US political leaders from both sides of the aisle on Sunday made their closing arguments to voters two days before the hotly contested midterm elections, with several top Democrats framing the election as a referendum on American democracy.
President Joe Biden accused Republicans of reveling in political violence, saying hundreds of the party’s candidates for state, federal and local office were “election deniers, who say that I did not win the election, even though hundreds of attempts to challenge have all failed, even in Republican courts”.
Biden said that for them, “there are only two outcomes for any election: either they win or they were cheated”.
He said Republicans were willing to condone the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and that, after the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, some in that party made “light of it” or were “making excuses”.
“There’s never been a time in my career where we’ve glorified violence based on a political preference,” Biden said.
The president made the comments as he wrapped up a five-state, four-day campaign tour with a Sunday evening rally at a college in Yonkers, New York, where he championed the Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul. She is locked in a tight race with Lee Zeldin, who is looking to become the state’s first GOP governor since 2006.
Republicans, meanwhile, swung back by saying that they would better address Americans’ economic woes and repeatedly insisted their rivals were ill-equipped to help voters despite Democratic rhetoric that the GOP was to blame for the nation’s political divisiveness.
Trump stayed evasive on a 2024 presidential run, saying, “I will probably have to do it again, but stay tuned”, teasing an event he has with Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, JD Vance, for Monday. “We have a big, big rally. Stay tuned for tomorrow night.”
Trump appeared in Miami late on Sunday in support of Florida’s Republican senator Marco Rubio, who is seeking another term on Tuesday. The former president mocked leftist politicians, promoted his Truth Social platform, and predicted a Republican-controlled Congress would target a number of culture war issues dear to Florida, including critical race theory and LGBTQ rights.
“The stakes are about economics,” the Minnesota Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar said on CNN’s State of the Union. “Every country in the world has been through a hard time coming out of this pandemic.
“The question [that] voters have to ask is: who do you trust to have people on staff who see them, who’s going to stand up for them, social security and Medicare?”
Klobuchar also warned that a shift right could spell danger for the country. She noted that numerous Republican candidates had sowed doubt over the 2020 elections – and said that Trump’s shadow was “looming over” key states.
“These candidates are throwing truth out the window – they’re shattering the rule of law and they’re laughing at political violence,” Klobuchar said. “If you’re a Democrat, independent, or moderate Republican, democracy is on the ballot and it is time to vote for democracy.”
The New Jersey Democratic senator Cory Booker voiced similar sentiments. “There’s a lot on the line and we have to remember after what we saw at January 6, Republican or Democrat, we should be electing people that believe in our democracy, that believe in our traditions, and that ultimately want to unite people and not divide them,” Booker said on ABC’s This Week.
Referring in part to the attack on Pelosi’s husband, he added: “There’s a culture of contempt in this country. You’re seeing election workers getting increased threats. You’re seeing judges getting increased threats. Heck, you’re even seeing members of Congress – as we saw with what happened to Paul Pelosi.
“Something has gone wrong in our country where rising political violence, rising threats are really threatening who we are as a people.”
The South Carolina Democratic congressman Jim Clyburn on Fox News Sunday defended prior comments that the climate in the US had similarities to Germany in the early 1930s. The House majority whip pointed to denying election results and establishing ways that state executives can overturn election results, as well as calling the press “the enemy of the people”.
Clyburn insisted that he didn’t think people were in the wrong if they didn’t vote Democratic. Rather, wrongness involved voting for persons trying to sow skepticism about elections’ validity.
“If they don’t vote against election deniers. If they don’t vote against liars, people who lie, know full well they’re lying, we all know they’re lying,” Clyburn said. “So if they’re lying, they’re denying, they’re trying to delete, they’re trying to nullify votes – vote against that foolishness.”
During a pre-recorded interview that aired on ABC, Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, told voters that his party better represented their economic interests. Youngkin also hit cultural talking points, invoking the bogeyman of rising crime.
“Americans are hurting right now and Republican gubernatorial candidates, because that’s who I’ve been spending a lot of time with, are offering commonsense solutions to these most critical issues,” Youngkin said. “Americans are sitting around their tables in the evening and they’re worried about inflation and they’re worried about crime and they’re worried about their schools and they’re worried about the border.
“Republicans have clearcut commonsense solutions to all of these,” Youngkin also said, without detailing any of those purported solutions.
Both sides’ intensely ideological politicking ahead of Tuesday speaks to a potentially watershed outcome for the nation’s future. The party in control of Congress often loses its majority during midterm elections. So a Republican majority at this point of Joe Biden’s presidency would not be shocking historically speaking.
Any dramatic political shift in the current climate, however, could fan the flames of unrest and pessimism pervading a country that is increasingly divided over issues such as voting, gun control, race, reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights.
And, as political violence and conspiracy theories abound, Trump’s divisive politics might reign supreme once more, especially as he might soon declare his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Regardless of the midterm elections’ outcome, it remains unclear whether politicians will be able to shepherd meaningful legislative solutions to these problems. Major legislation will probably require bipartisan cooperation, which seems unlikely in a bitterly partisan political climate.
On NBC’s Meet The Press, host Chuck Todd asked the Florida Republican senator Rick Scott: “What’s the first bill a Republican Congress sends to the president’s desk that you actually think he would sign?”
Scott did little more than toe the party line, saying: “I think the issue we’ve got to deal with is inflation. We’ve got to figure out how to spend our money wisely, so we don’t continue this inflation. I think we’ve got to do whatever we can to get this crime rate down, so I think we have to look at that. We’ve got to secure the border.”
