Below is my column in The Hill on the Valley Forge speech of President Joe Biden kicking off his 2024 campaign. Biden’s claiming the mantle as the defender of democracy and free speech struck a discordant note with many civil libertarians given his record and the actions of many Democratic activists in this election.
Here is the column:
“This is like something out of a fairy tale, a bad fairy tale.”
That line, from the speech of President Joe Biden at Valley Forge this week, may have been the most accurate observation in the entire address kicking off Biden’s 2024 campaign.
The speech was a masterpiece of contradiction. Biden started by denouncing how Donald Trump’s campaign is only “about him” and “obsessed with the past.” He then spent virtually all of the speech obsessing about Trump and Jan. 6, 2021.
It was an early indication of the Orwellian character of the speech. Facing the lowest polling numbers of any modern president, Biden attempted a constructive substitution. “Democracy is on the ballot,” he said. So voters do not have to vote for him. When they see Biden, they should just read “democracy.”
That will require more than an act of substitution in the voting booth. It would require an act of willful blindness.
Biden spoke of how Democrats are fighting to protect the “right to vote.” Democratic activists and officials across the country are seeking to remove Trump from the ballot even though he is the most popular choice for the presidency right now.
In fact, dozens of Democratic officials have sought to remove 126 Republicans from Congress on the same basis. Even as Biden was telling citizens to vote Democrat to preserve democracy, a Democratic activist was seeking to remove a GOP congressman from the ballot in a nearby Pennsylvania district.
Biden’s speech would be more credible if he had joined principled Democratic politicians who have denounced this nationwide effort. As usual, he has remained silent as he did on court packing in the last election.
It would also have been a tad more convincing if his party were not preventing citizens from voting for anyone other than Biden in the primary. Florida called its Democratic primary for Biden and blocked opposing candidates, despite two-thirds of Democrats wanting an alternative to Biden. Faced with such polling numbers, the party establishment is so committed to democracy that it has decided voters cannot be trusted with a choice. North Carolina’s Democrats became the latest to bar anyone but Biden from the ballot.
Democratic officials are approaching democracy the way Henry Ford responded to calls for different color choices for the Model T. He pledged to provide “any color the customer wants, as long as it’s black.” In this election, voters can choose anyone they want, as long as it is Biden.
For millions of voters, democracy may be on the ballot but it is aspirational. If you vote for Biden, you might just get democracy back, but only after the election.
Even more galling was Biden’s claim to be the defender of free speech. As I have previously written, Biden has been the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. His administration has been unrelenting in pushing for censorship and blacklisting of those with opposing views.
The Biden censorship efforts have been described by one federal court as unprecedented in our history and a virtual “Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’” The Biden Administration has called for the censorship of even true statements that it deems misleading.
For Biden to run on free speech is about as convincing as Bill Clinton running on abstinence.
Biden hopes that voters will buy the “don’t vote for me, vote for democracy” line. However, it does not appear to be working thus far. Indeed, the Valley Forge speech was another example of “the sound of one hand clapping” with the same 40 percent or so that is clinging to Biden in the polls.
This time, however, he dropped the hellish red back drop from Philadelphia in 2022, when he denounced Trump supporters as enemies of the people. Instead, he did everything he could to channel the spirit of George Washington, short of appearing in a Continental uniform.
Of course, Washington was a unifying figure in his time. He did not declare all Tories to be traitors. Many Tories and former loyalists would ultimately join his cause. Biden portrayed the 74 million voters for Trump as virtual redcoats seeking the return of the monarchy.
The key to Washington’s success is that he was at Valley Forge. He lived through the deprivations imposed upon his men and defended democracy by refusing invitations to become a monarch. If Biden wants to assume the mantle of a Washington, he could start by supporting democracy, practicing it in both the primary and in general election by calling for voters to be given their choice of candidates.
Given his record, Biden’s effort to disguise himself as George Washington left him looking foolish in a uniform two sizes too big for his stature.
Biden has a consistent record of only supporting principles and positions that bring political benefits. While James Freeman Clarke once said that statesmen think of the next generation, Biden seems rarely to have thought beyond the next election.
