The Post-Assassination Goodwill Is Over: Back to Basics
Are you better off now than you were nearly four years ago?
On July 14, hours after the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden told the nation, “(We need to) lower the temperature in our politics.”
On July 14, hours after the assassination attempt, former Trump Attorney General William Barr told Fox News: “The Democrats have to stop their grossly irresponsible talk about Trump being an existential threat to democracy. He is not.”
On July 18, four days after the assassination attempt, Trump at the Republican National Convention delivered his acceptance in a subdued tone and urged national unity. He insisted he did not want to be president of just “half the country.” But he went off script and attacked Biden using the same points and much of the same language as if this were a Trump rally.
On July 22, eight days after the assassination attempt and after Biden quit his race for reelection, Biden phoned in to a Wilmington, Delaware, campaign event held by Vice President Kamala Harris. He said: “We still need to save this democracy. Trump is still a danger to the community. He’s a danger to the nation.”
The “lower temperature” fired right back up. Would it have mattered had Trump at the RNC given a reflective “we need to lower the temperature in our politics” speech? Would Biden, and now Democratic presumptive nominee Harris, still push the “the election-denying Trump is an existential threat to democracy” hypocritical attack line?
As I recently wrote, Biden in January 2022 preemptively denied the results of the November midterms. Like most Democrats, he fretted that the widely anticipated Republican “red wave” would cost the Democrats the Senate and increase the GOP majority in the House.
Asked at a press conference if he would accept the results, Biden said: “Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election. … I think if, in fact — no matter how hard they make it for minorities to vote, I think you’re going to see them willing to stand in line and — and defy the attempt to keep them from being able to vote. I think you’re going to see the people who they’re trying to keep from being able to show up, showing up and making the sacrifice that needs to make in order to change the law back to what it should be.”
Biden added: “It easily could be illegitimate. … I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit. … The increase and the prospect of it being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these (voting) reforms passed.”
What?! “I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit”?
About Republican politicians who hedge on whether they will accept the 2024 presidential results, The New York Times wrote: “The evasive answers show how the former president’s refusal to concede his defeat after the 2020 election has ruptured a tenet of American democracy — that candidates are bound by the outcome. Mr. Trump’s fellow Republicans are now emulating his hedging well in advance of any voting.”
Were The New York Times and Democratic politicians upset at Biden’s “hedging” months before the 2022 midterms? Did anyone chastise Biden for “emulating” the Republicans’ sin of questioning election results “well in advance of any voting”?
Democrats questioned the results of the 2000, 2004 and 2016 elections. But they essentially receive an in-kind contribution given the media’s refusal to hold Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John Lewis, Jimmy Carter (about the 2016 election) and others to the same standard for “undermining our democracy” by “refusing to accept election results.” Hillary Clinton throughout Trump’s presidency called the 2016 election “stolen” and Trump “illegitimate.”
So, when the dust settles after the defenestration of Biden and after the glow of Kamala “to the rescue” Harris dims, we return to basics. This means the economy, inflation and gas prices. Are you better off now than you were nearly four years ago? Unless you are one of some 8 million illegal aliens who entered the country under Biden, the answer is no.
COPYRIGHT 2024 LAURENCE A. ELDER
