Joe Biden, in what is being described by the media as one of "the most significant speeches of his presidency," went to Philadelphia, site of the Liberty Bell, and gave a ringing defense of democracy and a fierce attack on Republican efforts, as he sees it, to subvert it. It's hard for me to watch this guy because I have such a mixture of emotions. I noticed that normally it's very hard to generate these contradictory emotions even in a movie. On the one hand, I feel a certain anger, a certain rage at the mischaracterizations, the whoppers that this guy puts out. On the other hand, his stumbling, meandering stare, he looks to the left, he looks to the right; he's clearly not all there. So, you have the combination of the immoderation of his rhetoric, combined with the kind of dim flickering light brain that is delivering these lines. And the combination is both frightening and comic at the same time.
Now, I want to get into the argument here a little bit because Biden really doesn't. Biden makes really no effort to persuade. If you listen to what he's saying, it is nothing more than categorical assertion. He seems to imply, number one, that Republicans are leading an effort to block people from voting, and by the way, primarily, people of color, but all people, targeting all races. So, we're just trying to make it hard for people to vote, according to him. That's his first point. And the second is, even once people vote, we're trying to control the count. As if we've got our own counting system in place. We're going to tabulate the normal result and then somehow rig it by producing our own result, "It's ultimately about who gets to count." Yeah, it is about who gets to count. It's also about the core meaning of democracy.
Let's start for a moment with what's going on in Texas because you have the Texas Democrats who, again, are very much in the Biden camp running off to Washington to urge the Democrats to pass HR 1. They're trying to put pressure on Sens. Sinema and Manchin. According to them, they are standing up for democracy. It's kind of funny; I don't know if you saw on social media, they're all singing, "We shall overcome." I mean, an absolutely horrible rendition. Nevertheless, they have this idea that they are brave champions of democracy.
But let's step back and think about this for a minute. They are themselves elected members of a legislature. They're part of a democratic process. They happen to be in the minority. Who is in the majority in Texas? Republicans. So Republicans have called a session of the legislature, which is duly constituted. They're exercising their authority as a democratically elected state legislature under the Constitution. They have a whole bunch of legislation on things that are coming up.
Now, Biden himself said in his speech that minorities have to learn to accept the will of the majority. They have to acquiesce and recognize that democracy means majority rule. Well, Texas is the red state. We have a Republican majority. And so the Democrats, in trying to subvert the democratic process in Texas, by skipping town, if you think about it, they're doing something that is fundamentally similar to what the Democrats say the January 6 protesters did.
What are the January 6 protesters accused of doing? Number one, delaying and subverting a democratic process. Some of the charging documents literally talk about obstructing an ongoing democratic process. And the obstruction is caused, supposedly, by a delay – of what an hour two? – by going into the Capitol Building. Now, the Texas democrats didn't go to the Capitol Building; they left the Capitol Building. They left the state. But with what end? What is their objective?
Well, they're very blunt about it. Their objective is to obstruct the democratic process in Texas. Their objective is to prevent a legitimate democratic process from going forward. So who is the real opponent of democracy here? The Democrats or the Republicans? Well, quite obviously, it's the Democrats. They're not heroes of democracy. They're enemies of democracy. Why? Because what's going on in Texas is no subversion of democracy. It's the actual exercise of democracy.
Biden is fundamentally talking about voter ID laws. I'm going to set aside for a moment the extravagant rhetoric about January 6 being the greatest threat since the Civil War and Biden saying, "the Confederates didn't even breach the Capitol as the insurrectionists did." So, according to Biden, pretty much everything goes right back to the Civil War. And then he says somewhat comically, "That's not hyperbole." Well, you may want to look that one up in the dictionary because I think probably right there in small letters, at least in a future dictionary, it will say, "See Biden's speech circa 2021."
But voter integrity laws should serve two purposes. Number one, they should make it easier to vote. Number two, they should make it harder to cheat.
You can see that both these considerations are, in fact, synonymous with the meaning of democracy. Democracy means that people who are eligible to vote should be able to vote. But democracy also means that only people who are eligible to vote should be able to vote.
It's not only the Republicans who are pushing for voter integrity, signature verification. When there were signatures submitted for a recall petition for Governor Newsom in California, the Democrats went through all those signatures one by one, checking every one, verifying every single signature, throwing every anomalous signature out. Why? To make sure that only legitimate signatures counted. So when it comes to the Democrats, when their interests are at stake, they want signature verification. They want voter integrity.
The point that Biden does not address is if he wants to make his case that in trying to make it harder to cheat, the Republicans are also making it harder to vote (this appears to be the argument he was going for, although he never said it), if this is the argument he wants to make, the way to do it is to take these provisions one by one, starting with things like the requirement that you have to bring your own water. Poll workers and campaign managers can't hand you water while you're waiting in line to vote. Or number two, a two-week early voting period. Or number three, voter ID. Biden would have to take each of these things and go down the list and say, "Listen, it's true, that bringing your own water makes it a little bit harder to vote." But at the same time, it makes sure that there can't be campaigning going on at the very last minute. So in weighing these two considerations, which one should take predominance?
Take voter ID. Yes, voter ID makes it marginally harder to vote because you have to produce an ID, but big deal. You produce an ID in all kinds of other contexts. If producing an ID is not racist when you produce it to a bank, and it's not racist when you produce it to an airline, it's not airline suppression, it's not travel suppression, it's not banking suppression, why would it be racist when you produce an ID to vote? It's not really making it harder to vote. Pretty much everyone with very little trouble can get an ID, but voter ID laws are very important to make sure that it's harder to cheat. And that's really what seems to be getting the Democrats here.
That's really why Biden is on the warpath. It appears that the premise of the Democrats is that cheating took them across the finishing line. Cheating is necessary for Democrats to win elections. And that's why under the guise of making it easier to vote but paying no attention to making it harder to cheat, the Democrats are able to go on this crusade and accuse the Republicans of subverting democracy when the ones truly subverting the democratic process is the party that bears the democratic name.