Less than two weeks after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, calls to lower the political temperature were vociferously tossed aside Wednesday evening when Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office.
Biden — whose shocking decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential campaign and throw his support behind Kamala Harris has stunned the nation and world — offered virtually no explanation for his change of heart, leaving more questions than answers.
It’s time for sanity, the taming of the tongue, and smarter politics.
But beyond that, Biden also did something else — a deeply troubling move in the wake of a violent and turbulent election cycle: He again framed the 2024 campaign as an existential battle for America’s survival.
“It’s been the honor of my life to serve as your president,” he said. “But in the defense of democracy, which is at stake, I think it’s more important than any title.”
At a time when the political temperatures are scorching, Biden told the nation that the “defense of democracy” is essential, because, from his vantage point, it is “at stake.”
Again — just days after gun violence rocked the 2024 campaign and claimed the life of Corey Comperatore, a man attending Donald Trump’s rally — Biden chose to use terror and fear to score political points while elevating himself and his party to hero status.
This “defense of democracy” language suggests that Trump, if he wins in November, will somehow destroy America and its structural underpinnings. Far from a mere mention uttered in passing, Biden went on to express the same idea in different forms throughout the speech.
“I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future all merited a second term,” Biden continued. “But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy, and that includes personal ambition.”
Once more, the “saving our democracy” language emerged, sending an unsubtle message to an already fearful and inflation-riddled electorate that our nation could somehow be lost if the Democratic Party doesn’t hold onto power.
At the end of the speech, the president concluded by hammering home the same narrative, urging the nation to “preserve our democracy” by listening to him and voting for Kamala Harris.
Such proclamations might seem benign, but they are anything but. At a time when citizens are ginned up into an almost incessant panic, the claim that the 2024 election is a choice between demolishing democracy and choosing someone who will defend it is, at best, unhelpful — and, at worst, dangerous.
After the attempted assassination of Trump, Biden himself stressed the need to “lower the temperature in our politics,” but his “defend democracy” language does anything but temper those storms. Instead, it pours gasoline on the already raging fires of consternation in this nation.
Some, like Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), recently encouraged people on both sides of the political divide to stop using these sinister tactics.
“We can start by dropping hyperbolic threats about the stakes of this election,” he said in a July 14 post on X (formerly Twitter). “It should not be misleadingly portrayed as a struggle between democracy or authoritarianism, or a battle against fascists or socialists bent on destroying America. These are dangerous lies.”
And yet those “dangerous lies” were once again on display Wednesday night. Golden is right to call us to stop going to the lowest common denominator to try to win elections.
Trump, too, is back to name-calling, lashing out at “Crooked Joe Biden and Lyin’ Kamala Harris,” calling them a “great embarrassment to America” and proclaiming “there has never been a time like this.”
But the truth is, the 2024 race is a battle over ideology and the future. Like all elections, it’s a debate over which party has a better vision for moving the nation forward, protecting the borders, providing economic opportunity, and offering possibilities to live out the American dream.
Democracy isn’t on the chopping block, and it’s unfortunate Biden and others continue to use such divisive and dangerous language — especially at a time when the nation is still trying to find its footing following the attempted assassination.
Golden also spoke of how efforts for “short-term political gain” lead to exaggerations of differences and make political opponents appear as “diabolical caricatures bent on destroying the country.”
Not only does this force us to see ideological opponents as enemies, but Golden said it can lead us to experience violence and instability.
“The result is an overwhelming sense of fear [and] anxiety about the future of our country, where the normal and tested tools of democracy no longer seem adequate to protect the common good,” he continued. “In this light, a rise of politically motivated violence in America is sadly unsurprising.”
It’s time for sanity, the taming of the tongue, and smarter politics. We must call on all candidates to step up to the plate, stop leeching off Americans’ emotions, and win elections on the merits of their own ideas and policies — not on trumped-up fear and consternation.
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