Biden Knows How to Make the Moral Case Against Trump By Andrew Sullivan

[emmaverybo]

Snip—————————————————————-

A really unexpected thing happened to me this week. I felt a slight but measurable twinge of hope. For the first time, I heard a speech that, while measured and well-balanced, homed in relentlessly — and with passion and authority — on the core moral unfitness of Donald Trump to be president of the United States. Joe Biden’s Iowa address last Wednesday finally did what needs to be done: Leaving questions of policy aside for a moment, it framed next year’s presidential and congressional campaigns as a battle for the soul of America.

Trump’s inability to grasp this country as an idea ultimately beyond race and territory and religion, his despicable moral character and incendiary rhetoric, and his constant threats to Constitutional order and civil peace render him unfit for the office he holds. That’s Biden’s central message and the core, urgent issue of our time — because it relates to all the others: the costs and insecurity of health care, the intensifying climate crisis, the crumbling of liberal democracy in the West, the corruption of the American right, the rise of white supremacist terror, and the pressures of absorbing the biggest wave of immigration in a century, and, in absolute numbers, the biggest wave in American history. With Trump reelected, all of this gets fathomlessly worse. With him gone, there’s a chance to recover. But while he’s there, the danger never ends.


The speech should reassure people — as it reassured me — that the Democratic primary base is not wrong or cowardly or sexist for consistently putting Biden at the top of their preferences. These rank-and-file voters want to defeat Trump and think they’ve found the best candidate for the job available. And if Biden can sustain both his focus and the powerful argument he laid out this week, he may well prove them right.

This is not to say that Biden isn’t showing some signs of aging. He was composed, but he does appear a little frail; there were times his speech seemed a little slurred, and he had several minor slipups. This is not to fault him: At 76, he has enviable sharpness and physical fitness. But at 76, there are limits. And somehow, at 73, Trump’s psychological sickness gives him an edge: a gob-smacking drive to keep going and going and going, with no signs of flagging at all, and many signs of mania. Who in their 70s is crazy enough to keep up? Even as he claimed he was seeking healing and unity this week, Trump was still tweeting insults, filming a shameless campaign video, and comparing crowd sizes with Beto O’Rourke’s. The sheer sociopathic narcissism in the face of such grief and trauma beggars belief. But it sure makes Trump seem younger than he is.

End snip——————————————————-

I don’t endorse some conservative twists surfacing in this otherwise strong essay, but it nails what was essential in Biden’s stand against Trump.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/andrew-sullivan-biden-can-make-the-moral-case-against-trump.html

[msongs]

1. everyone knows who trump is. huge chunks do not care and never will. it has to be about more

than trump and his friends are a waste of oxygen

[emmaverybo]

4. I think Sullivan shows how crucial Biden's grounds for attacking Trump are to

2020, among other issues, and why and how the country needs such a persistent rebuke:

Snip——————————————-

But avoiding the lardaceous orange elephant in the room seems like a defensive dodge to me. It gives the impression of weakness. It cedes too much to Trump and normalizes him. It is not the relentless, epiphanous stare-down of Trump that a successful 2020 opponent needs to muster, and that so much of the country is yearning for. And it misses what is in fact the central issue in 2020: the unique danger this bitter bigot poses to this country’s liberal democracy and civil peace.

Next year will not be a midterm election, after all. It will be a referendum on Trump — as it has to be, and as Trump will insist it be. And so the central task of the Democratic candidate will be not just to explain how dangerous Trump’s rhetoric and behavior is, but how un-American it is, and how a second term could leave behind an unutterably altered America. One term and the stain, however dark, might fade in time. Two terms and it marks us forever. (bolding mine)

To read the whole essay: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/andrew-sullivan-biden-can-make-the-moral-case-against-trump.html

[peggysue2]

28. The 2020 election will ultimately be a referendum on Trump and Trumpism

Both of which need to be renounced and fully repudiated. Nothing else is as important as defeating Trump and his budding fascism because if we fail we can kiss the whole damn country goodbye.

The election is that critical. Everyone's well-being and everyone's future rides on kicking Trump and his criminal enterprise out of the White House, to the curb and (if God is just and our will is firm) directly into a jail cell.

Nothing else matters until the man and his enablers are finished, kaput!

[Cha]

2. This is well said by Sullivan.. not a fan but

I don't reject anyone who doesn't like trump and has something worthwhile to say.

Trump’s inability to grasp this country as an idea ultimately beyond race and territory and religion, his despicable moral character and incendiary rhetoric, and his constant threats to Constitutional order and civil peace render him unfit for the office he holds. That’s Biden’s central message and the core, urgent issue of our time — because it relates to all the others: the costs and insecurity of health care, the intensifying climate crisis, the crumbling of liberal democracy in the West, the corruption of the American right, the rise of white supremacist terror, and the pressures of absorbing the biggest wave of immigration in a century, and, in absolute numbers, the biggest wave in American history. With Trump reelected, all of this gets fathomlessly worse. With him gone, there’s a chance to recover. But while he’s there, the danger never ends.

