Biden, Harris Welcome 'Fascist' Trump

They were just kidding about all the dictator stuff

“We will have a peaceful transfer of power in America,” the White House said today. “We accept the choice the country made,” President Biden offered.

“Earlier today, I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory,” Kamala Harris said in her concession speech yesterday.

What happened to the existential threat to democracy? What happened to all of the fascism talk, to the warnings about Trump’s authoritarian streak, to the talk of him as a dictator, hellbent on exacting revenge?

Not a peep. 

Instead, the losers want everything to be very civil and proper. It is so fitting that even in abject defeat, these norms humpers can’t help but get one last thrust in.

Kamala Harris in her concession speech did not just concede the election. She also admitted that she doesn’t really believe Donald Trump is a “fascist” — the term she used to describe him in the days before the election. Harris emphasized that she congratulated Trump. “We will help him and his team with their transition and … we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power,” she pledged.

That is not how you talk about a fascist, about a man that was compared to Adolf Hitler. Can you imagine in 1933, when Hitler was appointed Chancellor to lead the Nazi Party, that his opponents would hail it as a victory for democracy and congratulate him?

Here’s what Harris said in her concession speech:

“Now, I know folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now. I get it, but we must accept the results of this election.”

I wonder where “folks” got those emotions? In the days before the election, Harris called Trump a “wannabe dictator” and “petty tyrant.” Could that have stirred up some feelings?

“[There] is a legitimate fear…he [Trump] will not obey an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Harris said.

Even by the standards of today’s national politics, the cynicism is astounding. It’s as if Harris is saying: Come on now, you didn’t actually believe that whole fascism routine, did you? 

In fairness, why should they have any shame about this? Biden retires to his sad corner. Harris gets to go back to being Vice President, write a multimillion dollar book and become a darling of the MSNBC circuit. The only blame I’ve seen the DNC assign is to Senator Bernie Sanders, who warned that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the working class. DNC Chair Jaime Harrison called Sanders’ remark “straight up BS.” (Harrison has since announced he won’t seek another term, so perhaps he’ll return to his previous job lobbying for Bank of America, Lockheed Martin, Wells Fargo, Boeing, BP, and so on.) 

The over $1.5 billion the Harris campaign raised got the consultants paid. They may have traumatized millions of voters by losing an election they spent the past year telling them would culminate in fascism, but they get paid either way. Everyone goes home in a limo. Except the voters.

We’re already hearing talk of 2028, the assumption of course being that Herr Trump will serve his term and the system will continue to hum along.

Ana Kasparian

, commentator of the progressive news show The Young Turks (and my former coworker) got dragged by the progressive left recently for saying she didn’t think Trump is a fascist  — while also stressing “I don’t support Trump.”

Now it turns out that Kamala Harris agrees with her. And so does President Biden, who in his first speech since the election announced that he had also called Trump to congratulate him and would help with the transition. Per Biden’s speech: “I’ve said many times, you can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t love your neighbor only when you agree.” 

This will be the Democratic Party torch for the next four years, its love of country and of the Constitution, words on paper on display under glass. But no need to break that glass, because, well, convicted-felon-rapist-bully-liar-vindictive Donald Trump is not really that guy. Clearly, the American people agreed.

Like Harris, Biden also made Trump’s threat to democracy a major theme of his campaign for president. So I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw in his speech the admonition that Americans cool their jets. 

“Bring down the temperature,” Biden said, admonishing the citizens to go home and accept their fate, presumably as they are rounded up and sent to concentration camps or worse. 

Setting aside the rank hypocrisy, it may already be too late to dial down the temperature. Thirty-five percent of voters cited “Democracy” as the most important issue to them, according to exit polls by Edison Research. Eighty-one percent of them say they voted for Harris, a greater number even than those citing abortion as their top issue (14 percent, three-quarters of whom voted Harris). By contrast, only 31 percent of people cited the economy as the most important issue, with 79 percent of them voting Trump. 

This is the natural result of the Biden-Harris campaign spending the last year scaring the shit out of people about the coming Fourth Reich. Ironically, this is very similar to Trump’s disappearing migrant caravan, which only seems to materialize in the weeks before an election before disappearing in a puff of smoke. For Democratic leaders like Harris, now that the election is over, the Fuhrer Trump memes are getting boxed up and put in the attic where they’ll remain until Vance runs for president in 2028.

It would all be funny if it wasn’t for the staggering opportunity cost of spending all this time litigating Trump’s psychology instead of, say, healthcare (remember when that used to be a campaign issue?), endless war, climate change and so on. None of which Harris took on with a shred of specificity or promise. 

And then there’s the psychic toll. After the election, a therapist I know expressed dread at the coming avalanche of affluent clients seeking relief from Trump-related anxiety. (Reporting suggests that this is a widespread phenomenon, with therapists informally calling it “Trump Anxiety Syndrome.”) I don’t recount that with any disdain. The pain people feel is real to them. And with wall-to-wall news media sensationalism — “The debate over Trump’s authoritarian tendencies will soon be resolved,” a post-election Washington Post headline ominously intones — can you really blame them?

— Edited by William M. Arkin