A warning about a new constitutional convention

The constitution can be amended if Congress proposes a constitutional convention by a vote of two-thirds of both houses or if the legislatures of two-thirds of the States call for a convention to propose an amendment(s). Once the states call for a convention, all hell can break loose. The reason for calling the convention can be ignored, and the entire constitution, including all existing amendments, can be completely rewritten. 

That is what happened when the authors of the current constitution did in 1787. They were called to amend the Articles of Confederation, but instead wound up blowing it off and doing a complete rewrite from scratch. That is what the Republican Party wants to do today. It hates the federal government, most civil liberties, consumer protections and environmental protections. The Republicans want to crush all of that into oblivion.

The New York Times writes:

Representative Jodey Arrington, a conservative Texas Republican, believes it is well past time for something the nation has not experienced for more than two centuries: a debate over rewriting the Constitution.

“I think the states are due a convention,” said Mr. Arrington, who in July introduced legislation to direct the archivist of the United States to tally applications for a convention from state legislatures and compel Congress to schedule a gathering when enough states have petitioned for one. “It is time to rally the states and rein in Washington responsibly.”

To Russ Feingold, the former Democratic senator from Wisconsin and president of the American Constitution Society, a liberal judicial group, that is a terrible idea. Mr. Feingold sees the prospect of a constitutional convention as an exceptionally dangerous threat from the right and suggests it is closer to reality than most people realize as Republicans push to retake control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

“We are very concerned that the Congress, if it becomes Republican, will call a convention,” said Mr. Feingold, the co-author of a new book warning of the risks of a convention called “The Constitution in Jeopardy.”

“This could gut our Constitution,” Mr. Feingold said in an interview. “There needs to be real concern and attention about what they might do. We are putting out the alert.”

While the rise of election deniers, new voting restrictions and other electoral maneuvering get most of the attention, Mr. Feingold rates the prospect of a second constitutional convention as just as grave a threat to democratic governance.

“If you think this is democracy’s moment of truth, this is one of those things,” he said.

Elements on the right have for years been waging a quiet but concerted campaign to convene a gathering to consider changes to the Constitution. They hope to take advantage of a never-used aspect of Article V, which says in part that Congress, “on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments.”  

“We need to channel the energy to restore and reclaim this country’s traditional values and founding principles of limited government closest to the people and individual freedom and responsibility,” Rick Santorum, the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania who has become a convention champion, told a conservative conference this spring in the state.  

But Mr. Feingold and his co-author, the constitutional scholar Peter Prindiville, say the problem is that there is no certainty that the convention could be forced to stick to a defined agenda. They say that a “runaway” proceeding would be a distinct possibility, with delegates seizing the opportunity to promote wholesale changes in the founding document and veer into areas where they would seek to restrict federal power governing the environment, education and health care, among other issues.

“A convention by its very definition is a free-standing, distinct constitutional body,” Mr. Prindiville said. “It would be the ultimate high-risk gathering.”

The Republican Party wants to (1) crush the federal government, and (2) replace it with more easily corrupted state governments, rampaging political parties, aggressive big corporations, aggressive unregulated capitalism and aggressive Christian fundamentalism. Most personal civil liberties, honest governance, consumer protections and environmental protections, elections are all going to get shafted real hard. 😵‍💫 But the elites will love it, especially the trickle up of wealth and power. 😊 Actually, it will be a gushing up of wealth and power. 😍

What will save us - the 75% threshold

The barrier to that happening is that three-fourths of the states, 38, have to ratify whatever the convention puts out for ratification. According to the map below, there are about 27 red (20), leaning red (4) and purple (3) states, and 23 blue (20) and leaning blue (3) states. Assuming the convention puts out a far right, autocratic-theocratic-capitalist constitution, it looks like a constitutional convention cannot get ratified unless 11 more states shift far to the right. Unless my state count on this is wrong, that seems unlikely any time soon. 😊

Ranked choice voting is anti-extremism

Most election reformers claim that ranked choice voting (RCV) dilutes extremism, and our current system encourages it. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial says:

Ranked-choice voting diffuses extremism. Which is why it worked against Palin.

Just when America needed some sign that sanity still exists in its politics, Alaska, of all places, delivers. Sarah Palin last week lost a special congressional election there. As the leader of a pernicious populist movement that foreshadowed Trumpism, Palin’s defeat at the hands of a Democrat (and the first Native Alaskan elected to Congress) is good news for democracy.

