In the three years that have followed the devastating Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, leaders in the United States have learned nothing.
The looming 2024 presidential election serves as a harrowing reminder that President Joe Biden may not win and that the nation may spiral back into violence and disorder during former President Donald Trump’s time in office.
The United States cannot even seriously address critical needs like healthcare, education and societal reform when the fundamental notion of democracy is still at stake.
In a speech delivered in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania last week to address the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Biden fired at Trump for his continued willingness to violate the Constitution to retain power.
As Biden sees the end of his term, his projected worry that Trump could spark more political violence has branded the strength of American democracy as the fundamental question to the upcoming election.
Biden has disappointed many different voting blocs that he was able to count on in the 2020 election. The latest NBC News poll shows that Biden is in tight competition with Trump for young voters ages 18-34, a steep drop from the high margins that set Biden ahead in the last election.
Young voters feel disillusioned with Biden’s tenure in office, given his failure to address climate change, codify Roe v. Wade and cancel student loan debt in its entirety.
However, Biden’s recent most significant loss of support among young people and minority groups centers around his purposeful neglect of the slaughtering of innocent civilians in Gaza, while he vows allegiance to the nation of Israel and authorizes tremendous amounts of military aid.
For many, the vote for Biden no longer feels obligatory. Instead, it is repulsing to back a candidate who supports atrocities. Another national poll conducted by NBC shows that 70% of voters under the age of 35 disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war.
Some voters are pledging to abstain from this presidential election or search for a better third-party candidate to match their beliefs. Jayden Camarena says in an interview with NBC News that if they give their vote to Biden, they will show that what the Democratic Party is putting out is satisfactory, which it is not.
It is devasting that peoples’ futures are on the line again. The strategy in which Biden could harness the American vote in 2020 wasn’t designed to be repeatable, especially not in these bleak circumstances. The President cannot bank on the sake of democracy to save him again.
The threat of a second presidential term under Trump term may have been enough before, but after four years of slowly touting the bare minimum, Biden could not possibly hope for the same level of urgency among his voters — if they turn out to vote in this upcoming presidential election at all.
It is imperative to understand that the system will only work if it gives people a reason to vote. The end of democracy, although both legitimate and frightening, is an overdrawn talking point in the media because it was already wrung out in the last election cycle.
Most Americans have seemed to move on and become heavily desensitized to the deadly seize of the Capitol that just occurred three years ago.
Based on the evidence, the strategy of labeling himself as the better alternative in this horrible game of defense can’t possibly be reused by Biden. Still, it may be all he can do to earn at least a few votes.
