give up on — coming back and assuming that the attempt fails today.
[Editorial Note: In the hopes of increasing clarity of who’s speaking, I have put the questions to President Biden in italics and added colons after “Q,” and I have put Biden’s replies in bold but have not otherwise edited the transcript from the White House website.]
After years of hearing about all of Trump’s “unprecedented attacks on democracy,” the worst of which was daring to question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election culminating in the January 6th “insurrection” where Trump supporters attempted to overthrow the election results, President Biden turns around and attacks democracy by questioning the legitimacy of the 2022 midterm elections. And here is White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s curious attempt to convince us that Biden did not say what he plainly said by confirming that he did say exactly what we all thought he said. Denial by confirmation if you will.
In other words, if you don’t run your elections the way we want you to run them then the election may be illegitimate. That’s exactly what everyone thought Biden said in his press conference, and exactly the same claim made by Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Yet because Biden is a Democrat this will not be heralded as an attack on democracy the way Trump’s claims were.
There are two different sets of rules for Democrats and Republicans when it comes to contesting the legitimacy or even potential legitimacy of an election. For example, three years after her resounding defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton was still bellyaching about her loss and refusing to take any responsibility for it, calling Trump an “illegitimate president.” The obvious implication being that he somehow stole the election from her.
“No, it doesn’t kill me because he knows he’s an illegitimate president,” she said. “I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories — he knows that — there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did.”
So how does the party that has questioned the legitimacy of every presidential election they’ve lost going back to at least the year 2000 have any leg to stand on in claiming that Trump’s claim was somehow uniquely a threat to democracy when he was merely using their favorite tactic? The answer is that they’re saying whatever they think will best advance their political and electoral interests. They don’t actually believe that Trump, who headed one of the least effective regimes in modern American history, represented a threat to the American political order, and nor do they believe that the probable Republican wave in 2022 will be the result of widespread electoral fraud. They painted Trump as a threat to American democracy because it served their narrow political interests at the time, and they’re questioning the legitimacy of the 2022 election because it serves their narrow political interests now.
And now that the Democrats have failed to pass their “election reform” bill, what will the narrative going forward be for the 2022 mid-term elections? Remember that passage of this bill was, according to Biden, one of the measuring sticks by which the legitimacy of the 2022 elections could be measured. If the Republicans have a huge victory, as seems likely, will the Biden regime continue the proud Democratic tradition of attacking American democracy by declaring elections that they lose to be illegitimate?
And, perhaps most importantly, who will hold them accountable if they do?