President Joe Biden started a great debate about American democracy in the new year. “It’s what the 2024 election is all about,” he said at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania—General Georgia Washington’s encampment site during the brutal winter of 1787-88 during the Revolutionary War. Biden made a wise move focusing on democracy. Just as in 2022, when the cognoscenti said democracy was a weak campaign issue compared to the economy, Biden and his political allies understand that democracy was and is an issue that gave Republicans and independents—yes, there are still swing voters—good cause to go Democratic and defeat MAGA Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in Arizona and senatorial wannabes Herschel Walker in Georgia and Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania.
But to make his democracy a game-changer at the polls, I suggest that Biden take a second step in 2024.
“Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” he asked.
Sure, but the chief executive needs to translate democracy to the voter in terms more expansive than preventing a second Donald Trump presidency.
Biden needs to explain to voters their stakes in this fight. We all expect it will be another close election, but does it matter to voters in their actual lives whether he or Donald Trump is elected? Sure, Trump will try to screw with elections and break the law ad nauseum, but how will that affect you?
What does it matter to the voters’ democratic rights?
That’s the question. Abortion is a big part of the answer here. Biden needs to conflate abortion rights with small-d democratic rights in the minds of voters. The pitch: They took away your right to an abortion, and if Trump wins and the Congress goes Republican, don’t assume he can’t take away more—pass a federal abortion ban or dramatically restrict the use of the abortion pill. A Trump ally recently declared war on in vitro fertilization, which usually leads to some destruction of embryos and an end to no-fault divorce.
There’s no need to rely on Trump surrogates. Just go to the videotape. “There needs to be some form of punishment” for women having an abortion, Trump told me on MSNBC in a live town hall meeting just before the 2016 Wisconsin Republican primary. He later walked back the line, keeping in tune with the right-to-life movement, which has always emphasized punishing doctors who perform the procedure.
But there was no getting around the cruelty in Trump’s revealing quip. He was answering my simple question of how the law and law enforcement ought to treat women choosing to terminate a pregnancy. Trump has been walking back his anti-abortion stance this year, too—distancing himself from the more draconian bans on the procedure, like the six-week limit on the procedure in Ron DeSantis’s Florida.
But there’s no reason Biden should let him get away with being squirrely when he can shackle Trump to the unpopular issue of abortion restrictions. We saw in Virginia that even the fleece-wearing, friendly Governor Glenn Youngkin bombed when he tried to make the 2023 statehouse elections about his 15-week abortion ban. This deadline includes over 90 percent of abortions and surely tested well in focus groups. But voters overwhelmingly didn’t want to hear any Republican talk about restricting abortions. Period. Democrats held the assembly and picked up the senate in the commonwealth.
“Some form of punishment” is even more effective against Trump now that his justices provided the supermajority to kill Roe v. Wade. And Biden can note that Trump was found liable for rape but demanding “some form of punishment” for the woman.
Democracy isn’t just a one-off. Neither are democratic elections. They foretell the future of society.
We will have several elections later this year hinging on abortion rights that were rescinded by Trump’s Court—ballot initiatives, statehouse races, and congressional contests, many verging into the presidential contest. I expect candidates will wish to remain on the winning side.
It works as well in reverse. Back in the 1970s, Philadelphia saw a surge in African-American voter registration—higher than among white voters. Do you think the presence of “law and order” Mayor Frank Rizzo was a reason?
Of course, it was. People get out to vote not just to fight for the candidate they prefer but the rights they demand—and need—as citizens. Black votes matter.
So do the rights of retirees. People don’t want things taken away from them, even if they were wary of them in the first place. Obamacare? Try getting rid of it now.
One reason Democrats have done well with voters since the 1930s is that they still understand that the party of Franklin Roosevelt is more reliable when it comes to protecting Social Security.
One reason African-Americans prefer Democrats is that Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
And why did LBJ follow up the year later with the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Because the vote protects our other rights.
The issue for Biden is not just picking a popular issue—or the principle of majority rule. It is also about protecting your rights as citizens. It’s about having the vote to defend yourself, to protect your rights.
President Biden began a vital debate. It’s about democracy, not just counting ballots on election day but every day. It’s about the stakes: how the law treats each of us.
Biden went to Valley Forge to remind us how the Continental Army prevailed that winter. He should set the next trip to the Boston Tea Party. The American Revolution was incited by King George grinding the boot onto the necks of the colonists, taking away their traditional self-rule prerogatives from neutering their statehouses and demanding Redcoats be quartered in their private homes, taxes be hiked, and dissent be crushed. The rescinding made British subjects want to be Americans. Today, that impulse is still in our DNA.
With all the president’s eloquent thoughts about democracy, it would be good to remember the voters’ stakes in this fight. Yes, it’s about Trump’s self-aggrandizing lunacy, but it’s about your rights. If voting for an 81-year-old Biden is not inspiring, vote for you. Vote for you and your rights. Keeping the rights you have is essential. American resentment against the motherland and their king arose because he trammeled on rights the colonists assumed they had, and the crown could not and would not snatch them. This is powerful stuff, deep in the American psyche. It’s how Biden can win.
