There are many ways to
assess a speech that is given to inform the public of an immanent threat
to the Nation. There's the content, logical coherence, reception by
media and the public,and practical impact i.e. concrete
policies/plans/goals to alleviate or reduce the emergency faced. Yet
another important measure of significance is follow-through on the part
of the speech-giver. If the president warns the country about a tropical
storm that could devastate a whole region, but does so only once and
then moves on and forgets it, announcing no policies to mitigate the
damage, the speech is ultimately looked back on as a failure-- "talk and
not action." Only time will tell whether Biden will truly address this
very real crisis or go back to a stony and enigmatic silence he's
maintained on the topic since his term began.
*****
As far as content and logical coherence go, Biden was inaccurate in maintaining the myth that MAGA are a "minority" of the Republican Party, and that he "knows this" because--supposedly-- he has "worked with mainstream Republicans." That's bullshit, sorry. There are almost no non-MAGA "mainstream" Republicans left. Trump non-loyalists (those who refuse to parrot the "Big Lie" or, at a minimum, keep their mouths shut lest they get RINO-hunted) are a tiny, ever-dwindling minority of the GOP in office. MAGA IS the mainstream GOP brand now. Rank and file Repubs mostly support it, as ultra-conservative Liz Cheney's dramatic defeat shows and a slew of other primary results has amply demonstrated (as well as opinion polls). Biden is scared to say it like it is because it appears (coming at this particular election time after saying nothing for nearly 2 years) like a self-serving partisan speech. Maybe it is.
Much of the content was actually the kind you get in campaign speeches (what he's done and how great--um, supposedly-- economic and political prospects now are ("I'm more optimistic than ever." and "this will be another American Century"). Those rosy pronouncements do not cohere logically with the message that we're on the brink if MAGA-GOP gains the upper hand in Washington (as they may). By a) articulating an emergency-level threat to our form of government and then b) offering no concrete policy remedies or changes in law (such as election reform, domestic terror laws etc.) and c) spending much of the time detailing and exaggerating his successes as a basis for optimism that the future will get better and not worse, the content is revealed as at least partly false, and basically incoherent when you try to connect the various dots of the speech logically.
Another measure of an alleged transpartisan, emergency of democracy speech is its reception. I've searched the main media outlets including NYT, WaPo, NBC, CBS etc. Most ignored-- even failed to carry it on TV. There has been little discussion in both major media outlets and even social media outlets compared to coverage and discussion of Trump, or the 1/6 hearings etc. Most people in the media covered 1/6 and Cheney's Trump denouncing concession speech, but see Biden's speech as largely unrelated to the things discussed there, and more an attempt to rally Dems during campaign season.. Partly it's because Biden comes to the topic way too late with a distorted, unduly optimistic, and supposedly "bi-partisan" approach. In that sense, their cold reception is understandable. There's just nothing new in a speech like this, which actually sounds like a very watered down version of what the 1/6 committee has put out there over the summer, and will resume investigating and broadcasting shortly. Biden is *behind* the curve, not ahead of it. He's following the media coverage and not breaking any news. He's not leading on the issue, and he is the primary target of MAGA. If he can't stand up more forcefully and frequently to his own enemies, who will?
Most damning, then, is his his own lack of commitment to *DOING SOMETHING ABOUT
THE PROBLEM* he is finally, and only in a watered down way, flagging as an existential threat to our system of government. He
says, "I will not stand by." But that's exactly what he has done during
his term so far, and by all indications 3 or 4 days after the "warning
speech, what he is still doing. He campaigned with a promise to "put
teeth into domestic terrorism laws," but has done nothing. Political
violence and credible threats/intimidation have only gone up since then.
