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Home » On Biden’s deplorable speech yesterday: the history of condemning your opponent’s voters

On Biden’s deplorable speech yesterday: the history of condemning your opponent’s voters

The New Neo Posted on by

What made Biden’s advisors/handlers think it would be a good idea to give this type of speech to all of America in prime time (although interestingly, the networks didn’t cover it)? Apparently, they think the time is right.

Of course, he’d already given a similar one about a week ago in which he famously called Trump supporters “semi-Fascists” – but that was at a Democratic fundraiser. Fundraisers are much more limited preaching-to-the-choir events, and often feature more incendiary language than speeches for a general audience.

You may recall slightly similar comments in speeches by Hillary Clinton, in which she called half of the voters on the right “deplorables,” or by Barack Obama, in which he referred to Republican voters in Pennsylvania or the Midwest as bitter clingers to guns, religion, and xenophobia. The thing is, both of these speeches were given at fundraisers; Obama’s in extremely blue San Francisco, and Hillary’s at an LGBT event in very blue New York City. They were also said during campaigns in which neither had been elected president, although Obama would go on to win his election and Clinton would go on to lose.

You can see a progression here, and I believe it is a planned one integral to the strategy of the modern Democratic Party. To the best of my knowledge, until Obama was campaigning for the presidency, although it was commonplace for politicians to attack rival politicians, I can’t recall any American president attacking the supporters of a rival politician. Maybe it occurred, but I certainly can’t think of it; Truman’s famously nasty 1948 campaign was directed against officeholders and not the public. And LBJ’s famously nasty ad depicting Goldwater as a person whose election would lead to a mushroom cloud was an attack on Goldwater, not his voters.

Obama broke that tradition, but only at a fundraiser and also, if you look at the actual text of what he said, it was more smugly condescending than nasty:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

It as shocking at the time, but now it seems relatively mild – Obama as therapist, psychoanalyzing the poor dears.

Hillary “deplorable” accusation was also made at a fundraiser, and a radical one at that, but she took it quite a few steps further than Obama along the path where we find ourselves today. She was no longer the least bit understanding or sympathetic to those she put down. But she did say it was only half of Trump’s supporters who were so awful:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

Half are deplorable, some are irredeemable – but they “are not America.” She also added an interesting echo of Obama’s sympathy/empathy/therapist-talk for the other half of Trump’s supporters. In other words, the bitter clingers:

…but that “other” basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but – he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Trump himself could and still can be a very nasty guy, but to the best of my recollection I don’t think he ever attacked Democrats or Biden voters.

Here’s the full text of Biden’s speech from yesterday. It goes many many steps further, although he has a little bit of language in there that tries to limit what he’s saying. Here’s the attempt at limitation:

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.

Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.

But “MAGA” was merely Trump’s campaign slogan: Make America Great Again. Trump supporters bought hats and T-shirts and posters that said MAGA, and I would go out on a limb and say that just about everyone who voted for Trump really did want to make American great again. The great majority of Republicans voted for Trump in both elections, and support most of what he did. So Biden is quite obviously referring to all of them.

The next line makes it even more clear:

I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.

The only Republicans Biden’s been able to work with as president are people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Their numbers are very very few, and nowhere near a majority of Republicans in Congress or anywhere except the staff of the Bulwark (who arguably are no longer Republicans). Note also the subtle switch in Biden’s rhetoric from talking about extremist Trump voters to a very tiny number of “mainstream” Republicans he has successfully worked with, who certainly are not voters and certainly cannot be described as in the mainstream of the GOP, although he tries to label them that way.

Next:

But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.

So he immediately returns, after the short feint, to the denunciation of Republicans in general, and the labeling of them as a threat.

More:

MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.

They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.

That particular statement of Biden’s hasn’t been given much attention, but I think it is crucial. It sets the groundwork for a coming Democrat attack on the legitimacy of any “MAGA Republicans” who might get elected. After the 2022 election, Biden (or a replacement such as Harris) will still hold the presidency, and the FBI and the DOJ will of course remain in overwhelmingly Democrat hands. This passage is a preemptive strike at any winners of the next election as people who have fixed that election illegally, while simultaneously attacking the same people as “election deniers” of the 2020 election, which was a “free” election.

This is one of the more subtly pernicious passages in a wholly pernicious speech.

It’s stunning in its Orwellian reversals, and of course he uses the popular term “election deniers” – a phrase I discussed in this previous post.

Biden continues:

MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.

