WASHINGTON —After 52 years in federal electoral politics, Democratic President Joe Biden exited the political wars on July 24 with the same theme he used to start his now-dead re-election campaign, warning about the threat to U.S. democracy.
In a short speech from the Oval Office at the White House yesterday, explaining his decision to end his race for re-election, and endorse his Vice President, Kamala Harris, for the job, Biden, 81, didn’t discuss much of what pushed him out.
He made no mention, for example, of the widespread opposition to his support for Israel in its war against the Palestinian people. That opposition and problems he faced among young voters as a result were not mentioned. He did not discuss the fear that lawmakers lower on the ballot had about being dragged down along with him.
Instead, Biden again recited his achievements in the White House term, declared his administration overcame the coronavirus pandemic, pulled the U.S. out of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, and added a long list of legislation dealing with climate change, gun control, and lowering the cost of prescription drugs, among other pluses. He did not discuss how mass movements of the people were involved in building the support base for many of the positive changes he had endorsed.
But the last item on Biden’s summary list was that his administration, he said, fended off “the worst threat to the U.S. Constitution since the Civil War.” That, though he did not say so, was the January 2021 Trump-ordered and –encouraged invasion, insurrection, and coup d’etat attempt at the U.S. Capitol. Again, mass popular support for democracy as opposed to autocracy, was not discussed by the president.
And after reading from the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” Biden said “I never believed America would walk away from that choice,” even when the U.S., as he has admitted before and repeated in his speech, falls short of it.
“I don’t believe we’ll walk away from it now,” the president re-emphasized, but the threat is there. He then repeated Ben Franklin’s answer to a Philadelphia woman about whether the newly written U.S. Constitution created a republic or a monarchy.
“A republic, if you can keep it,” Biden quoted Franklin’s reply.
“But whether we keep this republic is now in your hands,” Biden warned the country. “History is in your hands, power is in your hands. So let’s act together to protect our democracy.”
On the really negative side, Biden bragged about uniting and expanding NATO, the most dangerous military alliance in the world and he described the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine as a “coalition of nations to stop [Vladimir] Putin.” The peace movement will have its work cut out for it, at least for the six months remaining in the Biden term.
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