On Friday President Biden gave a his first major campaign speech of the 2024 election at Valley Forge (transcript from Associated Press):
In the winter of 1777, it was harsh and cold as the Continental Army marched to Valley Forge. General George Washington knew he faced the most daunting of tasks, to fight and win a war against the most powerful empire in existence in the world at the time. His mission was clear: liberty, not conquest. Freedom. Not domination. National independence. Not individual glory.
America made a vow: Never again would we bow down to a king.
He made it completely clear that he is running against Donald Trump, considering Trump a deadly enemy of democracy.
Contrast President Biden’s speech with this prediction by JPMorgan strategist quoted at Business Insider:
President Joe Biden may not be on November’s ballot papers, says JPMorgan Asset Management strategist Michael Cembalest.
Cembalest predicted Biden would drop out from the race “sometime between Super Tuesday and the November election, citing health reasons.”
Super Tuesday is set for March 5, with 16 states and territories holding their primaries and caucuses on that day.
Biden, Cembalest wrote, would then be replaced by a “candidate named by the Democratic National Committee.”
Assuming he’s right, how you reconcile running to preserve democracy with running a candidate for whom no one voted but was appointed by the DNC is unclear to me.
I agree that Donald Trump should not have been elected president. I do not think he is suited by training, experience, or temperament for the job. I will not vote for him. I think the way to prevent that is at the polls and the way to build the case for the re-election of Joe Biden is by pursuing effective policies and administering them well. It’s a bit late in the day for that so running a completely negative campaign it will be!
Goes to show one man’s insurrectionist is another man’s hero.
I’ve tried but can’t hold back any longer. I think James Joyner put it well: multiple things went on all at the same time on 1/6/2021. For some it might have been an insurrection; others thought they were preserving democracy; yet other were expressing their displeasure. Tarring everyone who was demonstrating in Washington, DC on that day as an insurrectionist is a stretch.
And what does that make of the pro-Hamas demonstrators who’ve disrupted multiple City Council meetings with their loud and disorderly conduct? Are they insurrectionists? And what about the public officials who have not restrained them or disrupted the disruption? That includes the mayor and the entire City Council. Are they insurrectionists, too?
In the antebellum period abolitionist were frequently described as inciting servile insurrection. In some cases they could be convicted, like Jacob Danders in relation to the Denmark Vesey slave revolt.
Per Wikipedia:
“Danders was charged for saying that he ‘disliked everything in Charleston, but the Negroes and the sailors.’ Danders had said this publicly after the plot had been revealed; city officials thought his comment suspicious. Danders was found guilty for showing sympathy to the slaves who had been caught ostensibly as part of the conspiracy.”
Criticism of slavery during the Missouri Compromise was a source of agitation, and Vessey was inspired by what he read in the Bible and about the French Revolution.
For sure, even if it was an insurrection not everyone there was trying to be an insurrectionist just because they were breaking the law. AFAICT those people arent being charged with insurrection.
Steve
To the best of my knowledge not a single individual has been charged with insurrection to date. The closest is “seditious conspiracy” on the part of some members of some rightwing militias. The total number of those charges is, what? Around a dozen people?
Whatever they charge. hundreds of formerly ordinary, employed Americans have been hit with life altering Federal charges completely out of practical reason.
Remember the context of the times, rioters burned cities, and few arrests were made. police were told to stand down,
and the police who didn’t were charged and arrested.
These are politically motivated charges meant to send a message from a totalitarian President to the electorate that America will accept no other result than the current one party rule which has become permanent.