Remember when nice-guy Romney was asked during a 2012 campaign debate about states banning contraception? Romney was taken aback and didn’t understand where the question was coming from, but it was coming from the need to spread the false idea that Republicans might actually do such a thing:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception? Or is that trumped by a constitutional right to privacy?

MITT ROMNEY: George, this is an unusual topic that you’re raising. States have a right to ban contraception? I can’t imagine a state banning contraception. I can’t imagine the circumstances where a state would want to do so, and if I were a governor of a state or…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, the Supreme Court has ruled —

ROMNEY: … or a — or a legislature of a state — I would totally and completely oppose any effort to ban contraception. So you’re asking — given the fact that there’s no state that wants to do so, and I don’t know of any candidate that wants to do so, you’re asking could it constitutionally be done? We can ask our constitutionalist here…

STEPHANOPOULOS: … asking you, do you believe that states have that right or not?

ROMNEY: George, I — I don’t know whether a state has a right to ban contraception. No state wants to. I mean, the idea of you putting forward things that states might want to do that no — no state wants to do and asking me whether they could do it or not is kind of a silly thing, I think.

That was twelve years ago. Now it’s morphed into Biden declaring this is what Trump supporters are determined to do and plan to do. But then again, Biden’s the same guy who said in that same year of 2012, to an audience composed of many black people, that Romney wanted to “put you all back in chains.” Romney, one of the few people he might today describe as a “mainstream Republican.” (Note also when you look at this how much sharper Biden was mentally back then.)

But back to last night’s speech:

[MAGA Repulbicans] look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.

It goes on, but I’ll stop with the close textual analysis because it’s both unnecessary and sickening. The demonization and Orwellian accusations and transparently hypocritical yet sanctimonious calls for unity continue for the rest of the speech.

I’ve seen many people label it one of the most divisive speeches ever given by an American president. But they never name a similarly divisive or a more divisive one. Personally, although I’m certainly not familiar with every speech given by every president, I can’t think of an equally divisive one. I can’t think of any speech by a president that targeted the half of the country who voted for a presidential rival.

In addition, this speech had no other purpose and no other theme. We’re not talking about a sentence or a paragraph embedded in a larger message – this was the subject matter of the speech, and there was no larger message except “everyone who hates these people should unite behind me” – which is essentially the same message, just the supposedly more “positive” part of it.

People keep saying that Biden has crossed the Rubicon. But this isn’t the first time he’s crossed it; it appears to be a meandering river that he crosses over and over. But actually, I think the Democrats crossed the Rubicon a long time ago, and I certainly don’t think this is just Joe Biden speaking and planning and plotting all by himself. I’ve said before that although Joe is far more cognitively challenged than he was even just a few years ago, I don’t agree with those who call him senile or who say he’s totally controlled by others and doesn’t even understand what he’s doing. My position on Biden is that he’s fully onboard although he gets befuddled at times, but that the Democrat Party is wholly given over to the same approach. I would be exceedingly surprised if anyone on that side offers any serious dissent to what he said last night. They may not think he should have said it out loud, but they will not denounce it as it should be denounced.

And therein lies the tragic and awful situation in which we find ourselves.

Comments

On Biden’s deplorable speech yesterday: the history of condemning your opponent’s voters — 31 Comments

  1. The senile buffoon came across as demented and delusional (as well as menacing and hateful), and it seems unlikely that any American president has ever given such a disgraceful performance. Jonathan Turley has written that the “speech” (declaring war on half the citizenry) looked as though staged out of the depths of Dante’s Inferno, and some have even spoken of its horror as being demonic and Satanic. At least there exists one vein of dark humor online, the joke being that the “speech” (written by whom?) must have sounded far better in the original German.

  3. While it doesn’t directly contradict your point, it should be noted that Obama made the ‘bitter clingers’ characterization prior to the PA Democratic Presidential Primary, so he wasn’t necessarily talking about Republican voters but likely about Democrats that he couldn’t convince to support him. He struggled to win votes in among working-class white Democrats in the Rust Belt. Clinton went on to win the PA primary in 2008.

    ===
    A political storm is brewing over Sen. Barack Obama’s recent statements. Last Sunday, Obama was explaining his difficulty with winning over working-class voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

    “And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama said.

    The comments were posted Friday on The Huffington Post, creating a wave of criticism from Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. John McCain, and other politicians as the April 22 Pennsylvania primary draws near.

    https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2008/april/obama-they-cling-to-guns-or-religion.html

  4. Who was the audience for this speech?

    Was it the far left? Well, that’s pointless preaching to the choir, right? I mean, they’ve already got their votes locked up… or do they?. I assume the far left want Biden to become more extreme, so perhaps part of the point in all this ridiculous demagoguery is to help shore up the base for November by telling them what they want to hear? Like a coach’s halftime lockeroom speech?

