Biden’s Post-Election Pep Talk Was Pathetic

By Norman Solomon, The Hill

After years of serving as enablers for a faltering President Joe Biden, Democrats in Congress must finally break away from his leadership — for the sake of their party and the survival of democracy in this country.

Donald Trump, the man whom Gen. Mark Milley called “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country,” does not deserve to have the blue carpet rolled out for him at the White House. Yet such hospitality was key to Biden’s message in his Rose Garden speech on Thursday.

It’s one thing to pledge to “ensure a peaceful and orderly transition,” as Biden did. It’s quite another to proceed as though this is a normal transition and a normal incoming president.

Instead of rising to the historical moment with clarity about the grave and imminent challenges ahead, Biden opted for ominous silence about the clear and present danger to the republic that America will face beginning Jan. 20, 2025.

To the tens of millions of Americans who are deeply alarmed about the future of this country under a second Trump administration, Biden offered only some of his usual aphorisms, along with vague pep-talk phrases like “setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable.”

When Biden assured the nation that “we’re going to be okay,” the statement failed to live up to his responsibilities as someone who took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

That Constitution is now under dire threat. But you wouldn’t know it from what Biden had to say. Instead, what screamed out were his silences, as though the well-founded and widespread worries about Trump’s fascistic qualities are no longer of great moment.