Moreover, Biden’s effort to champion the Constitution was contradicted by a long line of decisions finding that he has violated the Constitution with impunity. This includes rulings that his administration has exceeded his authority and engaged in racial discrimination in federal programs. Indeed, Biden has often displayed a cavalier attitude toward such violations.
For example, the Biden administration was found to have violated the Constitution in its imposition of a nationwide eviction moratorium through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Biden admitted that his White House counsel and most legal experts told him the move was unconstitutional. But he ignored their advice and went with that of Harvard University Professor Laurence Tribe, the one person who would tell him what he wanted to hear. It was, of course, then quickly found to be unconstitutional.
Biden showed the same disregard over the unconstitutionality of his effort to unilaterally forgive roughly half a trillion dollars in student debt.
Biden rarely allows principle to stand before politics.
That is why Biden is no Washington. It is not even clear that Biden makes a convincing Biden. His checkered history of violating the Constitution has left little real notion of what he values beyond the politically expedient.
The tragedy of Biden is not that he has not reached the heights of Washington. Few ever have. The tragedy is that we may never know if Biden could rise to meet his own Valley Forge challenge.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Law School.
“Joe Biden will bring us together”, I recall those CNN and MSNBC reporters making this ridiculous claim. Biden is claiming the millions of people that voted for Trump in 2020 – and those who are voting for him in 2024 – are a “threat to Democracy”. This is just total nonsense. It’s the Democrats that are that threat to Democracy,as these effort to take Trump off the ballot show.
“The speech was a masterpiece of contradiction. Biden started by denouncing how Donald Trump’s campaign is only “about him” and “obsessed with the past.” He then spent virtually all of the speech obsessing about Trump and Jan. 6, 2021.”
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Found Biden’s speech on YouTube. (I especially like Llyod Austin’s part at 2:48.) You got it. He’s certainly no Washington. Maybe more East St. Louis:
@Turley,
It seems that the Biden WH is either inept or is brazen enough to not try and hide their illegal activities.
If the story about the Georgia case where the outside counsel billed for the time he met w the WH to talk about Trump’s case… you have a direct line ( dots connected) to the WH pushing cases to impede and harm the opposing candidate.
This is clearly election interference and would be yet another impeachable offense. It seems that Joe or his handlers don’t care because at the convention in Chicago… they will announce his replacement. Now if I were Kennedy, I’d be peeved since he’s being taken off states ballots in the primary against Biden.
Biden is clearly playing to his party’s core. Turley says 40% however, I would argue its less than that. His mantra is vote for me, because the other guy is worse.
For the progressives who fail to think beyond their next paycheck, this hits home. For everyone else who sees the rot and ruin caused by inept and not well thought out policies… Trump becomes the clear solution.
The only real key is if they can keep Trump from putting his own size 12’s in his mouth. He’s his own worst enemy.
-G
The guy who can’t find the exit without and falls up the stairs thinks he is George Washington. Sure Joey and I am Abe Lincoln.
Turley, your comment section is pure trash. You must be very proud.
You are a joke!!!
Great reply. Thanks for proving my point, trash boy.
Trash ^^^^
General Washington scraped off better turds than biden on whatever stump was convenient.
The US House can go around DOJ regarding holding Hunter in contempt and putting him on trial in the US House, then detain him if found guilty. Tarring and feathering him would be sublime. Then likewise to all of Biden’s cabinet members
The Contempt of Hunter Biden
Come Wednesday the Republicans will give their response. Both the Oversight and Judiciary committees will be marking up resolutions to hold Hunter in contempt. If they pass in committee, they go to the full House. If the House passes them, the question becomes whether will Joe Biden’s Justice Department will prosecute.
Therein lies a snag. Many believe that Attorney General Merrick Garland will decline to bring charges, the same way Eric Holder refused to prosecute former IRS official Lois Lerner when the House held her in contempt in 2014. This time the decision is even more fraught politically, because it involves the president’s son in an election year.
….
