Opinion: How Biden can avoid Clinton's 'basket of deplorables' fiasco
Opinion by Julian Zelizer, CNN Political AnalystUpdated: Thu, 01 Sep 2022 21:40:46 GMTSource: CNNEditor's Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affai
Opinion by Julian Zelizer, CNN Political AnalystUpdated: Thu, 01 Sep 2022 21:40:46 GMT
Source: CNN
Editor's Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, "The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment." Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
In recent days, President Joe Biden has ramped up his attacks on the anti-democratic forces within the Republican Party, going so far as to liken the "extreme MAGA philosophy" to "semi-fascism."
Speaking tonight at Philadelphia's Independence Hall, Biden will likely turn up the dial in a speech that will address "the battle for the soul of the nation" -- an issue he cited as the reason for launching his 2020 presidential bid.
The speech comes at a critical moment in our nation's history. With just two months to go until the midterm elections, the country is still grappling with the violence that broke out on January 6, 2021, and the lies that former President Donald Trump and his allies have spun about our election system. Meanwhile, Trump has become the subject of yet another investigation -- this time, for his handling of classified materials.
Given Trump's continued grip on the GOP, the Biden administration has had to wrestle with whether to move on or insist on accountability and reform. It's the same choice that President Gerald Ford faced in 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate. Ultimately, Ford chose to heal the nation by pardoning Nixon instead of allowing Congress to pursue legal action against his disgraced predecessor.
But, unlike Nixon, Trump has refused to go quietly. Given Trump's apparent desire to run for reelection in 2024, and the potential for his election-denying followers -- if elected to key state offices -- to cause a constitutional crisis, Biden may be forced to take a more adversarial position than Ford.
In speaking out against Trump, however, Biden will want to avoid the "basket of deplorables" moment that plagued Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton during her 2016 campaign against Trump. In her infamous speech, Clinton distinguished between two kinds of Trump supporters -- there were the Americans who faced economic desperation and felt let down by the government and those who were "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic."
Trump supporters weaponized the criticism and argued that Clinton had insulted large parts of the electorate, making this the dominant narrative instead of acknowledging the nuances of her comments or quashing the incendiary rhetoric that she had warned against.
But it would be a fool's errand for Biden to try to anticipate how the right will react. The truth is that they will use every possible opportunity to seize on his remarks and use them against the administration and his party. We've already seen this in the response to Biden's "semi-fascism" remark. Given this reality, Biden should disregard the potential backlash and take a stand in defense of our democracy.
Modern US history provides plenty of profiles in courage to draw from. One of the most well-known instances occurred in 1954, when Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin launched his infamous interrogation tactics during televised Senate hearings into Army security.
On June 9, 1954, Joseph Welch, the Army's chief counsel, stood up to McCarthy after the senator accused one of Welch's lawyers for having ties to a communist organization. "Have you no sense of decency?" he famously said. While historians debate the impact of this, Welch's comments seemed to play a part in McCarthy's declining stature.
Another such moment occurred 12 years later when President Lyndon Johnson faced fierce opposition for proposing an open housing bill aimed at eliminating racism in the sale or rental of property. Despite the backlash, Johnson stood his ground just days before the 1966 midterm elections and told a room of reporters: "I can think of nothing more dangerous, more divisive, or more self-destructive than the effort to prey on what is called 'white backlash.' ... I think it divides this nation at a very critical time -- and therefore it weakens us as a united country." Democrats ended up losing 47 seats in the House and three seats in the Senate, although the party retained control of both chambers of Congress.
And when the Watergate hearings exposed the corruption that defined the Nixon White House, Republican Rep. William S. Cohen of Maine a new member of the House Judiciary Committee, voted in favor of the articles of impeachment. "Each of us," he recalled, "by a force of circumstances beyond our desire or control, was placed on a high wire that was strung between disloyalty to party and disloyalty to principle."
Given these historical examples and their mixed political results, it would be impossible to predict the impact of taking on Trump and his supporters.
But the potential for backlash and the stakes for our country are high, and this has the makings of a character-defining moment for Biden. In his speech on Thursday, the President needs to stay above the fray and make clear that his comments are not about partisan gain but repairing the democracy. He must be clear-eyed and direct about the ways that the Republican Party leadership have enabled Trump and his attempts to overturn the election without making blanket statements about the motivations of all voters who support the GOP.
In making his case, Biden needs to focus on the facts and lay out the ways these anti-democratic forces pose a threat in 2022 and beyond. He must also offer a path forward through substantive reform, highlighting the proposed changes to the Electoral Count Act, for example, which has garnered some bipartisan support.
Our leaders shouldn't shy away from defending our democracy due to a fear of the political ramifications. That's not what leadership is about. When our democracy is under attack from within, Biden would do well to remember Johnson's response to advisers warning him about the risks of advancing civil rights: "Well, what the hell's the presidency for?"
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