Last week, President Joe Biden gave a speech warning that "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic." Since then, Republicans have been performing umbrage. This, in turn, led to a great deal of media worrying about whether Biden's speech was "divisive" or could backfire by recasting the fight to save democracy in "partisan" terms. There was reason to be worried. Americans tend to distrust politicians, viewing their public proclamations as political noise better dismissed than taken seriously. But in this case, it appears Biden's choice to give the speech worked to focus voter attention on the very real threat to democracy posed by Trump and the MAGA movement.
Biden gave his speech right before Labor Day weekend and then Reuters/Ipsos polled Americans after the holiday. What they found was a solid 58% of respondents agreed with Biden that Trump and his movement are undermining democracy. Interestingly, 59% also agreed that the speech was "divisive," showing that all the media handwringing was influencing people's responses. Clearly, a lot of respondents are of the belief that they are smart enough to see the truth in Biden's words but worry that other Americans are not. Still, Biden accomplished what he set out to do. Americans are listening, paying attention, and really beginning to believe the threat to democracy is real.
It would be an overstatement to suggest Biden caused Americans to wake up to the threats with a single speech. He was helped by a summer-long news cycle that provided the evidence for his claim so that by the time he made it, voters were ready to listen.
First, there were the dramatic congressional hearings of the January 6 committee, which laid out a persuasive case that Trump deliberately incited the Capitol riot in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The hearings had barely faded from the news when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in an effort to recover classified documents that Trump had illegally taken. The following drip-drip of news stories showing the lengths Trump went to in order to conceal his possession of the documents and prevent the government from taking them back has only underscored the public sense that he's up to something sinister. Meanwhile, Trump has been engaged in an unsubtle effort to provoke the same kind of MAGA devotees who stormed the Capitol to take some kind of violent action against the FBI on his behalf. Already, there was one well-publicized terrorist attack, which ended pathetically but made it much harder to ignore the impact Trump's inciting language has on his followers. Often, discussions defining fascism or authoritarianism get bogged down by academic nit-picking that most people struggle to follow, but political violence is an unmistakable warning sign most Americans understand quite well.
That's likely why Biden focused on that aspect in his speech, as well as in an earlier one where he argued that the embrace of political violence rendered MAGA a "semi-fascist" movement. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., made a similar point on "Face the Nation" on Sunday, calling political violence one of the "hallmarks of fascism."
All of this together sends a clear and compelling message to voters: Trump is lawless and violent. He puts his own will to power ahead of democracy and rule of law.
Even before Biden gave his speech, fears about the future of democracy had risen to the top of the polls listing Americans' main concerns. While a lot of that is driven by Republicans repeating Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election, polling also shows that Democratic voters are increasingly worried that the American system is failing. That's a big swing from even a few months ago when the concern was that Democratic voters had been lulled by Biden's win into complacency.
Biden's choice to give the speech worked to focus voter attention on the very real threat to democracy posed by Trump and the MAGA movement
All of this evidence laid the groundwork, but Biden's speech likely still helped galvanize voter opinion. This goes back to a popular political concept from Barack Obama's presidency: the idea of a "permission structure." The premise is that there are ideas or choices some people feel attracted to, but they are held back by social fears. In this case, people see all the evidence of a growing authoritarian threat but fear that saying so out loud will register as hyperbolic. By giving this speech — and refusing to back down or apologize when Republicans complained about it — Biden sent a signal that it's okay to give voice to those nagging concerns.
There's a reason that the leading GOP talking points about January 6 have centered on minimizing the horrors of the day by calling the insurrectionists "peaceful protesters." They're leveraging the "it can't happen here" myth to pressure people into ignoring the evidence of their eyes and ears. That's why it was so effective for Biden to argue that "we must be honest with each other and with ourselves" and that we "do ourselves no favor to pretend" that democracy isn't under threat. He was directly rebutting the GOP's main rhetorical strategy.
Of course, it helps significantly that, as David Frum wrote in the Atlantic, Trump was provoked by Biden's speech into a "monstrously self-involved meltdown." Just this week, Trump went to a Pennsylvania rally where he gave a lengthy speech raving about the FBI raid instead of promoting the statewide GOP candidates, as he was supposed to do. He's also gone back to dangling out the promise of pardons for the insurrectionists, recasting those who were convicted of crimes as heroes instead of the "few bad apples" narrative the GOP establishment prefers. Taking pride in January 6 only ends up reinforcing Biden's message: Trump is dangerous and a threat to democracy.
During his speech, Biden offered an off-ramp to Republicans who may not like Trump but fear what it means to buck their own party. "Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology," Biden insisted, characterizing those who aren't MAGA as "mainstream Republicans."
That's why it was so effective for Biden to argue that "we must be honest with each other and with ourselves" and that we "do ourselves no favor to pretend" that democracy isn't under threat.
This part of the speech has been criticized, including by Salon's Chauncey DeVega, and for good reason. It simply isn't true that Trump sits outside of the mainstream of his party. He's the favorite to win the 2024 nomination because most Republican voters like and support him. Polling shows, time and again, that most Republican voters even sign off on the Big Lie, either believing Trump's lies about the 2020 election or playing along with the Big Lie because they see it as a road to power.
Still, Biden is betting that a significant chunk of Republicans are harboring doubts about Trump. The polling suggests this suspicion has some merit. One out of four Republicans polled by Reuters agreed that Trump and MAGA are a threat to democracy. True, that's only a minority of Republicans and far from the "mainstream" of the party. But Republicans still need those voters to win elections. If they start to lose some of those folks because of Trump, it could go a long way towards weakening Trump's power and derailing the MAGA movement.
That quarter of Republicans is right to worry. Tucker Carlson of Fox News may put out propaganda videos casting authoritarian leaders like Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a beatific light, pretending they preside over harmonious utopias. In reality, however, authoritarian societies are often marked by social strife and government incompetence, especially as political leaders tend to be more interested in lining their own pockets than serving their constituents. The ever-looming threat of political violence has already become a reality in the U.S., but there really is no telling how bad things could get if things further devolve.
Until recently, however, this threat has been so abstract that it's been hard for Democrats to really convince the public that it's real. That shifted over the summer and likely will shift some more as the January 6 committee reconvenes for fall hearings. Biden warned Americans that "equality and democracy are under assault." Americans, it appears, are finally listening.
