Biden sounded a little too much like Bush in his plea democracy is at stake on Election Day
Fears of election denialism and political violence echo fears years ago about terrorist threats. Will the outcome of the president raising the alarm be different?
President Biden’s speech on the very essence of democracy being at stake in the mid-term elections — an effort that was his last pitch before Election Day and last ditch given polls show he needs something to avert a potential red wave — has stayed with me in the days that followed. That’s not because I was moved to vote Democrat by his words, but because I had the feeling I heard a campaign pitch along those lines before.
The basic premise of Biden’s speech was the coupling of a major act of political violence we’ve seen in recent days, the assault on Paul Pelosi, with the violence and intimidation we saw nearly two years ago over Donald Trump’s denial he lost the 2020 election and the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Biden, with a degree of intensity turning up the volume to high levels, warned us the link between the assault and Donald Trump’s election denials demonstrate we’re in drastic times calling for drastic measures.
“In this moment, we have to confront those lies with the truth. The very future of our nation depends on it. My fellow Americans, we’re facing a defining moment, an inflection point. And we must — with one overwhelming, unified voice — speak as a country and say there is no place — no place — for voter intimidation or political violence in America, whether it’s directed at Democrats or Republicans. No place, period. No place ever.”
Biden had one line in particular that would fit in perfectly well with the principles of the Weekly Dystopia: “We must vote, knowing what’s at stake is not just the policy of the moment, but institutions that have held us together as we have sought a more perfect union are also at stake.” Biden’s solution to preserve our institution, however, was for the nation to vote Democratic in the mid-term election and rely on his political party to keep the nation together.
The threat level remained at DEFCOM 5-level throughout much of Biden’s speech. Any number of lines in his pitch to voters, many of which vilified Trump for his refusal to accept the 2020 results, cast the upcoming election as a make-or-break moment.
You know, American democracy is under attack because the defeated former President of the United States refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election. He refuses to accept the will of the people. He refuses to accept the fact that he lost.
But here’s the thing: Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot. We had the election to oust him in 2020. Anyone can see he continues to have influence on the Republican Party, so much so that many candidates are running — to various degrees — on the same denial of the 2020 results. But if Biden was trying to convince me Republican wins in an off-year election would end American democracy as we know it, he came up short.
The desperation that came through was specifically intended to incite fear in the American public. So much was at stake by potential Republican wins, Biden argued, voters should disregard their political ideologies, or discontent with issues like inflation and crime, and keep his party in power. Forget about everything else, there’s so much danger it should override those concerns.
We’ve seen that approach before in American politics. President George W. Bush in his campaign for re-election back in 2004 made fear of terrorist threats a central component of his campaign. The political machine seeking to win him re-election, orchestrated by the unscrupulous Karl Rove, drew on continued fears of terrorism based attacks after Sept. 11, 2001 — as well as stoking alarm over gay couples getting married by calling for a Federal Marriage Amendment — to divert attention from the quagmire of the Iraq war Bush started under the false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction.
Remember the TV ad that showed footage of white wolves skulking about in the forest and looking menacingly in the cameras? That old line from Franklin Roosevelt, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” was tossed away as a relic for a sturdier generation in a bygone era.
For Bush and Biden, the nature of the articulated threats were different, but at the end of the day both approaches came down to using fear about basic security and basic institutions to mobilize voters.
Biden even had a line his speech echoing Bush’s in his defense of his policies and continued presence in Iraq. “Look, my fellow Americans, the old expression, “Freedom is not free; it requires constant vigilance,” Biden said. That’s exactly the line given in response to questions under Bush about why America needed a continued presence in Iraq and why U.S. troops needed to keep dying there.
One other thing led me to draw a comparison between Bush and Biden: A news story just before Biden’s speech indicating the Department of Homeland Security had circulated an internal memo within U.S. agencies warning of an elevated domestic terrorism threat prior to Election Day. That memo struck me as similar to the alert system during the Bush era with colored-coded warnings depending on the imminent nature of a terrorist attack, which would often come as voters were going to the polls.
Under the Bush system, I had no idea how I should respond to the color-coded warning on an imminent attack other than be afraid. Bill Maher had a great joke in his standup at the time: “What am I supposed to do? Carry a sweater?” I would hope the law enforcement receiving the DHS memo would find within it something more actionable.
We won’t know for sure until Election Day whether’s Biden’s pleas to save democracy will have an impact at the polls. For George W. Bush, the strategy of stoking fear about terrorism led to different outcomes at different times.
In 2004, the strategy paid off in spades as he defeated John Kerry and Republicans made gains in Congress. To this day, Bush’s victory that year (and unlike his win in 2000) was the last time the Republican nominee won the presidency with a majority of voters behind him in the popular vote.
In 2006, however, as the Iraq war continued to linger on, Karl Rove executed the same strategy about the fear of terrorism and need to stay the course in Iraq. It didn’t work as well. Democrats enjoyed historic gains in the mid-term elections, setting themselves up for even greater wins in the next presidential election with Barack Obama.
Let’s come back to the present in 2022. If the polls are any indication, Biden’s party will suffer the same losses as Bush’s party did in 2006.
I don't envision this fledgling newsletter will as a general matter delve too deeply in the ever-changing tide of politics, but I bring up this comparison between Bush and Biden for two reasons.
First, it’s the latest development consistent with the clearly visible phenomenon of migration between the political parties in recent years. The swap includes myself as an apostate of the progressive movement now skewing more conservative, although I still see myself as more or less a chimera of American political ideologies.
Second, one of the principles of the Weekly Dystopia is the need to preserve values and institutions that have made America thrive as the pinnacle of Western civilization. Democracy is the top of the list for those institutions.
The basic premise of Biden’s words, just as they were with Bush, is American voters should forget how dissatisfied they are and further empower people who are already in power. Despite Biden’s plea that is the only way to save democracy, that approach comes off more as a way to undermine the institution. If Democrats are allowed to stay in power under the guise of an emergency situation, they could usher through any number of misguided or partisan measures without proper scrutiny.
Biden likely won’t get his way with voters on Election Day. If the polls showing Republican gains bear out in the election results, it will demonstrate American voters need more than visceral fear to move them at the ballot box. At the end of the day, that might be better for democracy than Biden would think.