Biden’s exit not like Trump’s insurrection

Perhaps they’re floundering because their path to the White House isn’t as easy as it seemed heading into the weekend. Maybe they’re confused, or they’ve miraculously had a change of heart.

Whatever the reason, Republicans suddenly seem very concerned about protecting democracy now that President Joe Biden has abandoned his reelection campaign.

Shortly after Biden announced that he would step down as the Democratic nominee, Republicans decried the decision, calling it a “coup,” accusing Democrats of overturning an election and even suggested it would be illegal to replace him.

In response to Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson’s post applauding Biden for stepping down, fellow North Carolinian Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican, responded, “Smooth words for overturning the result of an election. Why do you celebrate disenfranchising millions of your party’s voters?”

Bishop also reshared a post calling it an “insurrection,” and Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., said it was a “true subversion of the will of the voters.”

Republicans must need to be reminded of what election subversion actually looks like. It’s what happens when a presidential candidate loses the election and insists he actually won, despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s also what happens when that candidate’s allies in Congress echo his claims and use their elected position to try to keep him in power. Election subversion is when a candidate’s supporters try to violently interrupt the official certification of the election results, all because they believed the lies that candidate told them.

Biden’s decision to exit the race is not a “coup” or an attack on democracy, nor has an election been overturned. Biden voluntarily dropped out of the race, as he has every right to do, and Democrats have every right to select a different nominee — it’s completely permissible under the law and within the party dynamic. What Donald Trump and his allies did, on the other hand, was not legal, which is why Trump and several of his associates face legal consequences for their actions. Trump, in particular, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on multiple counts of obstruction and criminal conspiracy in relation to Jan. 6.

The indignation of Republicans might be more believable if it were at least consistent. But Bishop and Rouzer were among those in Congress who echoed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and voted to overturn the results. Bishop, too, recently dismissed the absentee ballot fraud scandal that happened in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District in 2018 as “some fairly minor illegal ballot harvesting.” Of course, there was nothing “minor” about that incident, as it led to a new election, as well as a political operative and several of his associates facing criminal charges. Bishop should know that, because he ran in that special election and ultimately won the seat.

Republicans say Biden only exited the race under pressure from Democratic “elites,” but the truth is that this is what voters clearly wanted. Polls showed that most voters wanted Biden to be replaced by another nominee, including two-thirds of Democrats and an even larger majority of all voters. It was enough to harm his standing even in states thought to be safe for Democrats, such as Virginia and New Mexico. As experts have pointed out, nobody is removing Biden from the ballot, because he wasn’t even on it yet. He hadn’t yet been named the party’s official nominee, as that vote happens at the Democratic National Convention.

Arguably, it would have been less democratic for Biden to remain in the race when voters inside and outside of his party wanted him out of it. Many of those voters may not have chosen Biden to begin with if they’d had complete information about his health.

It’s hard to tell if Republicans actually believe what they’re saying about Biden leaving the race, or if it’s just part of a political calculus that allows them to explain away Trump’s actions before and during Jan. 6. Republicans have been able to dodge that liability in recent weeks as questions about Biden and his political future dominated the news cycle.

But with Biden out of the race, much of the scrutiny will be on Trump and Republicans once again. Apparently, the only defense they’ve got so far is this deeply unserious finger-pointing. It’s the political equivalent of “I know you are, but what am I?” They really should do better.

Paige Masten is a columnist for The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer.