Posted on 08/31/2018 12:06:09 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Former VP rejects tribal politics. The president embraces it
ANALYSIS | Two very different speeches by two very different politicians Thursday — made 1,600 miles apart — provide a possible preview of the next presidential campaign.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, went first by feting his longtime friend Sen. John McCain at a memorial service for the late Arizona Republican in Phoenix. Biden spoke about “values, fairness, honesty, dignity, respect,” and McCain’s belief in “giving hate no safe harbor.”
Biden spent much of his eulogy lauding McCain’s willingness to work with Democrats and lamenting America’s us-versus-them tribal politics that in many ways Trump embodies.
“All we do today is attack the oppositions of both parties, their motives — not the substance of their argument,” he said. “This is the mid-’90s. It began to go downhill from there.”
“The last day John was on the Senate floor, what was he fighting to do? He was fighting to restore what you call ‘regular order,’” Biden said. “Just start to treat one another again like we used to.”
[Biden Speaks to McCain’s ‘Ageless’ Code of Duty and Decency]
Listening to the former Delaware senator speak, it was easy to imagine him — should he opt to make his third run for the White House — talking about McCain on the campaign trail as part of a pitch to reject Trump’s brash style and slash-and-burn approach to politics.
“Bottom line was, I think John believed in us. I think he believed in the American people,” Biden said. “I think John’s legacy is going to continue to inspire and challenge generations of leaders as they step forward. ... John McCain’s America is not over. It’s not hyperbole, it’s not over. It’s not closed.”
Different messages
Earlier in the day, Vice President Mike Pence started a speech at an American Legion conference in Minnesota with a tribute to McCain.
Trump started his rally in Evansville, Indiana, by bragging about his 2016 victory.
Biden was at the Phoenix church to talk about a Republican lawmaker.
Trump was in Indiana to talk about a Democratic one, vulnerable Sen. Joe Donnelly. The contrasts in their remarks and styles were crystal clear.
In Phoenix: “My name is Joe Biden. I’m a Democrat. And I loved John McCain.”
Later in Evansville: “He says open up those borders, get them in,” Trump said of Donnelly and migrants. “Donnelly also voted for liberal Obama judges who want to take away your Second Amendment and lots of other things.”
Trump called Donnelly “the worst” and least-effective senator, citing a Center for Effective Lawmaking study. “I have to tell you if that’s what you want representing Indiana, you can have it,” the president said, dismissively tossing the printed article onto the stage. “A vote for … Sleepy Joe is a vote for Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and, who else, Maxine Waters,” he said, referring to the Senate and House Democratic leaders as well as the California Democratic congresswoman with whom he has a running feud.
The tribal era of American politics began before Trump’s emergence as the GOP frontrunner during the 2016 campaign. The former New York real estate tycoon and reality television star was more a product of it than its catalyst.
Biden appears to reject it. But Trump seems to embrace and exploit it, using it as an accelerant to fire up friendly rally audiences and his core supporters across the country.
“The most remarkable thing about the modern Democratic Party is how undemocratic they’ve become,” he told the sometimes-raucous crowd Thursday night. “They’re the old and corrupt globalist ruling class. … They’ll create borders in other countries, but here, open the borders and let them in because [Democrats] don’t care about crime.”
While Biden was speaking to the entire country, Trump largely used the Evansville rally like he often does as such events: to address his base and try to get them energized to turnout in big numbers in November.
“Republicans stand for stopping illegal immigration,” Trump said after contending the other party is indifferent to “massive amounts of crime” he said — without offering evidence — would inevitably be caused by increased immigration rates.
“Democrats want to raise your taxes, we want to lower your taxes. … We want money for your military, they want money for things you wouldn’t believe,” the president said.
Trump made the trek to attack Donnelly, who is in a close race with Republican Mike Braun, and try to score another personal political victory — the president often boasts about his record in congressional races in which he has gotten involved.
He didn’t tell any stories about sitting with Democrats, unlike Biden, who noted he and McCain were chided by their respective caucus leaders in the mid-1990s for sitting beside one another on the Senate floor.
