It had been stalled. If we were able to stall long enough for Trump to kick the bucket, I would have called that a win
It hasn’t been stalled considering it got an even bigger win this time. It grew! That’s even worst. But stalled isn’t good either. Destroyed is what you’re looking for, and you ain’t going to get it from the makers of the material conditions that enable fascism to arise.
It was stalled, but then Biden and the rest of the Democrats squandered that opportunity to actually solve the problem. Instead, they delusionally chained themselves to behavioral norms that were dead and gone and kept trying to prop up the neoliberal status quo, while doing pretty much nothing effective to fix the working class’ problems (i.e. the disaffection that led to the fascist demagogue’s success in the first place).
There is no moving the goal post, I asked a simple question, since the premise was the same in 2020, “vote Biden to defeat the rise of fascism”, I’m asking how effective that was. Did it work? Was the rise of fascism stopped? Altered? Slowed down?
One of the reasons Kamala failed was that her central message was crippled from the start. Her main campaign plank was that Trump was a threat to democracy. The problem with this was that Biden didn’t treat him like a threat to democracy.
Trump should have been arrested on day one of Biden’s term. He should have been rapidly tried in a military tribunal, had the book thrown at him, and quickly been convicted. And SCOTUS justices that dared to try to intervene should have been charged as accomplices tried with similar swiftness.
Biden didn’t do that. He appointed a Republican to lead the DOJ. That Republican then sat on his ass for two years, then began a slow investigation, only for Trump to eventually run out the clock.
Biden did not treat Trump like a threat to democracy. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus the last time there was a similarly-scaled threat to democracy. Lincoln ruled like a dictator during the Civil War. He had pro-Southern newspapers, in the North, censored and shut down. He actually showed what you need to do to a true threat to democracy.
True threats to democracy require bold and sometimes quite draconian response. It’s an emergency, democracy is on the line, and drastic action is required.
If you DON’T act with that kind of haste, you show that you don’t actually feel democracy is being threatened that much. Biden proved that he really didn’t believe his own rhetoric. Biden in his heart really doesn’t believe that Trump is a threat to democracy, as he certainly didn’t act like he thought he is.
This is why Kamala’s central campaign message fell flat on his face. There is ZERO reason an incumbent should ever be able to run on a platform of “my opponent tried to steal the last election.” If you’re the incumbent, it was YOUR responsibility to protect the republic from threats against it. If your opponent is truly a threat to the republic, why weren’t they locked up or sent to the gallows a long time ago?
That was the central problem of Kamala’s core message. If someone tries to violently overthrow the government, you are supposed to send the military after them and turn them into a fine mist or turn the justice department on them and see them hanged for treason. You’re not supposed to just let them off the hook and then bitch to the electorate that they’re dangerous and can’t be trusted. And if someone is a true threat to the republic, you shouldn’t even let the Supreme Court get in your way.
