Everyone Who Disagrees With Me Is An Extremist Threatening the Very Foundations of our Republic

Reductio ad MAGAdom - 2 August 2022

THEY CHOSE THESE OPTICS: The staging was deliberate, the message was dour, and a deeply divided nation heard President Biden tell them to go ahead, choose sides. Everyone is already digging ideological trenches for a pending national security indictment against the former president. What could possibly go wrong?

Democrats think they can get a midterm bounce out of defending abortion access for, um, well, for people who identify as needing abortions. In fact, reproductive rights issues became an electoral wedge against the right during the last decade but Republicans failed to notice the trend.

As they delete abortion rhetoric and pro-Trump language from their websites now, however, Republicans might consider winning back some of this ground just by naming “women.” It might work a little.

More to the point, though, is the energy of this speech. I am old enough to remember Jimmy Carter’s “malaise,” as well as the landslide election of Ronald Reagan that followed it, and Biden strikes me …