“Joe, it doesn’t look good, you sitting next to John all the time,” Biden said of Democratic leaders. “Same thing was said to John in [his] caucus. … That’s when things began to change for the worse in America in the Senate.”
Trump tactics
The two speeches signaled Trump’s 2020 message likely would be an embrace of win-at-all-costs and tear-down-your-opponent tactics, while Biden’s would focus on a return to bipartisanship based on, as he put it when speaking about McCain, “knowing this project is bigger than yourself.”
And parts of each speech showed how a Trump vs. Biden race would, in many ways, challenge voters to decide just what they want from a president.
“He’d part company with you,” Biden said of McCain, “if you lacked the basic values of decency, respect, knowing this project is bigger than yourself.”
Hours later, Trump said he inherited a Democratic-run country that was “choking with regulation, choking with high taxes,” contending without his 2016 win “you would have seen some real mess.”
But Trump apparently knows well what fuels his popularity with many Republicans and a steady 40 percent of the overall electorate— and his presidency.
“You can call it a revolution if you’d like,” he said with a grin. “And we want to keep it going.”
McCain and hate
Yeah, Joey, he was FULL of it
A mean, vindictive SOB
You’re even a bigger fool than I thought
Biden’s running mate in 2020 will be McCain. That’s my prediction.
They’ll nominate whomever has the required amount “super delegates” bought & paid for. That’s the only reason we are not talking about how badly DJT beat Bernie in 2016...
hahahahahaha.
Thanks 2ndDivisionVet. An illegal alien murders girl in Iowa -- "how dare anyone politicize this?!?" (by the very people who policized it). RINO McCain spends his career swearing at people, threatening them, badmouthing them in the compliant media, and then he or his family make funeral arrangements to continue the behavior -- not a peep from the partisan media shills.
McCain was for fraudulently documented foreigners being exempt from our laws.
Trump is for the citizens and the rule of law.
The Idiot Biden should be their candidate in 2020.
I thought I read that the DNC made changes in the last week or so to keep that from happening again. Some sort of rules change to super delegates.
Let the dead bury their dead.
Meghan?
It’s the DNC, so if they made any changes, I’m sure they still left a backdoor for some slickster to grab the nomination.
McQueeg’s leftist funerally was about giving hate a safe harbor.
Anyone here have the stomach to watch the McCain sendoff, aka Wellstone 2.0? Oh heck, news at six will cover it. The Wellstone event in 2002 was out of control moonbattery.
But that pic of the huge stadium with all those MAGA hats - love it!
Shotgun Joe Biden and his son hunter may have some explaining to do concerning their financial dealings with the Military of China. Hillary is burnt toast.
Convention against speaking ill of the deceased should also apply to overly, Extremely, praising McCain.
McCain blocked POW/MIA illumination legislation along with ‘hero’ John Kerry; signed off /initiated Senate POW/MIA investigation to kill legitimate questioning of whether or not there were HUNDREDS of not returned US Vietnam prisoners.
Supported ObamaCare against the will of the people of the United States just to flip the bird to PDJT; and thereby to the people of the United States who elected him.
Will be only missed/lauded by CNN/WaPO/MSNBC/NYT/PBS ; leftists all.
Biden’s eulogy for McCain was an appalling display of Joe talking about himself. He is such an actor and not a very good one. Phony fool.
Real heroes like my 5th Grade teacher Mr. Lamb, who survived the Bataan Death March never got this kind of praise. Real heroes like my late father who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam never got praise. Real heroes like my 6th Grade teacher Mr. Corbin who saw something that turned his hair white overnight in Vietnam were spat on and called baby killers.
I have no clue who this jerk John T. Bennett is, but he needs to point to a time that a Democrat ever spoke highly of a Republican when he was alive. Now they would speak kindly of McCain as long as he was touting their talking points but if he strayed from them then he was fair game. So I could careless how Biden eulogized John McCain today, because if it serves his party well he will be trashing him tomorrow.
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