1y ago

Biden is targeting Trump's 'extremist movement' as he makes democracy a touchtone in reelection bid

apnews.com Biden is targeting Trump's 'extremist movement' as he makes democracy a touchtone in reelection bid

President Joe Biden says there's an extremist movement that doesn't share the basic beliefs of democracy.

President Joe Biden is arguing that “there is something dangerous happening in America” as he revives his warnings that Donald Trump and his allies represent an existential threat to the country’s democratic institutions.

“There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement,” Biden says in excerpts of the speech Thursday in Arizona, released in advance by the White House, referring Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.

Although voting in the 2024 Republican primary doesn’t begin for months, Biden’s focus reflects Trump’s status as the undisputed frontrunner for his party’s nomination despite facing four indictments, two of them related to his attempts to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

Politics @beehaw.org

spaceghoti @lemmy.one

1y ago

Biden is targeting Trump's 'extremist movement' as he makes democracy a touchtone in reelection bid

apnews.com /article/president-joe-biden-donald-trump-democracy-arizona-788d5203b3ac970dbf6b71ca74d6b386

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140 comments

He's absolutely right. The GOP wants to abandon democracy and install Trump as a dictator. We are on a dangerous precipice.
- "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”—David Frum, Republican speech writer under W. Bush
  This was not a warning. It was a threat.
  
  It was a warning. Frum is and always has been a staunch never-Trumper. He's still a conservative, but he was never on board with Trump and to his credit has been pretty vocal in his opposition.
  
  Oh my god, it was a republican that said that? That makes that line scarier, because that means was probably said with the idea that abandoning democracy is a good thing.
- *trump or preferably any fascist Federalist society ghoul.
  Their plan to end democracy is public even. They're that confident/desperate. Leeja had a good video recently covering it.
- I had not given my brain the space to imagine that Trump would be the choice of dictator. I guess there would never be a 'good' dictator candidate but damn that would be insane.
  
  I would be a good dictator. I don't crave fame, fortune, or control. I like to live a quite life, have general good will for people and am kind.
  I have a very technical background, a decent understanding of, and more importantly a high respect for, science. My number one skill is probably troubleshooting complex systems.
  I'm am secure enough in my knowledge and abilities that I have no problem admitting when I'm wrong, and enjoy and am not threatened by other people being right so I can learn something new.
  I make a terrible manager, so I'd have to delegate the vast majority of the actual work to competent people.
  Mostly I just want everyone treated fair and equal, to have access to basic needs, and the ability to better themselves.
  I absolutely don't want the job, nor do I think anyone should have it, but yeah, I think I'd make a good dictator.
- What

MAGAts are traitors.
They tried to destroy our democracy and install Trump as dictator. They trampled and beat hundreds of police officers in an attempt get their hands on the vice president in order to lynch him.
Republicans are so lawless and disdainful of our justice system that they aren't even a little bit bothered that Trump was found liable for rape and fraud. They don't care in the slightest that Trump is out on bail for trying to steal the election, and for stealing classified documents.
Republicans are attempting to impeach a newly elected judge for the singular reason that she acknowledged the legally decided fact that Republicans cheated and gerrymandered their state to seize power without the consent of the governed.
Republicans have become echo chambers for Putin's propaganda, openly siding with our enemies over our allies.
Republicans are openly plotting to replace all the NONPARTISAN long-term government employees with violently partisan stooges who don't come anywhere close to meeting the bare minimum requirements for doing these essential jobs.
Make no mistake at all: Republicans are a minority party with no interest anything but seizing power and harming anyone who they decide is an enemy. They can't win over the voters with their perverted ideology, so they are determined to do ANYTHING inside or outside the bounds of the law, or even basic human decency, in order to steal the country from real Americans.
Republicans must be stopped, because if they gain power, they will make sure we never have anything close to a real election again. We will be living under a Christian theocracy, every bit as sick and hateful as the Taliban.

Joe Biden is right about this. Republicans don't believe in our democracy and they don't want people who vote against them to be able to vote.

Yes! Push this! They're UnAmerican! Let everyone know!
- They're American. They're the worst of us. But they're American. We can and should be better than them though. But we can't do that by acting like them.
  
  You can be an American citizen and be UnAmerican. They reject the basic ideals this country was founded upon. That makes them fundamentally UnAmerican.
  
  They might technically be citizens but they are unpatriotic fifth columnists. And that's being nice. It might be more correct to call them domestic terrorists: many of them openly moon over the idea of an actual shooting civil war and/or a government that will let them kill Americans that disagree with them and/or are the wrong color/ethnicity/religion, etc.

"Makes democracy a touchstone"
Wow man... It's become this bad.
- Not touchstone, touchtone! Beep boop beep

Fuck yeah I knew this Dark Brandon was coming. Going to be a long couple years.
- And don't forget Dark Brandon's color changing dark roast mug with flashing laser eyes! It even donates to his campaign.
  https://shop.joebiden.com/dark-roast-color-changing-mug/?mi_u=dfce147&refcode=jb_em_st_2023.09.28_b4_bhmt_actives1_rtb_bvf_c1_mi-res-ac&link_id=3&can_id=dfce147077502af3f0cdfcddd2ca4eff&source=email-a-color-changing-mug-featuring-dark-brandon&email_referrer=email_2062219&email_subject=a-color-changing-mug-featuring-dark-brandon-_&refcodeEmailReferrer=email_2062219
  
  That is pretty sweet. I want one with real lasers.

