Although Biden's prime-time speech was passed over by the TV networks, and though it wasn't exactly front and center on the Sunday news shows that I saw, an interesting article in The Atlantic shed a very different light on the whole matter. I thought it would be worth sharing here. Though my post here yesterday was critical of the speech, I was considering its value as a warning to the country about the very real threat to US democracy, and an explanation of just what Biden plans to do about it. This Atlantic piece looks at the speech as a tactical political move designed to bait Trump into having a self-destructive fit in the form of a public display, thus insuring the mid-terms will occur in the shadow of Trump's boundless rage and over-the-top insults. The goal, on this view, was to make the elections all about Trump, and not a referendum on Biden's record to date.
David Frum is a Canadian-American curmudgeon, a creature of the old neo-con Right who wrote speeches for George "W" Bush, before his second act in politics as a "never-Trumper." Though I find him to be a singularly humorless and often pompous "pundit," the article he just wrote for The Atlantic looks at Biden's speech from an angle I had not really considered. Frum suggests (and I'm not sure he's right as it seems speculative) that one of Biden's main motivations for giving the speech that he did, where he did and in the style that he did, was not so much to educate or warn the public as to provoke the notoriously thin-skinned and narcissistic Donald Trump to throw a fit that would ensure that the mid-terms would be exactly what the GOP most fears-- a referendum not on Biden, but on Trump. I've seen more than a few Republicans including Lindsey Graham all but beg Trump to stay out of the spotlight for a little while-- or at least talk about the candidates more than himself-- so they can focus on beating Biden by pointing to inflation, Afghanistan withdrawal, and whatever else they think will stick. Here's an example of Graham "advising" Trump on CNN last month. Notice especially his statement, "it's not so much about the people liking us, but based on Biden's performance it's about offering them alternative..."
Perhaps Trump just doesn't have the self-control or humility to occupy any position but center stage. Still, Biden, according to Frum, wanted to bait Trump in such a way that he would explode in public view, reminding one and all of his worst qualities. If so, Frum says, he succeeded wildly.
Frum writes:
Yesterday, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump addressed a rally supposedly in support of Republican candidates in the state: Mehmet Oz for the Senate; the January 6 apologist Doug Mastriano for governor. This was not Trump’s first 2022 rally speech. He spoke in Arizona in July. But this one was different: so extreme, strident, and ugly—and so obviously provoked by Biden’s speech that this was what led local news: “Donald Trump Blasts Philadelphia, President Biden During Rally for Doug Mastriano, Dr. Oz in Wilkes-Barre.”
Yes, you read that right: Campaigning in Pennsylvania, the ex-president denounced the state’s largest city. “I think Philadelphia was a great choice to make this speech of hatred and anger. [Biden’s] speech was hatred and anger,” Trump declared last night. “Last year, the city set an all-time murder record with 560 homicides, and it’s on track to shatter that record again in 2022. Numbers that nobody’s ever seen other than in some other Democrat-run cities.”
Trump spoke at length about the FBI search of his house for stolen government documents. He lashed out at the FBI, attacking the bureau and the Department of Justice as “vicious monsters.” He complained about the FBI searching his closets for stolen government documents, inadvertently reminding everyone that the FBI had actually found stolen government documents in his closet—and in his bathroom too. Trump called Biden an “enemy of the state.” He abused his party’s leader in the U.S. Senate as someone who “should be ashamed.” He claimed to have won the popular vote in the state of Pennsylvania, which, in fact, he lost by more than 80,000 votes.
The rally format allowed time for only brief remarks by the two candidates actually on the ballot, Oz and Mastriano. Its message was otherwise all Trump, Trump, Trump. A Republican vote is a Trump vote. A Republican vote is a vote to endorse lies about the 2020 presidential election.
On and on it went, in a protracted display of narcissistic injury that was exactly the behavior that Biden’s Philadelphia speech had been designed to elicit.
After reminding readers that even before the Biden speech, Trump's barrage of remarks about the FBI, the DOJ, and his insistence that all party members echo his news-grabbing anger as he ventilates, Frum puts forward the claim that Biden thought now would be the perfect time to set a trap for Trump. If he would take the bait, the November elections would inevitably be all about Trump. For this is now what Trump has said. As Frum summarizes Trump's meltdown-speech on Sept. 3, "The rally format allowed time for only brief remarks by the two candidates actually on the ballot, Oz and Mastriano. Its message was otherwise all Trump, Trump, Trump. A Republican vote is a Trump vote. A Republican vote is a vote to endorse lies about the 2020 presidential election."
The Atlantic article concludes thus:
Biden came to Philadelphia to deliver a wound to Trump’s boundless yet fragile ego. Trump obliged with a monstrously self-involved meltdown 48 hours later. And now his party has nowhere to hide. Trump has overwritten his name on every Republican line of every ballot in 2022.
Biden dangled the bait. Trump took it—and put his whole party on the hook with him. Republican leaders are left with little choice but to pretend to like it.
If Frum is correct about the impact of Biden's speech on Trump leading to a meltdown that the GOP will not be able to ignore, and to statements they must now either denounce (a losing proposition) or else dutifully embrace for the sake of their chosen leader (another losing proposition during midterms), then even if Biden didn't intend to to the damage to Trump that he did, the practical consequences would be much the same. It remains to be seen if, and to what extent, Trump's fury at everything from the city of Philadelphia, to the FBI, DOJ and other targets of his inordinate rage will define the midterms and damage GOP candidates. If it those were Biden's goals, then perhaps, the speech was more politics than profundity, as I concluded in a post here yesterday. But then, if consciously or by accident, Biden has drawn out the most repellent traits Trump has on offer and driven him to eclipse the candidates this year in order to prove that he's the central character behind all the others who are merely "his" bit players and sycophants, then it will have been one hell of an effective political speech for the Dems. So runs the Frum argument.
But it is just that-- an argument, not the last word on the matter. Let us hope Frum is reading the situation correctly here. There are at least 2 open questions right now:
1) Will Trump's speech (and doubtless future remarks in the same vein) really eclipse the referendum on incumbent President (Biden) that midterms almost always represent?
2) If Trump goes full out "King-MAGA" can we be sure that will not lead to such negative impacts as MAGA voters turning up in much higher numbers than otherwise might have been the case and taking key battleground states or his provocations causing increased political violence in the coming weeks or months?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp8TBoshaUg
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