The significance, context of US President Joe Biden’s recent speech on the threats to American democracy

His oft-repeated battle for the soul of the nation against MAGA Republicans that repudiate his victory in the 2020 elections, comes months ahead of the November midterm elections, where Democrats are desperately seeking to maintain their narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate (lower and upper chambers of Congress).

Deepened faultlines

Biden’s address to his Democrat voter base, along with those Republicans that “reject the extreme MAGA ideology” comes at a time when the American body politic is as fractured as it has ever been. Since Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential elections, Republicans have been falsely claiming that the election was stolen— a position that has been consistently maintained by Trump.

On January 6 2021 thousands of Trump supporters lay siege to the Capitol in Washington in a bid to block the certification of Biden’s election victory. Polls suggest that over a year on, a considerable number of Republican party supporters continue to believe the ‘Big Lie’ that Trump was the true winner.

Former President Donald Trump (AP/PTI, file)

The US Justice Department claims to have arrested more than 860 people for crimes related to the storming of the US Capitol, including over 260 who were charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement personnel, as reported by Reuters. On September 1, retired New York Police Department officer Thomas Webster was sentenced to a record 10 years in prison for rioting at the Congress building and using a metal flagpole to assault a police officer.

In his speech, Biden lambasted the MAGA Republicans, stating that “they don’t believe in the rule of law … (and) refuse to accept the results of a free election. He added that they are working to give power to “partisans and cronies” and are “empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”

According to a Washington Post analysis from August 15, in the 41 states that held nominating for November’s midterm elections, more than half of the Republican Party winners – around 250 candidates in 469 contests – uphold Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential elections were stolen.

Significance of the speech

Biden’s speech was delivered at Philadelphia’s historic Independence Hall which was illuminated in red and blue, the colours of the US flag. Biden’s warnings about the threat that his country faces from Trump and his supporters could not have been given at a more significant site. The birthplace of American democracy, Independence Hall was where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. It was also where the country’s constitution was debated and adopted a decade later.

Everything we stand for rests on the platform of democracy.

Those who threaten that platform, threaten the soul of this nation. pic.twitter.com/fP5a7jfkaF

— President Biden (@POTUS) September 3, 2022

The timing of the speech is also not coincidental, according to the BBC, as it came just before the Labour Day federal holiday in the US, reportedly seen as the beginning of the final stretch of campaigning before the midterm elections in November.

Biden had been facing a record-low approval rate of around 36% in July, however it has now increased to the low 40s, in light of declining gasoline prices and his administration’s success in passing a series of legislations , as reported by the Washington Post. Despite modest improvements, he nonetheless faces a disapproval rate of 53%.

In light of this, he is according to the BBC, trying to “reframe this November’s mid-term election choice as not about him, but about choosing between democratic freedoms and “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans”

Major developments in US Politics

Biden’s urgent appeal for Americans to “vote, vote, vote,” comes after a spell of rapid policy changes over the past few months that are likely to galvanise Democratic voters for the coming elections.

On August 25, Biden announced that the federal government would cancel up to $20,000 in student loans for millions of people. While many Republican leaders have criticised the move, an Economist/YouGov poll from July found that the majority of Americans, especially Democratic voters, support the reduction of student debt.

Asked if his student debt forgiveness plan is “unfair to people who paid their student loans,” Pres. Biden says, “Is it fair to people who in fact do not own multi-billion dollar businesses to see one of these guys getting all the tax credits? Is that fair? What do you think?” pic.twitter.com/ShcvKWYGcq

— ABC News (@ABC) August 24, 2022

In an unprecedented move, FBI agents in August raided Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, after a criminal investigation was launched into the potential mishandling and unlawful concealment of government records, many of which contained classified information.

According to the Washington Post, the search warrant of his home and the FBI affidavit mention three potential laws that Trump possibly violated, however it is yet to be known if the former President will be charged. This comes at a time when the Department of Justice is putting the heat on Trump in a separate investigation into his alleged attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, and his role in the subsequent January 6 attack by his supporters on the US Capitol.

Perhaps the most significant legal development took place on June 24, when the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade judgement that made abortion a consitutional right, and left abortion laws entirely up to the states, denying of millions of Americans in conservative -ruled states legal access to the procedure.

American exceptionalism

Biden’s speech rested on one basic argument, that America is the greatest country in the world, and that Trump and his supporters are endangering this exalted position. From the very beginning, Biden highlighted how the USA, with its Declaration of Independence and Constitution laid the foundations of equality and democracy, making it the “beacon to the world” for over two centuries.

MAGA Republicans are, according to Biden, laying siege to these two principles. “They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people,” he said in context of the thousands of Trump supporters that stormed the US Capitol on Jan 6. “This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.”

Biden conveyed in his address that Americans should unite against MAGA forces that are “determined to take this country backwards.” After lauding the measures introduced by his administration in gun control, climate change, healthcare and the Covid response, he ended his speech on an optimistic note. That America continues to be “the beacon of the world” and “that for the next 200 years, we’ll have what we had the past 200 years: the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.