“He’s not just a former president, he’s a defeated former president.” President Biden has often expressed his anger at Mr. Trump, but this speech is something different...going after Mr. Trump so directly...
This was striking from a president who sees himself as a political bridge builder. He said he would still try to work with Republicans who embrace democracy, but that “too many others are transforming that party into something else.” That seems like a turning point from a politician who always thought he could work across the aisle with almost anyone.
[I heard the president say that and I hope that it means that he now realizes that small-d democrats cannot work with anti-democrats.
Biden has made really sweeping statements in the past about the existential dangers of an assault on voting rights, but advocates have not seen that translate into action. That’s the political risk here, that the president delivers another speech full of soaring rhetoric, but then fails to deliver or gets bogged down in the realities of legislating...
[Ditto to Michael D. Shear. I had an epiphany a few weeks ago that Biden is not really committed to doing what is necessary to protect democracy in America.]
Congressional Democrats and activists have been calling on President Biden to step up his push to preserve voting rights through legislation stalled on Capitol Hill. Perhaps this speech marks the beginning of a new commitment.
As he concludes, President Biden is positioning himself as a the defender of American democracy in the tradition of Lincoln, fighting against the “kings, dictators and autocrats.”
The question of how to remember and memorialize Jan. 6, which Vice President Harris is addressing now, is a complicated one here in the Capitol — a place that is part workplace, part living museum. How to permanently acknowledge the riot remains unanswered.
[The Capitol should never have been repaired, it should have been left in the condition it was when the coup perpetrators departed. No one, especially the anti-democrats, could forget, they would be reminded after time they walk through that hallowed ground that it is also shadowed ground.]Vice President Harris was...making the case for the sweeping voting rights bill being blocked by Republicans in the Senate. “If we are not vigilant, if we do not defend it, democracy simply will not stand,” she said.
[True that.]