It was also a key test of ranked-choice voting, a process designed to more accurately reflect voters’ intent while making it harder for extremists to use division and blind partisanship to win. This time it appears, happily, to have worked.

Given her history, Palin’s bid for Alaska’s vacant congressional seat should have been a non-starter, but unfortunately, the Trump era has made her kind of politics newly potent among some voters. Still, she ultimately lost to Democrat Mary Peltola.

The election was Alaska’s first under its ranked-choice system, in which all candidates of all parties face off in the primaries, then the top four vote-getters advance to the general election. Voters then rank the remaining candidates based on their preference, with elimination rounds automatically calculated until someone wins at least half the vote.

In this case, Peltola and Palin were the top vote-getters in the first round of the general election. Peltola got more, but neither of them hit 50%, so the third-finishing candidate, a Republican, was dropped, and his votes were divided between them based on who his voters ranked second. (The fourth candidate in the field had already dropped out.) In the end, Peltola won with 51.5% to Palin’s 48.5%. 

Like clockwork, the MAGA crowd condemned the results under their standing principle that any election they lose is rigged. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, called it a “scam” because “60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican.” That analysis, based on the fact that the third-place candidate was a Republican, only works for those who view party as everything. But enough of the voters who chose that Republican ranked the Democrat as their second choice. In other words, their vote was for anyone but Palin.

Maybe RCV won't always work. But at least the experiment should be tried in more places. It probably cannot make matters worse.

The Long and Winding Road of Biden's Philadelphia Speech

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

 

A Critical Review of Biden's Anti-MAGA Speech

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.)

Split partisan perceptions of the threat to democracy

Some informed, intelligent, well-meaning people continue to see limited threat to American democracy. But, recent polling indicates that solid majorities of both Democrats and Republicans see a serious threat to American democracy. In my opinion, differences in how the two groups see the threat is also part of the threat. The New York Times writes:

The good news is that deeply divided Americans agree on at least one thing. The bad news is they share the view that their nearly two-and-a-half-century-old democracy is in danger — and disagree drastically about who is threatening it.

In a remarkable consensus, a new Quinnipiac University poll found that 69 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans say that democracy is “in danger of collapse.” But one side blames former President Donald J. Trump and his “MAGA Republicans” while the other fingers President Biden and the “socialist Democrats.”

There are at least four possibilities with possible variations on all of them, the Dems are the main threat, the Repubs are the main threat, both are roughly equal threats, neither is a major threat (but one or both could be non-trivial but minor threats). 

Some conservatives are truly terrified of things like aggressive liberal intrusions in shaping the content of secular public education and liberal defenses of non-heterosexuality. Some see a deadly threat to Christianity, fearing Christians will be rounded up and put into re-education camps and converted by force into atheism and/or pedophilia. Apparently, most conservatives see a rising liberal tyranny in all of that, even the conservatives who do not believe that the 2020 election was stolen. 

Conservative fears of threats of Democrats and their socialism and liberalism drives most of the rank and file right to support the ex-president and extremist Republican politicians. For most conservatives, whatever Republican Party and dogma threat there actually is to democracy appears to recede into secondary importance, or to near or complete non-existence.

Articulating the liberal threat

Liberals and democrats do not control most rural areas, so the liberal threat there is not going to come to pass. Libs and Dems do control some cities in some red states. But the liberal threat there is not going to come to pass because the legislature and governor can put the kibosh on liberal tyranny in those places. Laws are already being passed in red states to control teaching about race and gender in public schools. Most or nearly all religious schools in America already are bastions of social conservatism, so they are not going to fall to liberal tyranny.

Socialist Democratic tyranny judges do not control the Supreme Court, so that is not a source of major threat to democracy.

Democrats fight against Republican opposition to protect and expand voting rights. So that is not a source of significant threat to democracy, unless one believes that free and fair elections are a threat to democracy, which some conservatives do believe.

Democrats in liberal areas in blue states do have significant leeway over influencing public education, so those areas could be bastions of liberal anti-democratic tyranny. In those areas, at least some conservatives retreat from public education in favor of private schools or home schooling. Others move to conservative areas or red states. Some just chafe at the situation and are fearful of creeping liberal tyranny.

