What Biden Should Have Said About Election Legitimacy
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- President Joe Biden held a nearly two-hour press conference on Wednesday to mark the end of his first year of the presidency.
He botched his discussion of Russia and Ukraine, requiring a clarification from the White House later, but I tend to agree with Slate’s Fred Kaplan that it was a blunder that’s unlikely to have consequences. He did the spinning that presidents do, pointing out his administration’s accomplishments and other good things that happened, implying, sometimes by stretching facts but never stooping to the routine falsehoods his predecessor used, that the president was responsible for those good things.
He blamed inadequate communications, not policy, for any public opinion problems he or his programs have. Probably the most memorable thing about the session was how long it ran, easily topping the longest from Presidents Barack Obama or Donald Trump.
Perhaps the most interesting answers were to questions about the 2022 elections and the efforts by some states to narrow voting eligibility and give partisans more power to affect vote counting.
Q: Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn’t passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?
Biden: 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 …
And then a follow-up:
Q: I just wanted to clarify: A moment ago, you were asked whether or not you believed that we would have free and fair elections in 2022 if some of these state legislatures reformed their voting protocols. You said that it depends. Do you — do you think that they would in any way be illegitimate?
Biden: Oh, yeah, I think it easily could be — be illegitimate.
Imagine — imagine if, in fact, Trump has succeeded in convincing Pence to not count the votes.
Q: Well, I —
Biden: Imagine if —
Go on.
Q: In regard to 2022, sir — the midterm elections.
Biden: Oh, 2022. I mean, imagine if those attempts to say that the count was not legit. “You have to recount it and we’re not going to count — we’re going to discard the following votes.”
I mean, sure, but — I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit. It’s — the increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these — these reforms passed.
Biden immediately took criticism from several Republicans and from journalists, with Senator Mitt Romney of Utah accusing him of following “the same path that Donald Trump went down, which is attempting to delegitimize an election.”
The first thing to say is that, no, this is nothing like Trump, who has repeatedly lied about election fraud in virtually every election he’s ever talked about, including those he won. The second thing is that the standard had better be higher than just being less irresponsible than Trump.
Biden chose his words poorly. What he got most wrong is that he assumed a context he didn’t bother to explain, which meant he missed an opportunity to educate anyone interested in learning.
Biden should have responded by proclaiming that he will never raise questions of fraud or illegitimacy without hard evidence. He could have reminded everyone that he had attended the inauguration of quite a few Republican presidents, including two who won very close elections, and accepted the results every time. He could have said that he hoped that every election is free and fair, and that he’ll do everything possible to see that they are.
Biden also could remind people that he’s old enough to remember the days before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, when elections in many states were not free or fair or legitimate; that it was one of the great achievements of both parties to correct that injustice; that he’s especially proud of his Democratic Party, which was once the main source of undermining electoral democracy but had done the hard work of reforming people or removing them if they would not reform.
He could explain that Supreme Court decisions had subsequently gutted the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and that without enforcement, there’s no way to prevent new laws that chip away at fully legitimate elections, a little here and a little there — and that new laws in several states, passed after the Supreme Court acted, have started that dangerous process in motion.
He could further explain that one group of Republicans has declared war on the patriotic Republicans who administered elections properly in 2020, and that if that war succeeds there’s a serious danger of manipulated results in the future instead of the excellent record the U.S. has finally achieved in holding elections. And that on top of all of that, election procedures need to be updated for the modern world — in states governed by Republicans and in states governed by Democrats — so that the government doesn’t erect unnecessary barriers between citizens and the ballot box.
Biden could have pointed out that we’ve seen democracies erode around the world, and declared that he won’t stand for it here. He could have described how the bills he’s supporting in Congress — which were defeated in the Senate by filibuster later on Wednesday — were designed to ensure that no one in this nation will ever have reason to doubt that elections are free and fair. And he could have challenged Republicans who disagree with the ideas that Democrats have proposed to present alternative ways to restore the full power of the Voting Rights Act, a law their party has proudly supported in the past and that congressional Republicans voted for overwhelmingly as recently as 2006.
Instead, Biden just jumped to the potential problems with future elections, delivered in an accusatory way. I don’t think he undermined trust in those elections — certainly not as much as those who are passing restrictive laws or harassing and purging honest election administrators. But that doesn’t make it a good answer.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
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