Death threats are issued against officials routinely nowadays, and
there have been ZERO speeches or press statements by Biden on the topic
until now. He has flattered conservatives (even McConnell who got an
anti-abortion judge appointed by Biden in his state this year) when all
of them swear on their upside-down Trump bibles to make sure the Biden
agenda fails (actually Biden's "friend" McConnell has explicitly stated
as much, and yet has been rewarded for it). The deeply researched book,
This Shall Not Pass, shows how obsessed Biden has been with a)
bi-partisanship and b) his legacy as another FDR who gets "big things
done. If he can't quite claim to be up there with FDR, he didn't shy
away from comparing himself to one of the other most popular "great" US
presidents who built much of the post war infrastructure (highways,
suburban homes, GI Bill stuff etc.) -- i.e. Mr. "I like Ike" Dwight
Eisenhower. Imagine pins that say, "I Like Joe" being worn by Dems and
Repubs alike! Please. Is he making the speech to "stand up to MAGA" or
boast about alleged bi-partisan smash-success stories of his first
term?? And is he serious? The Eisenhower yrs were the height of "The Age
of American Prosperity." Ours is the age of stagflation, new cold wars
and the greatest possibility of a nuclear catastrophe since the Cuban
Missile Crisis. See https://www.bbc.com/news/wo... and, as of today, https://www.nytimes.com/202...
I mean, I could keep going. I won't. We're in trouble. So far, and probably going forward, the speech is already a forgotten one most people did not discuss much or take seriously. I think the media judge it to be largely based on the politics of the election because it actually reads that way. It's weak on MAGA. He said nothing to make them uneasy because he announced no measures he will take to curtail the growth of this movement.
At the same time, the lack of interest in the speech also shows how much trouble we're in. At a minimum, it might well have served as a conversation-starter for all its weaknesses. A speech about the threat of MAGA by the President should not be met with apathy if the press really believes what they report based on the 1/6 Committee and other sources. In that sense, the reception reveals much about the denial in which even "liberal" journalists live. They're jaded, and thrive on sensationalism. Trump's statements on "Truth Social" get more attention in mainstream media than Biden's one and only denunciation of MAGA in a prime time speech. No matter how weak the speech, there's really no good excuse for underplaying the *topic*, even if Biden did approach it largely as an awkward combination of a dire warning and a jingoistic campaign speech for Dems this year.
But ultimately, the buck stops with Biden. He treats our number 1 short term existential crisis as a problem in the minority of the GOP, then says nothing about how to stop it and goes on to brag ostentatiously about the infrastructure bill etc., before saying that 'the best is yet to come" and "we're in for another American Century" blah, blah. Nah. Useless imo. He did not wake anyone up who wasn't already awake as far as I can tell. But he put some of those who are awake to sleep with his milquetoast and jingoistic presentation of a deadly serious problem.
Though I hate Liz Cheney's policies, I'd listen to her speeches on Trump and MAGA anytime before enduring more Biden speeches like this one. She has been a force for MAGA to reckon with, not a denier of the total capture of MAGA on her party. She has played a historic role in bringing the worst elements of the Trumpist coup to light. She shows insight into the dark machinations of MAGA-GOP--probably, in part, because she KNOWS the players very well and does not underestimate the problem, as when she says, flatly, "The GOP right now is in very bad shape" and doesn't pretend there are mostly good "mainstream Republicans" in Washington or the States, as Biden does.
When The Lincoln Project, and people like Liz Cheney make Biden sound like an apologist for the GOP, I think we can safely say we're up the creek without a strong and focused leader on this critical issue. We can only hope that for reasons other than this dud of a speech, Democrats surprise all of us by taking both chambers this fall. That would give us *just enough time* to take the steps we should have been taking after 1/6 and stop whistling past the graveyard of democracy. The first task (one Biden didn't even mention and hasn't been working Congress on) is passing the ECA Reform Act currently one vote short. Without that, 2024 may be the year our electoral system fails to prevent the kind of overturning Trump tried in 2020. It gets almost no attention anywhere except among specialists in constitutional law.
(Note: This was originally written as a comment in response to Germaine's OP on the speech, but since it is prohibitively long for a comment, I posted it here.)
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