Republicans continue to be befuddled by the success of President Biden. Democrats reaped great success in the last three national elections: 2018, 2020 and 2022. The previous Republican president, on the other hand, recently said the Constitution should be nullified so he can be re-installed as president after the election he lost. Embarrassed Republicans take days pondering whether they should defend the United States Constitution against former President Trump.
Welcome to the presidential campaign of 2024!
In 1984, President Reagan ran for reelection with an ad titled “Morning in America” about economic revival. In 2024, President Biden could run for reelection with an ad championing the jobs created on his watch and the legislative successes he achieved in the first two years of his presidency. Biden and Democrats, and those Republicans who act in a bipartisan manner, will prosper politically. Republicans who obstruct will suffer the fate of Republicans in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
Biden, in ways Trump never did, serves in the presidency to lift and unify the nation. He works to heal the wounds created during the Trump presidency, to protect the nation by ending the massive waves of death from the most deadly disease in a century. He seeks a genuine bipartisanship between the legislative and executive branches of government, to restore the unity of the democratic alliance of nations that his predecessor mocked and ripped asunder.
I would flatly assert that former Presidents Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman and others would stand shoulder to shoulder, proudly, with Joe Biden for bringing a morning in America to the alliance of free and democratic nations.
And they, and others, would all be angry, appalled and disgusted by how Biden’s predecessor demeaned, ridiculed and divided the NATO alliance of free nations.
We can read the headlines in the newspapers, the stories on TV, and the opinions on the blogs and see that Biden, far more than any Republican in leadership, has always sought a genuine bipartisan spirit.
Today it is easy to witness Biden reaching out to Republicans, with all Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate reaching back. But which Republican leader in the House of Representatives is extending an olive branch of bipartisanship on any major issue?
Have House Republicans learned why they did so poorly in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections when they do little more than tell Americans which Democrats they should hate, and who they should investigate, in the hyperpartisan inquisitions they promise beginning in January?
When Biden seeks a morning in America, he seeks an America where election officials are not threatened or physically attacked; where losing candidates don’t deny they lost with never-ending falsehoods; where bigots who deny the Holocaust or preach hatred against various groups are not courted like valued power brokers at the dinner table of a former president.
Biden offers, with a real track record of success, what a significant majority of Americans want: a better standard of living. His style is to share credit for what has worked with those who deserve credit, while working to take his successes to the next level. He directly challenges those who obstruct measures that would lift the lives of Americans while offering nothing credible themselves.
Americans want what Biden seeks, a “Morning in America” of proud and prosperous patriots, working together for the common good — for all Americans.
Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the House of Representatives.