So why is there such a huge divide about who the threat is from? Most democrats and conservatives apparently operate with (i) significantly different definitions or conceptions of democracy and free and fair elections[1], and (ii) different sets of true or false beliefs based on facts or reasoning that may or may not be true or sound. For the former point, the conservative conception of democracy appears to have more power reside in states and their legislatures and less with voters and the federal government. In that vision, partisan cracking and packing gerrymandering tactics aren't flaws in the system. They are the system. With that view, Republican "election integrity" laws are not significantly worrisome to conservatives even if some voters are disenfranchised. Minority rule is what most Republicans appear to support, even if they are unaware of it. 

Partisan differences in perception of facts and reality are also a major factor. That gap probably cannot be bridged. 

But, at least when people say that democracy is not threatened, one can now respond by pointing out that is not majority opinion.

Q: What is probably closest to the truth, the Dems are the main threat, the Repubs are the main threat, both are roughly equal threats, neither is a major threat? Or is the question an oxymoron because the concept of democracy is essentially contested?

Footnote: 

1. The NYT article comments:

“There is a real difference in how the parties define democracy,” said Nicole Hemmer, a historian at Vanderbilt University and author of “Partisans,” a newly published history of the rise of conservative movement figures in the 1990s and their transformation of American politics.

“The Republican Party at the moment subscribes to a much narrower definition, as is evident in their support for everything from voter suppression to extensive gerrymandering to the right of Republican officials to overturn voter preferences in the certification process,” she added. “The Democratic Party favors not only a more inclusive voting system but more robust systems to support majoritarian politics.”

Thoughts on Biden's speech on democracy

The network news media

The Washington Post writes that his speech was deemed political or not important by major TV networks. ABS aired a game show called “Press Your Luck.” WaPo writes:

As Biden spelled out his objections to former president Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans,” NBC was broadcasting a rerun of “Law and Order.” CBS skipped the speech to show a rerun of “Young Sheldon.”

[Broadcasters] have passed on speeches that were part of campaign rallies or events, or when the subject was deemed insufficiently important or newsworthy. The networks, for example, decided not to carry a speech on immigration reform by President Barack Obama in November of 2014.

People involved in negotiations over Thursday’s address said the networks deemed Biden’s remarks as “political” in nature and therefore decided not to televise it.

Is the broadcast media off its rocker? Broadcast networks deemed a desperately needed defense of democracy speech by a sitting president to be too political and/or unimportant. That tells us that corporate news sees the threat of radical right authoritarianism as not real. Corporate lust for profit and power have subverted what integrity was left of broadcast news. 

It is fact- and reason-based to argue that (i) TV network news as a pro-democracy institution has fallen to authoritarianism and profit lust, and (ii) it is a betrayal of the American people and democracy. ABC, NBS and CBS appear to be enemies of democracy, at least by complicity, if not by quiet active subversion.

The Speech

If one believes the threat to democracy to be serious and urgent, Biden's speech was long overdue. Other than urging people to vote, the speech was generally vague about how democracy could be defended. There was no outline about how to protect civil liberties, including voting rights that are now under direct attack. The speech seemed designed to inspire, which is fine. But is that enough? 

Biden understated the threat when he asserted that most Republicans are not MAGA Republican Party (RP) extremists. Some recent polling and political facts indicate that is not true. More than half of Republicans support the ex-president. Only two Republicans in congress (Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) openly oppose RP authoritarianism. That includes alleged Senate moderates Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Essentially the entire RP leadership, its donors and elites and the radical right media are all in support of authoritarian, Christian theocratic RP extremism, election subversion, attacks on civil liberties and outright dictatorship. If one believes the threat to be serious and urgent, Biden seriously underplayed it. Maybe he did that in an attempt to be unifying and not divisive. Unfortunately, years of divisive RP propaganda has made defending democracy highly divisive. 

Divisiveness cannot be avoided under current circumstances. Simply saying that RP MAGA-style extremism is a threat to democracy is a necessary attack on the RP. Speaking truth directly attacks the RP's authoritarianism. The RP will respond as is now always does, with blasts of divisive lies, propaganda, slanders, vulgarity and crackpot conspiracy theories. Biden seems to be unaware of all of this. If not, in my opinion, he falsely believes that trying for unity will be helpful to the cause of democracy.

Qs: Was Biden's speech adequate or not? Should he give at least a couple more speeches in defense of democracy that are less vague and more accurate about the depth and scope of the RP authoritarian threat? Did the TV networks make the right call by airing reruns instead of airing the speech? Being for-profit capitalist businesses, should TV networks have any moral or other obligation to defend democracy or otherwise serve the public interest?