BIDEN TO VOTERS: SAVE DEMOCRACY
President calls on public to stand up to election deniers
Warning that democracy itself is in peril, President Joe Biden called on Americans Wednesday night to use their ballots in next week’s midterm elections to stand up against lies, violence and dangerous “ultra MAGA” election disruptors who are trying to “succeed where they failed” in subverting the 2020 elections.
This is no time to stand aside, he declared. “Silence is complicity.”
After weeks of reassuring talk about America’s economy and inflation, Biden turned to a darker, more urgent message, declaring in the final days of midterm election voting that the nation’s system of governance is under threat from former President Donald Trump’s election-denying lies and the violence Biden said they inspire.
The president singled out “ultra MAGA” Republicans — a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan — calling them a minority but “driving force” of the Republican Party.
Pointing in particular to last Friday’s attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Biden said that Trump’s false claims about a stolen election have “fueled the dangerous rise of political violence and voter intimidation over the past two years.”
“There’s an alarming rise in the number of people in
this country condoning political violence or simply remaining silent,” Biden added. “In our bones we know democracy is at risk, but we also know this: It’s in our power to preserve our democracy.”
The president’s speech — focused squarely on the rite of voting and the counting of that vote — amounted to a plea for Americans to step back from the inf lamed rhetoric that has heightened fears of political violence and challenges to the integrity of the elections. Biden was straddling two roles,
speaking as both a president defending the pillars of democracy and a Democrat trying to boost his party’s prospects against Republicans.
He called out the hundreds of candidates who have denied the 2020 election result and now refuse to commit to accepting the results of the upcoming midterms.
“This driving force is trying to succeed where they failed in 2020 to suppress the rights of voters and subvert the electoral system itself,” Biden said.
“That is the path to chaos
in America. It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And it is un-American.”
The speech came days after a man seeking to kidnap House Speaker Pelosi severely injured her husband, Paul Pelosi, in their San Francisco home in the worst recent example of the political violence that burst forth with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol and has continued with alarming, though less-spectacular incidents.
Election workers nationwide have questioned whether to go back to work
following increased intimidation and harassment ahead of Election Day. At least five people have been charged with federal crimes for harassing workers as early voting has gotten under way.
Reports of people watching ballot boxes in Arizona, sometimes armed or wearing ballistic vests, have raised serious concerns about voter intimidation. Election officials nationwide are bracing for confrontations at polling sites. A flood of conspiracy theorists have signed up to work as partisan poll watchers.
Emphasizing that it is the first federal election since the Capitol riot and Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Biden called on voters to reject candidates who have denied the results of the vote, which even Trump’s own administration declared to be free of any widespread fraud or interference.
Biden asked voters to “think long and hard about the moment we are in.”
“In a typical year, we are not often faced with the question of whether the vote we cast will preserve democracy or put it at risk,” he said. “But we are this year.”
“I hope you’ll make the future of our democracy an important part of your decision to vote and how you vote,” Biden added, asking Americans to consider whether the candidates they are supporting would respect the will of the people and accept the outcome of their election.
“The answer to that question is vital and in my opinion it should be decisive,” he said.
Biden also aimed to get ahead of conspiracy theories about the ongoing vote, saying Americans were voting early, by mail and by absentee ballot and it would take time to tally them “in a legal and orderly manner.” Major changes in voting in 2020 because of the pandemic prompted more early voting and mail-in voting and saw record turnout. It took five days before the results of the 2020 presidential election were final.
“It is important for citizens to be patient,” Biden said.