Mahalo, emmaverybo

[emmaverybo]

7. Mahalo, Cha for citing one of the best parts. I usually avoid Sullivan. But then he has been a long

time champion of same-sex marriage, so some saving grace. You keep that flame burning, Cha, you really do.

[Cha]

11. Andrew Sullivan described

Biden's "core message" brilliantly. You just never know who is going to come up with something so spectacularly relevant.

Leaving questions of policy aside for a moment, it framed next year’s presidential and congressional campaigns as a battle for the soul of America.

That's exactly what it is.. so many people are feeling it and that's where Biden launched his campaign. Fighting for the Soul of America. Nothing less.

You keep the Flame burning, too, emmaverybo. I love all our Biden Supporters and allies!

[Recursion]

12. What's this "biggest wave of immigration" he's talking about?

It's down from even 10 years ago.

[Hekate]

19. This, for sure

[EveHammond13]

3. THIS! And if you follow Lakoff (like I do!) you know this is the key

[world wide wally]

5. Wait until Joe invites Trump to go jogging with him

I hope he does it during a debate.

[Cha]

8. LOL! Yeah, I don't think

trump seems ".. younger than he is.." he seems like a big ol gas bag ready to explode

Thanks, WWW!

[peggysue2]

29. Hahahaha!

That would be one way to end Trump's tenure. Get him to jog a half block.

[ucrdem]

6. "The sheer sociopathic narcissism in the face of such grief and trauma beggars belief."

Nicely put. And every time I see Trump I wonder what kind of "vitamin" injections they're pumping into his veins.

[emmaverybo]

9. Sullivan has a way with words. That line jumped out at me too. NT

[comradebillyboy]

10. Did Andrew Sullivan accidentally stumble on to a true fact?

Sullivan is a deplorable in his own right, but in this case he is correct.

[Auggie]

13. I think a morals case is a very wrong way to head ...

it's too obtuse and subjective an issue. Many will defend their morals, however replusive others might find them. You give people reason to circle the wagons rather than welcoming them to join.

Talk about improving people's lives by creating new and better jobs. Offer concrete solutions, not hyperbole. Won't work with all Trump supporters, But maybe just enough.

[Voltaire2]

14. Horrible person said what?

[Cha]

22. Andrew Sullivan said it brilliantly.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

31. Another embarrassed republican.

[Vegas Roller]

15. K&R nt

[intheflow]

16. There are many moral cases to be made against Trump,

and many that have already been made. Casting Biden - or any Democrat - as a moral authority on anything is problematic for two reasons. First, morality is a religious concept using religious language. (The secular term is ethics/ethical.) Biden is not a religious authority, and liberals in general aren't religious and/or keep their faith private. Thus, many conservatives would view such framing by Biden as hypocritical. But secondly, it's not going to swing any Trump supporter to vote blue, as they are a living in a morality-free zone. They have no morals themselves, and yet they can hide behind their Christian "faith" and American culture just accedes their religious authority.

[emmaverybo]

17. I don't think the intention of Sullivan's essay was to cast Biden in the role of moral authority for

the party, certainly not for the nation. I don’t know that you have read the entire essay and I don’t think your response actually addresses its premise at all specifically much as you make points relevant to your thesis.

[aidbo]

18. Oh good, we can prosecute him in 'moral court'.

[Hekate]

20. Excellent OP. It's a pity so many miss the point. nt

[emmaverybo]

21. It is. You have a different preferred candidate, but know his was not a campaign speech and

does nothing to take away from any of our fine candidates or to designate himself as a moral
authority. As you see, that wasn’t Sullivan’s take-away.

We don’t need anyone as a “moral authority,” like some kind of church leading America.

[Gothmog]

23. Joe Biden reminded all of us of what a presidential president would sound like

Link to tweet

In a fiery and blunt speech slamming the tenor, tone and words of President Trump as the nation reels from white nationalist domestic terrorism, former vice president Joe Biden reminded all of us of what a presidential president sounds like. His words were stirring. His delivery was passionate. And they were befitting a man who kicked off his campaign with a video decrying Trump’s shameful response to Charlottesville....

Sure, some of that authority has to do with Biden having served side-by-side with the still-popular former president Barack Obama. His voice providing comfort for those of us who long for the days when a grown-up was president of the United States, acted accordingly and wielded the bully pulpit of the Oval Office with moral authority. Instead, in Trump, we have a bully with a pulpit and no moral compass.

“Days before the mid-terms,” Biden said of Trump, “he fomented fears of a caravan heading to the United States, creating hysteria. saying ‘look at what is marching up, that is an invasion…An invasion’.” The Democratic front-runner continued through a litany of examples of Trump hurling red meat to his supporters. “At a rally in Florida, when he asked a crowd, ‘How do we stop these people?,’ meaning immigrants, and someone yelled back, ‘Shoot them.’ He smiled,” Biden recounted. And then Biden drew a straight line from Trump’s embrace of white supremacy to the hate-inspired violence we’ve endured.....

