Biden's new campaign mode

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September 29, 2023

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

'Democracy is still at risk'

Biden speaks in Tempe, Arizona on Thursday.

It was the week when everyone in Washington had to check it was still September 2023 and not September 2024.

While Republicans won't start to pick their presidential nominee for nearly four months, it feels like the general election -- expected to be a rematch of Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump -- has already started.

Both Trump and Biden showed up in swing state Michigan courting blue collar votes this week. The president also headed west to Arizona, a state he barely won in 2020 and home to fast-expanding suburbs that are transforming the US political map. Biden must draw huge turnout there to win back the White House next year.

After weeks of Democratic handwringing about his reelection chances and an unflattering public debate about his age, Biden slipped into a more aggressive, sarcastic and campaigning mode. He returned to the theme that democracy is under attack -- a slam dunk given Trump's week of autocratic outbursts and demagoguery. He cited public statements of a predecessor who disrupted the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 to warn that US founding values were threatened. "Frankly, these extremists have no idea what the hell they're talking about," Biden said in a speech in Arizona, referring to Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) acolytes. "They're pushing a notion the defeated former president expressed when he was in office and believes applies only to him, and this is a dangerous notion -- that this president's above the law, no limits on power."

Biden was returning to the theme that drove him into the presidential race in 2020 -- that Trump represented an existential threat to the Constitution. He confounded pundits by successfully using the same strategy in the midterm elections in 2022, which helped subvert an expected Republican red wave. By invoking democracy in peril, Biden hopes to pull off a bigger trick --convincing Americans rocked by inflation and high interest rates, who worry about his health through a second term, that the election is about something bigger: "We are at an inflection point in our history," Biden said.

Almost everything that Trump did over the past week played into the president's warning. Continuing a habit that threatens the personal security of his adversaries, he suggested that Gen. Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who stood up for constitutional governance during his final days in office, should have been executed. He warned he'd use a second presidency of "retribution" to try to close down media organizations, specifically MSNBC. In Detroit, Trump accused Biden of trying to mount a government "assassination" of the auto industry by supporting cleaner electric cars.

Yet at the same time, a fresh burst of polling showed that close to a majority of Republican voters still love Trump. The ex-president still speaks for millions of Americans, who see him as voicing their anger with government, media, culture, economic and legal institutions -- and who believe his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump's campaign strategy of presenting indictments against him as examples of political persecution is working among Republican voters, and Biden's warnings about democracy under attack won't change that.

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The world and America

Chinese hackers stole 60,000 emails from senior US State Department officials earlier this year.

The self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabakh will cease to exist from next year after its president signed a decree dissolving state institutions.

And actor Michael Gambon, best known for playing Albus Dumbledore in most of the "Harry Potter" movies, has died at 82.

Meanwhile in America, officials at the Department of Homeland Security are working to determine if a ransomware attack on a contractor has compromised sensitive information.

The Department of Education released a new report recommending strategies for universities to increase diversity after a Supreme Court decision gutted affirmative action.

And the Senate unanimously passed a formal dress code.

'Too neigborly'

Earlier this week, we asked readers to comment on the geopolitical heat radiating north of the border, as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau juggles criticism for parliament's accidental applause of a former Nazi, and anger from India after he alleged government agents were likely involved in the assassination of a Canadian citizen.

Rhonda in Manitoba had a theory for why Canadian lawmakers offered a standing ovation to a 98-year-old former member of the Nazi SS Waffen Grenadier Division (he was introduced to the chamber simply as a Ukrainian veteran).

"The problem here is Canadians don't know their history or the history of Ukraine. This is a failure of our education system. Of note was that every MP in the house rose and clapped when the guest was introduced. Not too impressed with the whole lot trying to act like they are blameless and making the issue an election issue," she wrote.

And Steve in Ontario compared the ongoing stand-off with India -- which originated with intelligence from the Five Eyes security alliance, according to a US ambassador -- to an earlier confrontation between Canada and China.

"Just like the Chinese issue, the US insisted Canada detain the Chinese business exec, then insisted they would have nothing to do with the matter," he wrote. (In 2018, Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver on a US bank fraud warrant, sending relations spiraling. Two Canadians were detained in China shortly thereafter.)

Thanks for reading.

On Friday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier meets with Central Asian leaders in Berlin.

Saturday is the deadline for US lawmakers to reach a spending deal to avoid a government shutdown. Slovakia holds parliamentary elections.

On Sunday, Jimmy Carter, the oldest living former US president, turns 99.

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