BYRON YORK: Biden’s American carnage speech.
That was the conventional campaign part of Biden’s speech. Next came the abortion part. And no, Biden did not say the word “abortion.” Instead, in attacking Republicans, he harkened back to one of the ugliest speeches ever given in American politics — the “Robert Bork’s America” speech given by Biden’s old Democratic Senate colleague, Ted Kennedy, in 1987. Back then, Biden and Kennedy were working to block the Supreme Court nomination of Bork. Kennedy’s speech, delivered as Biden looked on, has become legendary for the sheer number of false charges it contained. Here is an excerpt:
Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens…
It would be hard to equal that, but on Thursday in Philadelphia, Biden tried. He was never the speaker that Kennedy was, and now he is old and slow, but he still managed to evoke the spirit of “Robert Bork’s America” when he said: “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”
It was an old-fashioned Democratic attack ad. It could have come from 1992. But Biden slapped a MAGA label on it and tied it to Trump, even though the issues had been litigated long before Trump ran for president.
The true darkness in Biden’s speech came in his long attacks on Trump and Trump’s supporters, whom he sometimes called “MAGA Republicans” and sometimes called “extreme MAGA Republicans.” In all, the acronym appeared in Biden’s speech 13 times.
“MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution,” Biden said. “They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself. … They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.”
So you’re saying they view the Constitution as a living, fluid document? Liberals Confirm They Hate the Constitution. “Apparently it isn’t ‘living’ enough for the left, so they want to kill it completely.”