But if House Republicans really want Hunter’s answers, and not simply a campaign issue, there is a route that doesn’t require the Justice Department’s cooperation: inherent contempt. While each chamber of Congress holds this power, it hasn’t been exercised since 1934.
Under inherent contempt, the House could enforce its contempt finding itself by bringing Hunter before the House and putting him on trial. If he’s found guilty, the House could detain him under its own authority. In 1821 the Supreme Court recognized this power in Anderson v. Dunn.
In that case, the justices held that inherent contempt was essential to Congress’s ability to function as a legislative and deliberative body. Without this power, it ruled, Congress would be “exposed to every indignity and interruption that rudeness, caprice, or even conspiracy, may meditate against it.”
Indignity. Interruption. Rudeness. Almost sounds as if they had Hunter Biden in mind.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-contempt-of-hunter-biden-investigation-politics-justice-department-rule-of-law-a0f883d6
I dont see where the House has any power to bring someone in for trial to begin with. The Sergeant at Arms, whose responsibility it is to detain the “recalcitrant witness”, has no jurisdiction outside the House.
Lowell knew this, which is why he had Hunter the coward do his taunting from the Senate steps.
Interesting, but not really relevant.
The term democracy does not appear in any of the founding parchments, most assuredly not in the Constitution. If we are a democracy, our Republic is dead.
We’ve always been a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional federal republic.
We are a constitutional republic. A democracy is 50% plus one, or another words mob rules.
A democracy is a form of government in which the power is ultimately held by the people. We’re a representative democracy, meaning we elect people to represent us. But we elect most politicians by whichever candidate gets a majority (your “50% plus one”). If you consider that “mob rules,” that’s your problem.
You pretend that either we’re a democracy or we’re a constitutional republic, when we’re both.
Tom/Estovir, the problem is that Trumpers keep yacking about the ‘constitution’ and ‘republic’. And every time they do, those terms are degraded in everyone else’s eyes.
What a stupid thing to say. “Trumpers” also “yack” about the United States, and the concept of equal justice under the law. I guess those terms are degraded too? SMH
Tom/Estovir, we’ve seen how the far-right has degraded ‘Christianity’.
Most of the christianity degradation was done by lefties in the catholic church, cornholing little boys. Kinda like lawn boy/turdrunner
democracy was a pejorative back then
The democratic/dictatorial duality.
The founders established a representative republic under a constitution that acknowledged individual rights and limited governing authority in order to mitigate progress (e.g. corruption).
Yes, JT is being careless, sloppy. The Prez’s speech was in Blue Bell, not Valley Forge.
Tch, tch.
David Benson, below, is a Svelaz sock puppet. He is using it to avoid the ban he was placed under. Please do not respond to his drivel. He gets paid by the reply. It’s obvious by the ridiculousness of his posts. Earlier he posted this same thing under the name “Dr. Harry Bagodics” or something like that.
I pinched it from Dr. B.
That’s it? That’s the best you can do?
𝐈𝐟 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐄𝐩𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧’𝐬 𝐈𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐚𝐬 𝐁𝐚𝐝, 𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐒𝐨 𝐌𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞
The atrocity that is Epstein’s Island is one that will be proof positive that the elite in our society believe they play by different rules, and not just in the realm of legality but also in the question of morality. It’s proof that there is an element of our society that actively wants to engage in some of the most depraved activities they can think of and that when they’re done they’ll put on suits and smile in front of cameras as they discuss how their ideas are the ones that can lead humanity into a brighter future.
𝐄𝐏𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐈𝐍 𝐃𝐎𝐂𝐒: 𝐁𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧, 𝐑𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐝
The latest batch of Epstein documents hit the internet on Monday, and those docs contain some… interesting descriptions of people and their activities.
By: Ward Clark ~ January 08, 2024
https://redstate.com/wardclark/2024/01/08/latest-epstein-docs-released-bill-clinton-richard-branson-among-those-named-n2168442
Alan Dershowitz name keeps coming up in this Jeffrey Epstein’s Island mess. (Hummm ??? Not Good)