For months, the Republicans have been playing down the storm on the Capitol in Washington a year ago – and trying to wash away ex-President Trump with it. President Biden harshly attacks his predecessor in a combative speech.
A year ago the fight for the Capitol in Washington ended with several dead and injured – in the end, the mob incited by ex-President Donald Trump failed to prevent the certification of the presidential elections of November 2020. But the struggle for democracy in the USA is not over yet. Since the events there has been a fight for their interpretation and, as some fear, also for American democracy itself. On the anniversary of the storm on the seat of the American Congress, President Joe Biden made a fiery speech to his compatriots, including Donald Trump attacked unusually hard. The expected long-distance duel with his predecessor was canceled – Trump canceled an appearance planned for the evening at short notice and postponed it to January 16.
“The former president created a web of lies about the 2020 elections,” Biden said without naming Trump. He could not accept that he had lost, although 93 US senators, his own vice president, his own attorney general and several judges, some of whom he appointed himself, recognized the election. “We have to decide what kind of nation we want to be,” said Biden, who spoke at the National Statuary Hall in the Capitol, where the rioters raged a year ago. “Will we be a nation living in the light of truth or in the shadow of lies?” The former president and many Republicans would spread the lie that the real uprising took place on election day. “Is that what you thought when you went to vote?” Asked Biden. The former president is trying to rewrite history.
In the days after the Capitol Tower, it initially looked as if Trump had finally overstepped the curve. Several senior Republicans such as House and Senate majority leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell moved away from him. They saw it as proven that Trump had incited the mob. A few weeks later, when the second impeachment proceedings against the former president were in progress, things looked different again. McCarthy swung back on Trump’s line and with him several Republicans, who almost unanimously voted against a condemnation in the impeachment. They began to play down the events, portray the rioters as patriots and continue to claim that Biden’s election victory was not right. With success: Trump has long since regained control of the Republicans and has the best chance of running again for them.
83 percent are concerned about democracy
At the same time, the Republicans in several states passed reforms that make it more difficult to vote – ostensibly to make fraud more difficult. But it is clear to the Democrats that their poorer, often black voters should be kept away from the polls. The Democrats are waging the struggle for the right to vote in Washington as well; it is one of the major clashes between the parties, and not just since the election. Biden now said to the Americans: “More than 150 million of you voted, more than ever before in American history, during a pandemic, some risked their lives for it. That deserves applause.” But instead of coming up with better ideas at the next election, Republicans said, “The only way is to suppress the vote. That’s wrong, that’s un-American,” Biden said.
According to a survey by the newspaper “USA Today”, 83 percent of Americans are worried about democracy in the country, 51 percent even very strongly – and that across party lines. According to this, 58 percent of Republicans believe that Biden was not legitimately elected. Regarding the Capitol Tower, two-thirds of Trump supporters believe that the rioters went too far, but that they had a real cause. A poll for radio station NPR found that less than half of Republicans accept Biden’s election victory. He left no doubt about how serious the situation appears to him. His Vice President Kamala Harris had also warned against inaction: “We can’t just sit on the sidelines, we have to defend our democracy,” she said.
The President reiterated the arguments as to why the election was clean. This has been checked more closely than any other before, in Georgia alone there have been three recounts. “There is zero evidence that the election result was incorrect,” Biden exclaimed. “The former president never explained why he didn’t contest the other election results that day.” At the same time, the citizens also elected new governors, MPs and senators – with the Republicans celebrating many successes. “Somehow these results are supposed to have been correct, votes on the same ballot paper, on the same day, by the same voters,” said Biden, whose speech in some places amounted to an indictment.
Chance for Biden
It was not unexpected but remarkable that Biden attacked Trump so sharply. Although he never left any doubts about his opinion on Trump and his role a year ago, he was more reserved in public. He won the election with a promise to bring people back together. For a long time it seemed as if he wanted above all to look ahead. For example, he hardly commented on the second impeachment proceedings.
The fact that he found such clear words was appropriate for the occasion – but Biden could also have seen it as an opportunity. Because in the past six months his reputation has suffered. First there was the messed up withdrawal from Afghanistan and new corona waves, as well as the eternal tussle over a large infrastructure package. The Democrats gave a quarreled picture, Biden looked weak, his polls tumbled downwards. One big disappointment was that the gubernatorial elections in Virginia were lost – in a state that Biden had clearly won in the presidential election. Trump as a bogeyman could mobilize his own voters again if his fragile coalition of Bernie Sanders left and conservative Democrats could weld together again. If it stays that way, the vast majority of Americans don’t want to see Trump in the White House again.