    Or was the audience less extreme elements of the Democrat party, the more mainstream (D) voters? If so, is it persuasive to them to categorize so many of their fellow Americans as basically villians, almost cartoonishly irredeemable monsters? So was all the stagecraft, the grim lighting and the quasi-militeristic atmosphere intended to terrify regular Dem voters somehow?

    Or was the audience the real middle, those soft low information voters who are often persuadable one way or another. If so, how does such a speech resonate with them? Do they truly believe that people who voted for Trump are monsters?

    Or perhaps the real target audience was the very same “MAGA Extremists”? Maybe the hope that by behacing so transparantly antagonistic and creating an oppressive image, making Biden look like some sort of totalitarian dictator, it would fires up some angry extremists to commit violence. And then the Democrats and the Media would have their villians.

  5. Nonapod (3:10 pm) suggests, “Or perhaps the real target audience was the very same ‘MAGA Extremists’?”

    Nonapod, perhaps you’ve not seen many people’s explanation, that Biden-&-cabal are trying to goad the right into overreacting, so that they would now have an excuse to crack down even more on those who dare to disagree with the left-establishment.

  6. Biden’s audience? The party’s brownshirts, who have shown no qualms about destroying portions of cities (Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Portland, Kenosha . . . I’m sure I’ve missed a few) and terrorizing their residents. Now, two months before the midterms, along comes this disgraceful speech, which greenlights (1) Trump’s indictment/arrest and (2) another round of leftist destruction (that is, if the Deplorables should fail to take the bait). Either way:

    demagogic provocation/abuse of state power => violent street theater => martial law => all mail-in voting = a glorious midterm victory for Our Democracy!

    I hope I’m wrong.

  7. It’s been said before, but the isolation of the leftist core among only like minded (or non-like minded and intimidated) people let hatred and fanaticism eventually seem “normal”. I’m old enough to remember segregationists being interviewed in the early 60s and being totally unaware of how awful they sounded.

  8. “My position on Biden is that he’s fully onboard although he gets befuddled at times, but that the Democrat Party is wholly given over to the same approach.” neo

    I’ve come to be persuaded of that position myself. He’s an active participant.

    But the democrat party has indeed crossed the Rubicon, in the sense that they now have openly and without qualification proclaimed themselves to be at war with half of America.

    They mean to destroy our ability to resist and will use whatever means necessary to that end.

    Nothing for them is beyond the pale; violence, false accusations, frameups, bankrupting through legal prosecution, threatening and even harming loved innocents… everything is justified. Had Kavenaugh’s assassin succeeded, upon what basis might we assume he wouldn’t have killed the family as well?

    But speculation is not needed, just look to the torture to which they’ve subjected the imprisoned Jan. 6th protesters, justified through false charges of particular seriousness. Despite video disproving the charges.

    Today it’s save the planet and eliminate racism. Once it was save the sinner’s soul… the mindset is exactly the one shared by history’s inquisitioners. They have their Great Cause, they have their Great White Whale to slay.

  9. After what these clowns–the mainstream media & their Democrat allies–did to the Covington Catholic kids…Nicholas Sandmann in particular–I’ve come to the conclusion they’re capable of doing anything to anyone to achieve power.

  11. It’s true that 1960s negative campaigning focused on the candidate, rather than his supporters, but the intellectuals who commented on the election were extremely derisive about Goldwater or Nixon supporters. As our politics became more “intellectualized” the note of contempt became more prominent. Even during the last Bush presidency, abuse still focused on Bush and Cheney. Harvard Law Obama and Yale Law Hillary Clinton made the jump to reviling the voters, rather than just the candidates, something that academics had been doing for years.

    I do notice that much of the Democrat support comes from organized or privileged groups, activist groups, the media, union leaders, academics, foundation heads, party apparatchiki, rich people who want something from the government. Republicans don’t tend to attack Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Democratic Voter, but given that the activists who make up so much of the Democrat ranks do get attacked by Republicans in every election cycle, it was probably inevitable that they would strike out at Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Republican Voter, especially since the talk about Republican billionaires has become stale and ineffective.

  12. I go with the duality: The already convinced dems can’t be any further convinced. The not-convinced are not-convinced for any number of reasons–each likely has a different combination in the quiver–and aren’t going to be changed by being called names.
    Who’s left? Those not paying attention and I don’t see them starting to pay attention now. Why now? And just because they haven’t been paying attention doesn’t mean this speech is going to be their Grail. Perhaps some or many of them are decent.

