But Thursday’s extraordinary speeches by two presidents, whose legacies will be intertwined forever, suddenly underlined how this election, in the words of the quadrennial cliche, will truly be the most important of our lives.
Obama’s praise was not just his most public intervention in the 2020 campaign or his most passionate denunciation of a successor whose top priority is to eradicate Obama’s achievements at home and abroad.
The speech, from the church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, also represented Obama’s crudest, most explicit and unrestricted burden on race on a prominent public stage throughout his political career.
In his 2008 campaign, he spoke powerfully about racial prejudice while trying to heal national wounds, and saved his campaign when pressured about his association with controversial reverend Jeremiah Wright. And he shared an intimate part of his own experiences and spirituality by explaining to the country why African Americans were upset by the acquittal in the Trayvon Martin shooting and breaking into “Amazing Grace” while praising parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina, Church hit by a mass shooting in 2015.
But Obama’s speech to Lewis was urgent and in the tone of an activist, not a healer or an optimist who once declared that “there is no black America” or “white America.”
It revealed a confrontation between the nation’s first black president and the one who has become famous with a racist “birth” campaign against Obama and running for reelection wrapped in the Confederate flag and defending monuments to the generals of the Civil War that they fought to preserve slavery.
Obama also offered the most salient explanation so far of the racial awakening after George Floyd’s death with a policeman’s knee to his neck at a time when Trump is trying to incite a backlash from white protests by painting. to the United States as in the grip of a wave of left “fascism” and “terrorists”.
While Obama’s speech offered liberals the kind of inspiration they have lacked since he left office, his reappearance could also serve to encourage voters who saw Trump as a vehicle for their backlash against the Obama presidency. There are already complaints on conservative Twitter that Obama hijacked the funeral to stage a divisive political speech, an ironic view considering Lewis’s life story.
Meanwhile, Trump did not travel to honor Lewis, a man he once denounced as “talk, talk, talk, don’t act.” But two other former presidents chose their side of the story: Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton also spoke in the service.
The tweet that echoed around the world
The day began when Trump raised the idea of delaying the election and recycling the lie that voting by mail is prone to massive fraud, in a tweet that almost everyone who followed his presidency expected.
Obama, praising Lewis, a civil rights hero who was beaten to the brink of death while securing the voting rights of African-Americans, then placed Trump directly in the lineage of old deep south fanatics, a movement Incredibly explicit that it marked Trump’s campaign against race. A direct threat to the Republic.
“Bull Connor may be gone. But today we are witnessing with our own eyes of police officers kneeling on the neck of American blacks,” Obama said, in statements that belied the caution about the race that he had primarily observed while in the charge and identified synergy between civilians. human rights and the Black Lives Matter movement.
“George Wallace may be gone. But we can witness our federal government sending officers to use tear gas and batons against peaceful protesters,” Obama said, in a clear reference to Trump’s “law and order” scaremongering.
“We may no longer have to guess the amount of jelly beans in a jar to cast a vote. But even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing everything they can to discourage people from voting, closing polling places and attacking minorities and students with restrictive identification laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, including undermining the Postal Service on the run. even an election that will depend on the ballots sent by mail so that people don’t get sick. “
“And if all of this requires removing the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, to secure the rights God gives to every American, then that’s what we should do.”
‘All ballots are missing’
Less than three hours later, Trump entered the White House meeting room and again denounced the ballots by mail. He also backed down and told reporters that he did not want to delay the elections.
“But I don’t want to have to wait three months to find out that the ballots are missing,” he said. “Smart people know that,” said Trump. “Stupid people may not know it. Some people don’t want to talk about it.”
The president’s previous tweet was denounced by many Republican lawmakers who understand that Congress, not the president, sets election days.
The tweet was a clear attempt to limit attention to Thursday’s gruesome new data that showed a staggering 32.9% annualized contraction in the economy in the second quarter amid coronavirus closings, the worst decline in history.
That he chose to escalate his claims to another on the morning of the funeral for the Georgia Democrat who dedicated his life to expanding the franchise was highly ironic.
The president’s intention is not difficult to measure. He has been trying to create an option to save her face if she loses her effort for a second term. But his tactics risk causing deep and lasting damage to the American political system. Trust in elections is the essential foundation of any democracy. An election that he lost but that his supporters consider illegitimate could also energize the conservative base and ruin the hopes of a new president to restore national unity and a successful administration.
Still, it’s also possible that Trump’s rhetoric on Thursday, which again underscored blatant authoritarian impulses throughout his time in office, could further alienate more moderate unaffiliated voters.
‘We don’t walk alone’
Thursday’s extraordinary political theater took place in a context of death and illness. More than 151,000 Americans have died in a pandemic that Trump first ignored, then politicized and mismanaged. In his appearance at the White House, the president gloated over the Covid-19 outbreaks in foreign countries that did a much better job than he did of suppressing the first wave of infection.
It was another day when Trump’s approach differed markedly from the decorum and seriousness shown by former presidents.
“The virus was said to be under control, but new cases have increased significantly again. So when you think someone is fine, sometimes you have to make your decision on that. You have to keep your statements,” Trump said.
“Since the beginning of June, daily new cases have increased by a factor of 14 times in Israel, 35 times, or 35 times, in Japan and almost 30 times in Australia, just to name a few,” he added.
The president’s comments were surprisingly misleading. The nations he mentioned had a much lower incidence of the disease than the United States and took much more proactive steps to suppress the infection curve.
The United States, despite having only 4% of the world’s population, accounts for around 25% of global coronavirus infections and has the highest number of deaths.
As the number of daily deaths rose once again to 1,000 on Thursday, Trump again made very misleading claims about a rapid rebound and a rapid decline in cases in Sun Belt states that are enduring a dire crisis.
Meanwhile, Obama argued that Lewis’s life lesson was that politics was the job of overcoming complacency and fear.
“That is where true courage comes from. Not facing each other, but turning towards each other. Not sowing hatred and division, but spreading love and truth. Not avoiding our responsibilities to create a better America. and a better world. But by accepting those responsibilities with joy and perseverance and discovering that in our beloved community, we do not walk alone, “he said.
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