{"id":5901,"date":"2022-09-07T09:26:24","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T13:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=5901"},"modified":"2023-07-13T11:24:19","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T15:24:19","slug":"a-distinction-with-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2022\/09\/07\/a-distinction-with-a-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"A Distinction with a Difference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the Mail<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Oddly enough, I receive a great deal of \u201cright-wing\u201d email.  I\u2019m sure in my quest to try to understand \u201cthe other side\u201d, my address landed on a saleable list.  Now I hear from Hillsdale College and Praeger University (one a real school, one a right-wing training site).  I get plaintive fundraising requests from Marco Rubio, Korey Lake and even JD Vance. And I also get mail from several \u201cnews\u201d websites, carefully taking pieces of mainstream news and crafting it to their message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read a lot of it, because I do think it\u2019s important to hear what they have to say.  And what they are saying about President Joe Biden is telling.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure there are the insults:  old, demented, addled.  Those often conflict with the \u201ccrafty, old liberal\u201d message, though they call Biden a \u201cpuppet\u201d of his far-left backers.  Puppets don\u2019t have to understand what they\u2019re saying.  I guess they haven\u2019t heard from the real far-left powers, who are almost as disgruntled with Biden as they are.   So, no matter how they spin it, Biden is \u201cbaaaaad\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mirror Images<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

And with the President now being up-front and honest with his concerns for the survival of our Democracy, my \u201cright-wing\u201d sources are singing a common hymn.  They claim it\u2019s all just politics, Democrats versus Republicans.  They\u2019ve been calling Democrats radical-left-wing-socialists for so long, they simply see the President in the mirror.  They say he\u2019s calling \u201cthem\u201d semi-fascist authoritarians, and he\u2019s insulting every single one of the 74,224,319 voters who chose Trump over Biden in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a common political tactic:  paint your opposition with a \u201cbroad brush\u201d, and include as many on \u201cyour side\u201d as you can.  Convince every single Republican that Biden is talking about THEM:  THEY are fascist authoritarians.  And if they don\u2019t quite get what that means (Trump loves the uneducated), think Hitler.  He\u2019s calling you Nazis.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They know that message can work.  When Hillary Clinton used the unfortunate term \u201cdeplorables\u201d to describe some of the Trump supporters, the right-wing used it as a wedge to drive the voters apart and to the polls.  If deplorable worked, semi-fascist authoritarian might work even better.  The fact that Clinton was describing the folks we now identify as the Proud Boys, or the Oath Takers, or the Three Percenters,  didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Damaging Democracy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Of course, that\u2019s not what Biden\u2019s doing at all.  He\u2019s saying that those Republicans who are denying the results of the 2020 election, claiming out of thin air that the election was rigged, are damaging American democracy. He\u2019s saying that those who look at all of our institutions:  boards of elections, Secretaries of State, local, state and Federal courts; and say they are all complicit in \u201cthe steal\u201d have already undermined our nation.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s message is actually pretty simple:  if elections don\u2019t work, then democracy can\u2019t exist.  If the only answer to losing election is violence, then the American Constitutional experiment cannot survive.  That is the existential threat.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that would have been true had Hillary Clinton lead a mirror-image \u201cStop the Steal\u201d movement in 2016.  It\u2019s not that we didn\u2019t think about it.  There are many who started down that \u201crabbit-hole\u201d in the years after 2016.  I wrote three essays about it:  77744<\/a>,  Put on My Foil Hat<\/a>, and Foil Hat II<\/a>.  But Democratic leaders, and particularly Hillary Clinton herself, saw it as their political duty to accept the results and move on.  They didn\u2019t question the election, instead, they worked to win the next ones in 2018 and 2020.  And they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Difference<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So when President Biden calls for \u201cMAGA Republicans\u201d to stop, he is really calling on almost all of the Republican leaders who have conceded to Donald Trump.  Where is their \u201cpolitical duty\u201d, their obligation, to protect the Constitution?  Biden isn\u2019t \u201cblaming\u201d all 74,224,319 voters who chose Trump.  He is attacking those who attack our Constitutional democracy by undermining it for their own political gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are deplorable.  They subvert faith in our democracy and our institutions.  And they are willing to use mob violence to achieve their own political ends.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s who Biden is calling out.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s the distinction between \u201cRepublicans\u201d (what the MAGA crew would call \u201cRINO\u2019s\u201d) and \u201cMAGA Republicans\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s a distinction with a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Mail Oddly enough, I receive a great deal of \u201cright-wing\u201d email.  I\u2019m sure in my quest to try to understand \u201cthe other side\u201d, my address landed on a saleable list.  Now I hear from Hillsdale College and Praeger University (one a real school, one a right-wing training site).  I get plaintive fundraising requests from Marco Rubio, … Continue reading “A Distinction with a Difference”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA Distinction with a Difference : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The President of the United States is making a distinction between "MAGA Republicans" and Republicans. 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