    However, among the already-convinced dems are millions who didn’t see the problem with the Floyd riots and similar violence and punching a fascist just got more validated. Question then would be how the response of the punchee is presented. And then there’s the attack from behind with, say, a bike lock in a sock.
    https://www.foxnews.com/us/ex-professor-accused-of-hitting-trump-supporters-with-bike-lock-at-free-speech-rally-in-berkeley-gets-probation

    The “violence” is going to be hitting back in self-defense.

  13. “Lincoln didn’t speak as poorly of the Confederacy as Biden spoke of you last night.” – Twitter comment

  14. This is the kind of speech that can start us down the road to Camps. Where the MAGAns can be sequestered for the ” protection of the majority of the population, from MAGAn violence “.

    While I don’t anticipate a Night of the Long Knives, with Democrats who don’t toe the line being tossed from the party, I would be far from surprised to see Antifa starting out having Kristallnachts, with BLM then taking the opportunity to go shopping.

    Hatred of The Other is a very useful emotion to generate, but a very hard one to stop. I wonder if the firm of Kline, Rice & Jarrett really have any idea what they are creating? Or if they even care?
    I am sure that their clients that they are working for don’t care.

    MAGA must be stopped, at all costs!

  15. Thanks Neo for your analysis.

    I agree it’s a process and planned.

    I see as it really taking off with how the tea party was demonized. And it worked! Tea party as a political force is gone.

  17. This wasn’t a speech, it was a warning. Any thinking person knows that Biden isn’t the president, he is a figurehead of the beureau that offers him power, and that group on the board of governance believe, after the theft of 2020, that they have hit a tipping point and can now engage in the governance that they think is appropriate.

  18. Remember when Romney made the comment (recorded at a find raiser by Jimmy Carter’s grandson) about not being concerned with the 47 percent of voters?

    Boy, did the media have a field day with that comment – totally taking it out of context. Basically accusing Romney of not caring about half of Americans. The reality of his comment was that he was answering a question about his campaigning strategy and that trying to reach those who wouldn’t vote for him anyway would be wasted effort. Not an altogether bad or slanderous comment – just plain ol’ fashioned political campaign strategy. Why waste time and money trying to get votes you won’t get anyway?

    But, with Hillary, Obama, and now Biden’s bad-mouthing voters I hear nothing but crickets from the media. Perhaps it is because those in media don’t see it as bad-mouthing; but, rather, they see it as “speaking the truth”?

  19. In 2005, Howard Dean said at a Democratic fundraiser, said “This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.” Yeesh.

  20. @ Nonapod > “Who was the audience for this speech?”

    Your list is very complete.
    I suggest “all of the above.”
    There was something for everyone in Dark Brandon’s diatribe.

    And walking it back (by outright lying) isn’t going to change anyone’s impression or belief: how many of his fans are even going to see or hear about the exchange with Doocy? Those who do will just go on with what he said the first time because they are used to their leaders lying for strategic purposes.

  22. Biden has always been a partisan and has never been that bright, so I suppose he is completely on board with what he has to say, but his apparent repudiation of the speech’s main idea the very next day makes me wonder just what the heck is going on with him.

  23. He was a soviet tool going back to the 70s this so called moderate so were panetta and kerry

  24. FDR’s attacks on business as well as the rich caused the worst part of the depression as net private investment went negative in 1936 and 1937 (only years during depression).

    FDR was pretty vicious.

  25. [MAGA Repulbicans] look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.

    Joe, your fellow-travelers set the precedent for that, the last week of June 2020 in Washington DC. You thought such unrest – far worse than that on 06 Jan 2021 – to be peechy-keen when they were threatening the White House and other Federal buildings.

    How is that not insurrection, by your definition, Joe?

    https://64.media.tumblr.com/eb3ad1ee60b25526c64c7a3a9bcb7bdb/29b5ac1b596386ee-e2/s640x960/26d36dd3287713686e5810da46ef866bf7771fdf.jpg

  28. FDR’s attacks on business as well as the rich caused the worst part of the depression as net private investment went negative in 1936 and 1937 (only years during depression).

    You’re referring to the contraction experienced in 1937 and 1938. It wasn’t the worst part of the Depression and the competing schools of thought have attributed it to monetary policy changes and or fiscal policy changes.

    The rate at which goods and services were being produced was at its lowest from the summer of 1932 to the spring of 1933. Not attributable to the Roosevelt Administration.

  30. Are the economic conditions in the US in 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 attributable to FDR and his (mal)administration? 🙂

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