Well the spineless Republican candidates jockying for the vice presidency aren't going to say it.

I think it's important to note that Trump's "extremist movement" is the mainstream GOP.
- Yeah I saw a poll/survey that said voters found Biden to be "too liberal" and the GOP is just about the right amount of conservative.
  
  The Overton Window in the US is so fucked up.
  
  Yeah, targeting the MAGA crowd is not going to work. The Dems need an identity outside of "We aren't Republicans"
  Edit: That said, I must confess it is good to see they're finally taking the Right seriously as a threat instead "ThEy WaNT WhAT's BeSt fOr tHE NaTIon, wE JuSt NeEd A BeTTeR ComPrOmISE"

I think this guy sucks, but he's not wrong here. I'll vote for him again because as shitty as he is, he's not going to completely destroy our country and/or destabilize the entire world.
If Trump is elected, that guy is going to hand Ukraine to Putin, and sever ties between the US and the majority of our allies in Europe.
- If Biden wants to fight extremism he could maybe make the alphabets do something about all the domestic terror threats.
  Maybe by admitting it's domestic terrorism to threaten to murder your milquetoast political opponents.
  
  Damn I'm so trained by the talking points. When you said alphabets I thought you meant gay people. Like what am I supposed to do? 🤣

It's no secret. They make no attempt to hide their scorn for democratic principles.*
For example mininizing the number of eligible citizens who vote, by intimidation, "technical issues", restricting in person voting times, targetting early and mail-in voting to name only a few tactics.
Also compare their legislative priorities with what actual Americans want... almost nothing in common. They continue to push a radical Christofascist agenda and are actually willing to destroy the country if they can't get their way.
Republicans are the party of cruelty and misanthropy now, that is their absolute worst failing.
*Not our "democracy" because it has never been a democracy, but I'll give him a pass there since literally every American politician abuses the language and people aren't educated enough to know the difference.

.... about fucking time?
But all politicians are equally at fault for not leglislating to ensure workers have livable salaries and encouraging the "outsourcing" thing that moved jobs overseas so people could buy cheaper Walmart stuff.

The story of Joe Biden and his incredible perseverance, through hurdles and tragedies, is tremendously relatable to the common citizen. This man dusts himself off and charges headlong back into the fray after every setback. Lesser men would crumble, if faced with his challenges.

Let's go Joe! Hope my fellow Zoomers go out and vote.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
President Joe Biden is arguing that “there is something dangerous happening in America” as he revives his warnings that Donald Trump and his allies represent an existential threat to the country’s democratic institutions.
The MAGA movement,” Biden says in excerpts of the speech Thursday in Arizona, released in advance by the White House, referring Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.
Biden’s speech is his fourth in a series of presidential addresses on the topic, a cause that is a touchstone for him as he tries to remain in office even in the face of low approval ratings and widespread concern from voters about his age, 80.
In closed-door fundraisers, Biden has spoken at length about reelection, imploring supporters to join his effort to “literally save American democracy,” as he described it to wealthy donors this month in New York.
Republican state lawmakers used their subpoena power to obtain all the 2020 ballots and vote-counting machines from Maricopa County, then hired Trump supporters to conduct an unprecedented partisan review of the election.
The money comes from a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed in the early months of Biden’s presidency, and the project is in partnership with the with the McCain Institute and Arizona State University.
The original article contains 1,170 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Extremism is born out of fear and desperation. And the number one driver of that is financial insecurity. I really wish he would say he was doing something about these fundamental issues: a liveable minimum wage, housing issues, education, and health care. He's not wrong about these asshole insurrectionist Republicans, but pointing out that their thinking is anti-American and backwards doesn't really get to the root of the issues.
- Oh my god; someone still selling the ridiculous narrative that these white supremacist fascists are being white supremacist fascists because of "economic anxiety"
  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economic-anxiety.html
  What they fear is losing the privileged status of white supremacy in America; what they're desperate to stop is a more equal society. They didn't march demanding more pay, better working conditions, or more upward mobility in Charlottesville, they marched chanting "Jews will not replace us" and "blood and soil." They've been telling us, loudly, for years what it's all really about and people still want to believe it's about economics as if there weren't dozens of very well-off people arrested for trying to attack Congress on January 6th.
  
  It's undeniable that more economic opportunity would shrink their pool of possible supporters, even if it would never eliminate that pool. We don't have to stop every from being a white supremacist; we just need to stop them from coming up with the power to topple our government.
  
