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President Joe Biden finally said the words Americans gobsmacked by the MAGA-fication of American politics have been waiting to hear: “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal.”
He’s right. And I’d argue a sizable majority of Americans, including many Republicans, know he’s right.
It’s not normal to deny the results of a free and fair election. It’s not normal to incite an attack on the U.S. Capitol and then side with the attackers once justice is meted out. It’s not normal to demonize any government institution or official – from the Department of Justice to the FBI to a certain vice president – who doesn’t kowtow to one leader’s demands.
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said Thursday night outside Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, later adding that “blind loyalty to a single leader … is fatal to democracy.”
He’s right. Any honest, rational person can see he’s right, and many have been saying the same things for years. But never have Americans heard this tough love delivered so clearly and so directly from someone as powerful as the U.S. president.
Biden’s speech will surely bring untold wailing and teeth-gnashing from the right. There’s an argument that, at a moment when Biden’s political standing is on the upswing, it was a risky speech. But it was, above all else, necessary.
The election denialism, the outlandish-to-the-point-of-being-embarrassing conspiracy theories, the rise of weird weekend MAGA warriors training as if their militia might take on the U.
