A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
History Will Know
Last night President Joe Biden gave what by any measure was an unprecedented Oval Office address warning of the dangers to democracy posed by Donald Trump, without ever mentioning his name. Sitting behind the Resolute desk and invoking the founders, Biden called this moment an “inflection point” in history with the “soul of America” at stake.
It’s not a speech that will be remembered for its eloquence or its delivery. But no one will be able to say that we weren’t warned. For those who remember the ritual of an earlier time of clustering around communal TV sets to watch these set piece presidential pronouncements, it was jarring to see it used to warn of the perils of authoritarian rule coming from within.
In some quarters, Biden’s address might be dismissed as the self-justifications of a man who was on track to lose re-election, gussied up as self-sacrifice on behalf of a grateful nation. But that would be a grave mistake because it was the very threat of Trump that made forcing Biden out of the race even thinkable. Don’t confuse cause and effect.
As the standard-bearer for the broad anti-Trump coalition, Biden’s faltering on the June debate stage put everything at risk. His failure to rebound quickly or sufficiently enough from that setback prompted the coalition, including his own party and many longtime allies, to abandon him precisely because the stakes were so high.
Biden eventually came around, perhaps more under duress than by free will, but he was ultimately able see that his re-election bid was more than about just him: “Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.”
For reasons that are probably peculiar to me, I have been focused to the point of borderline obsessiveness on helping to create a historical record that we didn’t just sleepwalk our way into authoritarianism. If we end up sliding over the cliff into a uniquely American form of fascism, I want it to be unmistakably clear to historians and everyone who comes after us that we knew what was happening. We saw it. We endeavored to prevent it, to arrest the slide, to warn of the perils. We had eyes wide open. We were not blindsided. If it happens, it happened despite our best efforts.
The warnings have come from sitting federal judges, from highly respected longtime Republicans cast out by their party, from conservatives who were previously villains in the progressive firmament, and now from President Biden sitting in the Oval Office having made a substantial personal sacrifice of his own as a way of further sounding the alarm.
History will show that we knew. Maybe that will erase the smugness of future generations that somehow they are immune.