President Biden on Friday delivered a ferocious condemnation of Donald J. Trump, his likely 2024 opponent, warning in searing language that the former president had directed an insurrection and would aim to undo the nation’s bedrock democracy if he returned to power.
On the eve of the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters, Mr. Biden framed the coming election as a choice between a candidate devoted to upholding America’s centuries-old ideals and a chaos agent willing to discard them for his personal benefit.
“There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do,” Mr. Biden warned in a speech at a community college not far from Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, where George Washington commanded troops during the Revolutionary War. Exhorting supporters to prepare to vote this fall, he said: “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question is: Who are we?”
In an intensely personal address that at one point nearly led Mr. Biden to curse Mr. Trump by name, the president compared his rival to foreign autocrats who rule by fiat and lies. He said Mr. Trump had failed the basic test of American leaders, to trust the people to choose their elected officials and abide by their decisions.
“We must be clear,” Mr. Biden said. “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.”
As someone with lots of trans and LGBT+ people in my chosen family, it abso-fucking-lutely enough. When the options are compromising and voting for the establishment center-right candidate who will protect those I love and the possibility of a fascist coming to power who wants to destroy them, it’s not even a question on whether it’s good enough.
People have to stop acting like perfect is the opposite of good when the only other alternative is an out of control dumpster fire.
That’s funny, for me as a cishet white middle aged dad without many LGBT+ friends and family but who gives a shit about other people, it is also abso-fucking-lutely enough! Never mind that I like not living in a dictatorship.