That Was A Pretty Damned Good Speech

LIVE: President Biden and VP Harris speak on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. https://t.co/JYdGSvs4Qe

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 6, 2022

I was listening to Biden lay into Trump (very satisfying, and very necessary; two very different conditions, even if Maura Liasson's immediate response was that Biden was engaged in a "fool's errand" because 1/3rd of the country accepts Trump's "Big Lie." She didn't bring that up again.), and I reflected on the oratory of Barack Obama.  I thought of it first listening to VP Harris, who is hardly the most dynamic orator (most politicians aren't very good at it, either).  Biden was dynamic if only in contrast, but neither rose to the heights of Obama.  But for all his rhetoric and oratorical skills, what did Obama accomplish?  No VRA (Holder v. Shelby was handed down in 2013), and his 8 years were followed by Trump, who we are still talking about.  So oratory is not the be all and end all of being an office holder.

Biden did deliver a "fiery" speech, all the more powerful because he waited almost a year (he hasn't been POTUS for a full year yet) and because he's Uncle Grandpa tellin' you just how the cow at the cabbage.  Biden has earned a certained civil moral authority that Obama really just pretended to (I'm less and less impressed with Obama's professions of Christian faith the further he gets from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church), a moral authority grounded in his years in public office and his Roman Catholic/Christian faith.  Biden cut loose on Trump, pulling no punches in calling him the "defeated" President (a personal slight against Trump as well as a necessary descriptor for those who still insist Trump won) and laying the blame for the riot a year ago today at the feet of Trump.  He stopped short of identifying the web of conspiracies hinted at in the information released by the Select Committee, but he made it clear to all listening that Trump wanted what happened on January 6, 2021, to happen.  He pointed out Trump began sowing doubt about the election before any ballots were even cast; he noted that Republicans up and down the ballot, save for Trump, won elections fair and square, and how does it work that only Trump was the victim of a vast and secretive conspiracy?  He went after Trump in clear, articulate language, without bothering with minutiae and arguable details, and he said democracy in America was both fragile and at an "inflection point," but that it would previal if "we the people" wanted it to be.

It almost too bad Trump canceled his press conference today, so he could lose again when nobody really cared what the whiny loser had to say, especially since it's no different from what he's been saying for almost 2 years.

Into the silence and the blather and the hand-wringing and the screeches of on-line Cassandras the President of the United States has spoken loudly, clearly, firmly, and resolutely, and done it at the right time from the right place on the right subject.

Yeah; that was a pretty damned good speech.