President Joe Biden kicked off his 2024 campaign with a powerful speech reminding people that the upcoming race will be one in which democracy —and perhaps more importantly — decency itself will be on the line, and the alternative is unacceptable to this country.

In a highly symbolic setting near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Biden made a furious case against Donald Trump.

The speech marked a transition in Biden’s term in the White House. Biden has been a president who did all he could to unite Americans; don’t expect that to change. But with his recently released powerful campaign ad and new speech, Joe shed the gloves and went straight at Trump and some of Trump’s most abhorrent behavior.
Biden can do so because he represents the polar opposite — decency.

In the speech itself (see below), Biden said, “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.” This he said from the secularly sacred ground at Gettysburg.

In perhaps Biden’s most powerful argument, the President highlighted that a Trump campaign is focused on the past: “I am your vengeance,” Trump has said, versus Joe Biden, always looking ahead to better days.

“Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice democracy to put himself in power.”

The willingness to sacrifice democracy might be the key argument going into 2024 because we all saw what happened on January 6th, and we’ve seen the consequences in a ruling like Dodds, overturning Roe v. Wade – a ruling that went beyond the question asked in the case!

Joe was nowhere near done. He threw a metaphorical spear through Trump’s heart, knowing the exact word that Trump most fears:

“The legal path just took Trump back to the truth. That I’d won the election and he was a loser.”

In Trump’s black and white world, being called out as embodying a “loser” is utterly devastating. But Biden still wasn’t done. He wanted to nail home that Trump was a loser on historic levels, levels the nation may have forgotten

“Trump lost 60 court cases — 60. Trump lost the Republican-controlled states, Trump lost before a Trump-appointed judge and then judges. And Trump lost before the United States Supreme Court. All of them. He lost. Trump lost recount after recount after recount and state after state.”

TRUMP LOST. It is a critical message in this campaign, not because it looks back but because it looks ahead! If Trump were ever to maintain power ahead, don’t expect judgments based on facts or even those in favor of the nation as a whole. Except them in favor of Trump.

But the President wanted his personal accusations against Trump finally aired and used Nancy Pelosi’s husband as a prime example:

“He talks about an intruder, whipped up by the big Trump lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi’s skull, echoing the very same words used on Jan. 6, ‘Where’s Nancy?’ And he thinks that’s funny, he laughed about it. What a…I think it’s despicable, seriously, not just for a president, for any person to say.”

This is Biden at his finest. His speech is presented below, and then we conclude with Trump’s response:

It is awful that it took another tragedy to bring it out, but the normalcy — indeed, the loving part — of Joe Biden is used as nothing more than a comment sense argument against Trump’s unending inhumanity. Biden lays it out: “Are these the words of a normal person, never mind a U.S. President? One who glories and mocks a violent attack against a political foe.”

Trump, of course, responded in a typically juvenile — but also hateful — brand of power as he put this all on a pre-determined infirmary:

“The Democrats rigged the last election, and they are trying it again…but it won’t work because they have shown how bad and incompetent they are. This is not a time for us to have a mentally challenged president.”

Obviously, at no point in this country’s history has the nation needed a more level-headed, mature, but concisely adult president.

Trump’s comments set off a wave of counter-statements, all of which slammed Trump for his selfishness and self-serving comments, from critics of the former president — who include an MSNBC columnist who accused Trump of being mentally ill, with some GOP hardliners in total agreement.

Republicans close to his former administration, including former Attorney General Bill Barr and The Lincoln Project, agree. Trump has lost his grip on reality.

It makes Trump especially dangerous. Obviously, most if us have long known of the danger Trump represents. This is nothing new.

What is new is that President Biden has gone on a full-force attack against these trends and is now pushing back hard against the man himself. It opens a new front in the battle for democracy.

Biden on George Washington: "By the way, when he got elected, he could've stayed for 2, 3, 4, 5 terms, until he died. But that wasn't the American he and the troops at Valley Forge fought for. pic.twitter.com/hp0aZG3KLe

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 5, 2024

Biden winds down his speech in Pennsylvania: "We don't walk around as victims. We take charge of our destiny … none of you believe America is failing. We know America is winning. That's American patriotism … we all know who Donald Trump is. The question is, who are we?" pic.twitter.com/yUDHaKqMky

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 5, 2024

Valley Forge is not a new front, but it’s a powerful reminder of the old front in an old fight made new again.

It is hard to think of a better leader, another Lincoln, than Joe Biden, who has nothing personal on the line.

Only a nation he’s trying to save, much like Lincoln.

I can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com and on “X” @JasonMiciak.