Joe Biden, Democrats, and voting rights advocates have cautioned for months about GOP attacks on the democratic process. As they renewed their push for legislation in recent weeks—and especially as it became clear that said legislation would fail along with their hopes of filibuster reform—their warnings have grown even starker. In the president’s words during a speech in Atlanta last week, lawmakers were at a “turning point in this nation’s history”: If voting rights legislation prevailed, democracy could be “protected” against backsliding. If it didn’t, Donald Trump and his allies may be able to “turn the will of the voters into a mere suggestion—something states can respect or ignore.”
Biden’s remarks were notable not only for their appeals to history, in which he discussed current Republican lawmakers in the same breath as George Wallace. They were also notable for how explicitly he spoke of the future that sits just on the other side of these legislative battles. It’s a future difficult for Americans who may take democracy as a given to imagine, as Biden seemed to acknowledge in the address when he twice vowed this was “not hyperbole.” But it’s a fine line to walk: How to be clear-eyed about the threats to America’s embattled systems and institutions without feeding into the very distrust that has allowed Trump and the Republicans to erode them?
Biden tried to strike that balance again Wednesday, as he took questions from reporters during a marathon solo press conference at the White House to reflect on his first year in office. While discussing voting rights legislation—which went on to fail in the Senate that evening, as expected—Biden was asked to take his warnings about the GOP attacks on voting and elections to their logical conclusion: “If this isn’t passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?”
Biden was equivocal. “Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election,” he said, expressing hope that voters of color and others who could be most impacted by the laws will “defy” obstacles to the ballot, as they did in 2020, which saw record turnout in the midst of a pandemic. “But it’s going to be difficult,” he acknowledged. “I make no bones about that. It’s going to be difficult. But we’re not there yet.”
Pressed to clarify later, Biden was more direct. “Oh, yeah, I think it easily could be illegitimate,” he said, invoking Trump’s efforts to get his vice president, Mike Pence, to toss state electors in 2020 and the prospect of bogus “recounts” like the one Arizona ran on behalf of Trump after his loss. “I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,” Biden said. “The increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.”
To some extent, this was the mostly unspoken concern among Democrats about what the GOP’s moves could mean: If they make it harder to vote and install Trump loyalists to oversee the process, that process could be compromised. But it’s nevertheless striking to hear a president not named Donald Trump express a lack of confidence in the election process—and it’s possible that it could hurt his own cause. “We can’t pretend there isn’t an effort right now on the state level to make it tougher to vote in 2022 than it was in 2020,” as CNN’s Jake Tapper put it. “That being said, if we are now saying that any election like that is an illegitimate election, then point me to one American election that’s been legitimate.”
To be clear: There’s a difference between Donald Trump manufacturing conspiracy theories about a “rigged” election and widespread “fraud” and Joe Biden combating efforts to use those conspiracy theories to actually subvert the process. Trump has never come close to proving any of his claims, which he began promulgating before a ballot was even cast. He and his allies, though, have unquestionably taken action to undermine the system. Pressuring an election official to “find” him enough votes to win. Trying to stop the certification of his opponent’s win, including by helping to incite a violent insurrection. Enacting draconian voting restrictions. Trying to exert control over the election process. Biden is not making these threats up. These incursions are actually happening, and they will have real world consequences. “I’m absolutely concerned about that,” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn told CNN Thursday morning, defending Biden’s remarks.
The question here, though, concerns degree. It’s one thing to diagnose America’s ailing democracy. It’s another to suggest the disease of Trumpism is terminal. Biden didn’t quite do that on Wednesday; he expressed optimism that voter protections could still be enacted and that the process would prevail even if they weren’t, and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made a point in a Fox News interview on Thursday to distinguish between the president “making a prediction” that the 2022 results would be illegitimate and him making a “commitment” to keep them from being so. “If there’s an effort to [overthrow the outcome,” Psaki told the network, “we’ve got to fight against that.”
But Biden’s ability to fight for the integrity of the process relies, to some extent, on widespread buy-in that it still has integrity to defend—that there’s something there to save. That doesn’t mean he should pull punches, as he’s done in the past, or regard the situation through rose-tinted glasses, as Democrats have a long history of doing. It may be unusual to hear a president express anything but total confidence in the resilience of the American system, but these are also unusual times, and they must be reckoned with as such. The challenge is doing that without contributing to the atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism that Trump capitalized on in the first place and is counting on in 2022 and beyond.
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