With America’s democracy at stake, Biden stands on the right side of history
President Biden has seemingly decided that highlighting threats to democracy will help him get some traction in the 2024 election, using his remarks last Thursday at the McCain Institute in Arizona to commit to putting the preservation of democracy front and center in his presidency and in his campaign for reelection.
“While we’ve made progress,” Biden said, “democracy is still at risk. […] I’ve made the defense and protection and preservation of American democracy the central issue of my presidency. From the speech I made at Gettysburg, an Inaugural Address, to the anniversary of the June 6th insurrection — or January 6th insurrection — to Independence Hall in Philadelphia to the speech I made at Union Station in Washington, I’ve spoken about the danger of election denialism, political violence, and the battle for the soul of America.”
Biden then called out MAGA followers of Donald Trump for undermining the American Constitution and the democratic system. “The MAGA extremists across the country have made it clear where they stand,” he claimed. “They are attacking the free press as the enemy of the people, attacking the rule of law as an impediment, fomenting voter suppression and election subversion.”
He urged “the majority of Americans to make clear where we stand. Do we still believe in the Constitution? Do we believe in the basic decency and respect? The whole country should honestly ask itself — and I mean this sincerely — what it wants, and understand the threats to our democracy.”
A report in Politico notes that “As the general election comes into clearer focus, Biden aides are betting that homing in on democracy will buoy the president’s campaign, especially after a spasm of political violence and threats to election integrity have shocked the American system in recent years.”
Biden’s challenge is first to articulate what the threats to democracy are and what preserving democracy entails. He then needs to figure out a way to get through the myriad of other concerns now pressing for attention in the lives of millions of Americans.
Let’s first look at what Biden said in Arizona about democracy.
Biden began, evoking Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, by saying “History has brought us to a new time of testing. […] What will we do to maintain our democracy? Will we… never quit? Will we not hide from history, but make history? Will we put partisanship aside and put country first?”
He then claimed that “democracy makes all things possible.”
One indication of the difficulty of the task that Biden has set for himself is that many Americans, especially younger Americans, do not agree that democracy makes all things possible.
Surveys show that among people born in the 1980s or later, only 25 percent say it is essential to live in a society governed democratically. Another survey, conducted earlier this year, reports that one in five Generation Z and millennial adults have said “dictatorship could be good in certain circumstances.”
And a 2022 Pew survey found that “the vast majority of Americans (85%)” believe that the U.S. political system either needs “major changes (43%) or needs to be completely reformed (42%).” And “among U.S. adults who say they want significant political reform, 58% said they are not confident the system can change.”
But another poll offered better news for the president’s democracy agenda. Its results show that “Half of Americans strongly agree with the statement ‘Democracy may have problems, but it is the best system of government,’ and another quarter agree somewhat.”
Among those who think that democracy is the best form of government, 30 percent say that “the voice of the people in influencing government” is the most important aspect of democracy and another 25 percent said that the “protection of rights and liberties” is most important.
Democracy, Biden told his Arizona audience, “means respecting the institutions that govern a free society.” But, as the president himself acknowledged, Americans today hardly seem to feel great respect for those institutions. In fact, confidence in the president, Congress and the Supreme Court are at all-time lows.
Biden also argued that the institutions of democracy depend on “our character and the habits of our hearts and minds.”
Democracy thrives in a culture of tolerance and respect for people and ideas very different from our own. Democracy thrives where people are curious about, and receptive to, the views of others.
Democracy, as Biden himself said, requires that we see those who oppose us as opponents — not as enemies. “Across the aisle, across the country,” the president said, “I see fellow Americans, not mortal enemies. We’re a great nation because we’re a good people who believe in honor, decency, and respect.”
Yet today throughout this country many Americans do not share Biden’s vision.
Their hearts and minds are marked by high levels of impatience, intolerance, suspicion, frustration and anger. Political scientist Eli Finkel and his colleagues have documented what they call the rise of “political sectarianism.” Sectarianism is “the tendency to adopt a moralized identification with one political group and against another.”
Political sectarianism, Finkel argues, “consists of three core ingredients: othering—the tendency to view opposing partisans as essentially different or alien to oneself; aversion—the tendency to dislike and distrust opposing partisans; and moralization—the tendency to view opposing partisans as iniquitous.”
Finkel says it “is the confluence of these ingredients that makes sectarianism so corrosive in the political sphere. Viewing opposing partisans as different, or even as dislikable or immoral, may not be problematic in isolation. But when all three converge, political losses can feel like existential threats that must be averted—whatever the cost.”
Losses that “must be averted-whatever the cost” is one of the reasons why the Big Lie gained so much traction among Trump supporters.
Complicating Biden’s plan to rally people around democracy is the fact that at the present moment, Americans seem to be focused on other things: the economy, inflation, immigration, the affordability of health care, poor leadership in Washington, D.C. And last year a New York Times/Siena College poll found that “Voters overwhelmingly believe American democracy is under threat, but seem remarkably apathetic about that danger, with few calling it the nation’s most pressing problem.”
The success of Biden’s campaign to rally Americans to defend democracy depends on his ability to figure out a way to break through that apathy. As he takes up that task, he can take to heart the fact that in 2022 voters rejected candidates who backed Trump’s election lies and were running for statewide offices in every presidential battleground state.
Meantime, whether Biden succeeds or fails in rallying Americans to defend democracy, history will applaud him for his effort and for reminding American voters that “Democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle. They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn the threats to democracy…. because they feel frustrated, disillusioned, tired, alienated.”
It may be a hard sell, but the president is right: “For all its faults, though, American democracy remains the best pass [path] forward to prosperity, possibilities, progress, fair play, equality.”
Austin Sarat (@ljstprof) is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Amherst College