  . They didn’t march demanding more pay, better working conditions, or more upward mobility in Charlottesville, they marched chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.”
  Yeah, because they're fucking stupid and they don't know why they have poor pay, poor working conditions, and no upward mobility. They literally believe it's a conspiracy by Them to keep the white man down. They're dummies.
  But that doesn't actually mean economic factors aren't the primary motivator. There's still an underlying, material problem.
  
  "Extremism" Not just the fascists. If you can't see the correlation between the shrinking middle class over the past 4-5 decades and the growth of extremism, I'm not sure what to say to that. These morons are anxious, and a lot of that is economic, and historically it doesn't take much to point angry morons at the wrong target. Just define an "other" (Jews, Immigrants, LGBTQ) for them to focus on and they'll run with it. I'm not excusing these assholes at all. But fighting the symptoms and not the disease is not a smart way to go about making change.
  Also, for what its' worth, I wanted to look at the article you posted, but I can't get past the paywall.
- Maybe if rural areas wouldn't vote against their best interests they wouldn't have been left behind.
- Difference between discussing solutions to difficult problems and developing effective rhetoric to win a campaign.
- If the Democrats were able to institute their full economic plan, there would be less financial insecurity. It wouldn't be enough, but it would be a huge boon for less wealthy Americans. Most importantly, it would move the conversation about what's acceptable policy more to the left.
- Nah dude, white supremacist extremism is born out of the fear of losing privilege.

Celebrate democracy!
By getting to choose between two octogenarians no one really wants...
- You should be voting safe when things are unstable.
  Worry about it when we don't have people trying to elect literal traitors who tried to overthrow the government.
  
  You should be voting safe when things are unstable.
  Sounds like a perverse incentive to keep things unstable.
- What does their age have to do with any of it?
- That's right there's literally no way to choose between them because they are in the same age bracket. Poor you.
  
  That's not what I'm saying.
  If I asked 100 people if they wanted shot in the head or leg, they'd all pick leg. It's an easy choice between two things you don't want to happen.
  Doesn't mean people are lining up to get shot in the leg for no reason, it's only to avoid getting shot in the head.
  And that's why voter turnout is so bad.
- uH ErM tHaT’s AgEiSt aNd AbLEiSt dUdE wHaT tHe HeLL!!!1!1!!1!

But will he do anything to stop their extremism or reduce their numbers?
- What exactly do you expect him to do?
  
  I’d say anything besides espousing how much he cares about the environment and then turning around and signing an environment-obliterating oil project. Or maybe pass any kind of real legislation that matters/codify court decisions. I’m not too picky.
  
  I don't expect anything from Joe "nothing will fundamentally change" Biden.
  But what he could do is use his unparalleled ability to communicate with the public to rally antifascist and progressive forces into direct action against the MAGA movement. Rather than just waiting until the next game of voteball, a united front could stand up and break up the fascists before they became a problem in the first place.
- You're a fudder. There's literally no reason to take a dump on Biden right now when Trump is the alternative.
  Biden FTW.
  
  "withhold criticism from this candidate because the other is worse" is not the defense you seem to think it is.

can we not have a lost nursing home patient run the country again please
- Can we not have ableist shitheads claiming that a man who has had a stutter all his life is neurologically unsound because they're mad their guy didn't win the last election
  
  It’s actually kinda hilarious how you think the dipshit criminal is “my guy”. Really shows how little you types really think about politics beyond a capital R or D.
  Enough of this virtue signaling bullshit. Joe Biden. Is eighty years old. Eighty. 8, 0. Donald Fuckhead Trump? An absolutely astounding three whole years younger. None of these geriatric fucks have any place in government. No one over twice the national average age represents the citizens of a country. And since you’re evidently such an expert on health and ableism, maybe you should do some research on how neurological degeneration occurs in the elderly and get back to me about that.
  Have fun choosing between conservative grandpa #1 and ‘slightly centrist but still a republican disguised as a democrat’ grandpa #2 next year. Let me know how that goes for you.
- Um, what? You think Biden is a "lost nursing home patient"?
  Personally, I've been loving the return to some semblance of stewardship after the dumpster fire that was donnie's maladminstration. Even if Biden could not complete his second term for some reason, so what? There is a line of succession.
  
  The US and the world would be in far better shape with Biden’s literal tombstone sitting in the Oval Office versus the writhing mass of a still living Trump.
  I would vote for Biden over any of these chuckle fucks even if he were 100 years old and in the hospital for COVID, plague, and multiple snake bites. If is ridiculous that this age thing is even discussed. I chalk it up to all the 24/7 news channels needing something to talk about.
  
  Biden, fuckhead dipshit Trump, Feinstein (rip I guess?), Chuck Grassley, Maxine Waters to name a few. Yes.
  I understand what you mean and I do agree, but only ever having the two options of:
  literal fascism
  identity politics with absolutely no legislative backing
  gets really tiring. It also really amazes me how so many people here are so deep in the sauce of bipartisanship that they forget that, unless it’s republicans forcing through legislation, barely anything gets done. Biden lied about so many things to get elected. Everyone before him did too, everyone after will as well unless real change happens.
  I’m tired of choosing between fascism and diet caffeine free liberalism.

140 comments