(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . How Much Should the 2024 Campaign Be Conducted Pro-Biden, How Much Anti-Trump? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-14 Here on Daily Kos, some weeks ago, I recently read a piece about the upcoming Presidential election that argued that Democrats should concentrate on persuading voters why they should vote for Joe Biden and not on why they should vote against Donald Trump. (I apologize for not being able to link to the piece, or even give the title and author, because I’ve been unable to find the piece again.) I don’t claim to be certain about what works, but if that author is right, that’s says something quite unfortunate about the American people. There is a good case to be made for Biden, and it certainly makes sense to make that case. Objective observers declared that Biden had the best record of positive achievement in his first two years (before the Republicans took control of the House) of any president in decades. Also, the performance of the American economy in recovering from the economic impact of the pandemic has been the best among all advanced economies—thanks in part to Biden. Additionally, the polls indicate that the public isn’t giving Biden credit for the job he’s done (e.g. believes very negative things about the national economy that are the opposite of the truth). So, yeah, it makes sense to campaign to motivate voters to “Stay the Course” — and re-elect a President who has been doing overall a highly creditable job. But whether Biden’s Presidency is graded as good or fair or poor, in this election what is most crucially important is that Biden’s has performed like a normal American presidency, and after a second term the United States would still be the constitutional Republic it has been since its founding. (And that has bestowed many blessings on generations of Americans.) What makes this election abnormal – what makes the stakes in the voters’ choice so enormously consequential – has nothing to do with Biden and everything to do with his opponent, who is the only person besides Biden who might become President. Trump’s winning the Presidency clearly represents an unprecedented threat to the survival of the American Democracy our founders gave us more than two centuries ago. Trump’s multiple indictments — the 34 felonies of which he’s been convicted in NY, plus the still more serious crimes that he almost certainly would have been convicted of by now that corrupt judges not unnecessarily delayed to prevent the American people seeing the ugly truth before they have to vote — show how lawless Trump has already been. But lately Trump has been far more explicit about his intention to sweep away the order of democracy and the rule of law in a systematic way. What would it say about America if the smartest strategy is to downplay the most important truth about this political moment — i.e. that Donald Trump must not be given the powers of the Presidency -– and focused instead on why people should vote for Biden ? Are we — the American people — so ill-equipped for Democracy that we cannot decide based on the most important truth? “People are not moved by facts,” declared the author of that article that argued Democrats should focus on why Biden is a good choice. He was arguing, it seems, that showing the American people the enormous body of facts that expose Trump’s ugly, criminal, fascistic record and plans would not affect how people will vote in November. Whether he’s right or not, conceding that Americans cannot be moved by facts that tell the most important truth would mean giving up on one of the foundational beliefs that inspired America’s founders who gave us our constitutional order. When they created a system that attempted to solve the age-old problem of tyranny – creating the first political system where power is wielded with “the consent of the governed” to accomplish “the will of the people” -– they were expressing the faith of what has been called “the Age of Reason,” or “the Enlightenment.” They designed a system to enable the truth – facts – to emerge freely and to play its proper role in guiding the choices the people make. That design included freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly so that different versions of the truth could compete in “the marketplace of ideas” to shape the understanding of the people, and the choices they make. And even though our founders also knew that people could get swept up by passions, and that factions could strive for their own self-serving purposes, they believed in the ability of human beings to use their reason to grasp the truth and collectively to make the right choices. If this election is fundamentally a choice between Democracy and Fascism – and I believe most strongly that this is the most important way to understand it – then the faith of our Founders would want the American people to understand that reality, and choose accordingly. It is disturbingly true that the polls show that at this moment, enough Americans are indicating a readiness to vote for the leader of the Fascist Force that there’s a real possibility that, with this election, “the land of the free” as we’ve long known it may come to an end. Does that mean that the American electorate might knowingly vote for a fascistic regime to replace our long-standing democracy? One might conclude that, throwing up one’s hands in despair, since what Trump is and what the Trump Party has become is hardly hidden, since the evidence has become so blatant and so mountainous. But I believe that at most one-third of Americans would want the kind of regime (authoritarian, dictatorial, fascist) that Trump and the Trump Party would bring. The evidence might be blatant, but other polls show that a shocking number of Americans pay shockingly little attention until the final couple of months of the campaign. And if we look to our actual recent elections – rather than to these long-before-voting polls – to indicate the real leanings of the American people, when they take on the job of voting, the picture is more hopeful. Again and again – in special elections and referenda -- voters are repudiating the MAGA tendencies in referenda and special elections. And if Trump was too MAGA in 2020, and the Republicans too MAGA in 2022, Trump is only getting more extreme in the direction voters have been rejecting. Most Americans, it seems clear, still believe in our nation’s basic values of liberty and democracy. All of which tells me that, while it’s valuable to get people to feel positively about a second Biden term, the more important work is to get as many Americans as possible to understand why this Fascistic Leader, and the Fascistic Party that he dominates, must be rejected. 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