“That’s what’s at stake right now: our democracy.”
President Barack Obama’s Democratic National Convention speech on Wednesday wasn’t just a call to support former Vice President Joe Biden over President Donald Trump this November — it was a warning about the health of American democracy.
Obama, betraying his typically upbeat rhetoric, was very explicit about the stakes, claiming, “I am also asking you to believe in your own ability — to embrace your own responsibility as citizens — to make sure that the basic tenets of our democracy endure. Because that’s what’s at stake right now: our democracy.”
Obama went on to explain:
This president and those in power — those who benefit from keeping things the way they are — they are counting on your cynicism. They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter. That’s how they win. That’s how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That’s how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That’s how a democracy withers, until it’s no democracy at all.
This gets at something many Democrats have worried about since Trump rose to power. It’s not just that they oppose Trump’s policies — although they do — but they worry that Trump is eroding liberal democracy. Between Trump claiming he’s sabotaging the Postal Service to make it harder to vote by mail and Republicans passing new restrictions on voting for years now, there’s certainly evidence to back up those concerns.
Not to mention that Trump won the 2016 election despite losing the popular vote. Trump has argued, contrary to the evidence, that he only lost the popular vote due to voter fraud, and leveraged his phony claim to launch a voter fraud commission that appeared poised to propose further restrictions on voting before it collapsed following a bipartisan backlash from state officials. And Trump has also been criticized for a variety of other actions seen as damaging to democracy, including using his Justice Department to shield himself from investigation and his impeachment for attempting to use US foreign policy to keep himself in power.
Obama put much of the blame for this erosion of norms on Trump. While he said he initially hoped Trump “might show some interest in taking the job seriously,” he argued Trump has treated the presidency as “one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.” He later added, “This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes to win.”
Obama made this point not to call for despair but for unity and action. Citing the historical experiences of minority Americans (ranging from Catholic and Jewish people to Black and Latin Americans), the former president said:
If anyone had a right to believe that this democracy did not work, and could not work, it was those Americans. Our ancestors. They were on the receiving end of a democracy that had fallen short all their lives. They knew how far the daily reality of America strayed from the myth. And yet, instead of giving up, they joined together and said somehow, some way, we are going to make this work. We are going to bring those words, in our founding documents, to life.
Obama offered a solution, building on the examples of the past: People, particularly the young, need to get out and vote in big numbers.
“To the young people who led us this summer, telling us we need to be better — in so many ways, you are this country’s dreams fulfilled,” Obama said. “You can give our democracy new meaning. You can take it to a better place. You’re the missing ingredient — the ones who will decide whether or not America becomes the country that fully lives up to its creed.”
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Author: German Lopez
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