President Biden on Friday delivered a ferocious condemnation of Donald J. Trump, his likely 2024 opponent, warning in searing language that the former president had directed an insurrection and would aim to undo the nation’s bedrock democracy if he returned to power.
On the eve of the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters, Mr. Biden framed the coming election as a choice between a candidate devoted to upholding America’s centuries-old ideals and a chaos agent willing to discard them for his personal benefit.
“There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do,” Mr. Biden warned in a speech at a community college not far from Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, where George Washington commanded troops during the Revolutionary War. Exhorting supporters to prepare to vote this fall, he said: “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question is: Who are we?”
In an intensely personal address that at one point nearly led Mr. Biden to curse Mr. Trump by name, the president compared his rival to foreign autocrats who rule by fiat and lies. He said Mr. Trump had failed the basic test of American leaders, to trust the people to choose their elected officials and abide by their decisions.
“We must be clear,” Mr. Biden said. “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.”
I posted the following elsewhere, just before I read that he said this, as I was thinking about a quote I heard earlier from DL Hughley regarding Trump’s election:
The Democrats’ problem is that they don’t address who we are. They offer only aspirations. Who are we (beyond the racists and fascists Trump and his supporters represent)? Broke. Sick. Overworked. Exploited. Isolated. Scared. He wants us to vote based on hope that we can push back fascism. Hope that we can win our rights back. He wants us to vote based on some dream of democracy I can’t say I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime. Give me someone to vote for who’s going to meet us where we are.
Obama was practically the platonic ideal of the perfect neoliberal president. He said all the right words, checked all the right boxes, and effortlessly combined warmth and charm with an air of stern authority. He was, in all likelihood, the best neoliberal president we will ever get. Neoliberalism is clearly not enough.
It’s time for the Democratic party to stop pretending they can serve the elites while paying lip service to the proles. In a rational world, the proles would have no option. Democrats are not their friends, but they will never be as bad as Republicans. But it’s not a rational world, and fascism thrives with the disaffected masses. When faced with the choice between “bad” and “worse”, “worse” is far more attractive than it should be.
People give Obama way too much credit, but that’s how far great oratory skills will get you as president. He ruled as a conservative and was solidly in the corner of the billionaires, just like every president since Reagan.
This. Common folk haven’t had a president since Carter, and that didn’t go well. Ruling class is called that for a reason. We need more anti-corporatism (aka Boston Tea Party).