When President Joe Biden delivers his campaign kickoff speech Friday, he is expected to lay bare that the stakes of the campaign season before us are nothing short of the preservation of democracy.
It’s particularly apt in light of new polling showing that Republican loyalty to both Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 rioters has increased in the three years since their deadly insurrection attempt. The Washington Post writes:
[Republicans] are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were “mostly violent,” less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack, and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate than they were in a December 2021 Post-UMD survey.
Given the political climate, perhaps it shouldn’t be noteworthy that the Biden campaign’s first ad of 2024 warns that “something dangerous” is afoot in the country, and yet it’s still entirely remarkable.
“There’s something dangerous happening in America,” Biden says. “There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. All of us are being asked right now, what will we do to maintain our democracy? History’s watching.”
Indeed, these are the times we are living in—sugarcoating it would be a disservice to pro-democracy voters and the republic.