Biden wasn’t blind to the shortcomings of our nation and the men who formed it. He talked about them. But he demonstrated that the vision of America was perpetuated by Democratic and Republican presidents alike throughout its history. Ending his speech, Biden slipped off his prepared remarks in an emphatic way. “This is the United States of America! Period! May God protect our troops,” Biden said pounding the podium, ending a speech that everyone knows he believes in his bones.

[aikoaiko]

24. Everyone knows he is immoral. His voters don't care.

I'm not sure this is the path to victory in 2020. It would be great if it were, but morality certainly wasn't in 2016.

[Princetonian]

26. Joe's appeal to independents is what will win this election.

[Princetonian]

25. Great read. Thank you!

As I recall, Andrew Sullivan is a practicing Catholic who had a rude epiphany during the Bush years and became an Obama supporter. He is an excellent writer who understands that Joe's appeal is his core decency:

Biden made this moral case. And he did it with feeling, and a wounded sense of patriotism. He invoked previous presidents, including Republicans, who knew how insidiously evil white supremacy is and wouldn’t give any quarter to it. He reminded us that in politics, words are acts, and they have consequences when uttered by a national leader: “The words of a president … can move markets. They can send our brave men and women to war. They can bring peace. They can calm a nation in turmoil. They can console and confront and comfort in times of tragedy … They can appeal to the better angels of our nature. But they can also unleash the deepest, darkest forces in this nation.” And this, Biden argues, is what Trump has done: tap that dark psychic force, in an act of malignant and nihilist narcissism.

Yes, Biden powerfully argued that Trump was an enabler of “white supremacy” in the sense understood by most people, and not the absurdly broad, new left definition that counts as a white supremacist nearly everyone not actively virtue-signaling on left Twitter. But he went further and explained why America, at its best, is an inversion of that twisted racial identitarianism: “What this president doesn’t understand is that unlike every other nation on earth, we’re unable to define what constitutes ‘American’ by religion, by ethnicity, or by tribe; you can’t do it. America is an idea. An idea stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It gives hope to the most desperate people on earth.” Hope, one might add, that has been deeply qualified by this president’s outspoken fondness for dictators like Kim Jong-un.

And although some of this might once have seemed like pabulum, in the Trump era, it comes off as fresh. There was even a nice line designed to get under Trump’s skin, ridiculing the listless condemnation of white supremacy Trump recited in the wake of the El Paso massacre: that “low-energy, vacant-eyed mouthing of the words written for him condemning white supremacists this week.” That’s a poignantly wrought description of that sighing, sniffing, singsongy voice that Trump uses when he’s saying something his heart isn’t into.

And more importantly, Biden was able to express all this with authority. The speech was a defense of American decency against an indecent commander-in-chief — and it echoed loudly because Biden is, so evidently, a decent human. I’ve never been a huge fan of the logorrheic, egotistical grandstanding Biden sometimes engages in; I don’t agree with him on some issues; his treatment of Anita Hill was disgracefully off-key. But I have never doubted Biden’s core decency. Maybe I have a soft spot for a well-meaning Irish-uncle type. But for 25 minutes or so this week, I felt as if I were living in America again, the America I love and chose to live in, a deeply flawed America, to be sure, marked forever by slavery’s stain, and racism’s endurance, but an America that, at its heart, is a decent country, full of decent people... decency is the heart of his candidacy. And voting for Joe Biden feels like voting for some things we’ve lost and have one last chance to regain. Normalcy, generosity, civility, experience — and a reminder that, in this current darkness, Trump does not define America. “Everyone knows who Donald Trump is,” Biden concluded. “We need to show them who we are. We choose hope over fear. Science over fiction. Unity over division. And, yes — truth over lies.”

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/andrew-sullivan-biden-can-make-the-moral-case-against-trump.html

[Gothmog]

27. Joe Biden's childhood struggle with a stutter: How he overcame it and how it shaped him

Joe is very well equipped to take on trump the bully

Link to tweet

Valerie Biden Owens, the former vice president’s younger sister, says that one lasting impact of his childhood stutter is that it has given him more empathy and compassion for others’ trials, and it uniquely equips him to handle Trump’s taunts.

“Trump is a bully, and Joe has been standing up to bullies his entire life,” Owens said in an interview. “Joe’s stuttering, I think, is one of the principal reasons — a major, major, major reason — that he is the good and compassionate and kind man that he is.”

About 3 million Americans suffer from the speech impediment of stuttering, marked by involuntary repetition of sounds, syllables or words. According to the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders, most children outgrow their stutter, but for 25% of them, stuttering is a lifelong challenge.

Biden has overcome the serious stutter of his youth, but remnants of it resurface on occasions such as when he is very tired, he said in a 2016 speech. Experts on stuttering who follow him closely say they have noticed it on several occasions during the campaign, such as an interview on “The View” when he addressed complaints about his tendency to touch and hug women while campaigning, and an April speech in Pittsburgh launching his campaign, when he struggled with words.

[Tarheel_Dem]

30. K&R

[onetexan]

32. Hopefully around this time next year the real moral majority will kick the Idiot out of the WH with

Their votes. The only way to do this is to vote Blue straight up & down the ballot.