Rarely does a president have the heavy duty of delivering the State of the Union address at a time when America’s union is actually imperiled. There can be no arguing that America in 2024 is not a nation in political crisis.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has been charged with 91 state and federal crimes, among them an effort to invalidate the lawful 2020 election. A full 31 percent of Trump supporters and nearly a quarter of Biden supporters now question whether democracy still works in such a divided country. Meanwhile, lawmakers like Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) pledge to do away with democracy entirely by refusing to certify election results that hurt Republicans.
Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday night didn’t just acknowledge the serious threats to democracy our country faces, he took the fight directly to the Republicans responsible for undermining American faith in our electoral process. That’s the fight Biden hopes will define the 2024 general election. If he’s right, Republicans are in deep trouble.
“January 6th and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War, but they failed,” Biden said. “America stood strong and democracy prevailed. But we must be honest that the threat remains and democracy must be defended.”
Defending democracy is familiar territory for Biden. It was Biden’s decision — over the misjudgment of some of his own senior advisers — to make the 2022 midterm elections a referendum on democracy. At the time, the consultant class panned Biden’s defense of democracy as too ambiguous, too complex for American voters to understand. Stick to kitchen table issues like jobs and the economy, they warned. But Biden’s judgment proved correct, and he successfully short-circuited the GOP’s predicted Senate takeover.
But democracy has seen a remarkable backslide even in just the two years since that election. Donald Trump now openly pledges to wield the presidency as a dictatorial tool to settle his personal political vendettas. At CPAC, the MAGA movement’s biggest organizing event, Trump-aligned speakers now cheer for the end of democracy and a second, successful January 6-style attack on the United States.
Biden’s dire words aren’t rhetoric — American democracy truly is facing a life-and-death struggle.
“As I’ve done ever since being elected to office, I ask you all, without regard to party, to join together and defend our democracy,” Biden shouted in one of the most energetic moments of the evening. “Respect free and fair elections! Restore trust in our institutions! And make clear that political violence has no place in America.”
It’s a struggle many Americans now see as a dangerous new political reality. A Morning Consult/Bipartisan Policy Center poll from August found that 82 percent of voters had serious worries about the state of democracy. A YouGov/CBS News poll from earlier this year found half of voters chose protecting democracy over economic growth, the first time in modern history when American voters have worried more about their fundamental democracy than they have about their wallets.
Republican-led attacks on American democracy are more expansive and calculated than just Trump’s authoritarian promise to overrule the ballot box. As Biden noted, GOP efforts to restrict freedom have taken their most visible form in the ongoing war against reproductive freedom, most notably IVF treatment.
Biden dedicated a sizable chunk of his remarks to highlighting the oppressive horror of Republican efforts to roll back womens’ access to basic reproductive care. It’s an issue even Republicans realize they’ve fumbled and can’t credibly address. Biden isn’t just picking up the ball on reproductive rights — he’s going yard with it.
“Many of you in this Chamber and [Donald Trump] are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom. My God, what freedoms will you take away next?”
With his focus on reproductive freedom, Biden spoke to the growing number of voters, including the 20 percent of pro-choice Republicans, who feel the GOP’s war on abortion has turned into a national disgrace. If Biden can cleave off even a fraction of those voters in close swing states, it will spell sweeping defeat for endangered House Republicans. With GOP leaders flailing to address a boiling voter rebellion on abortion, Biden’s focus is more than just good government. It’s winning politics.
By making his State of the Union a report on America’s battered democracy, Biden is tying his political hopes to voters’ love of freedom. That pitch worked in 2020 and 2022. Biden, Democrats and democracy are all depending on America’s voters hearing Biden’s call one more time.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.