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In his latest piece for the Washington Post, columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. found the Democratic Party’s aggressive new "attack" mode politics against Republicans "rousing," claiming that it’s putting the GOP "on the defensive" in a midterm race "that once seemed theirs for the taking."
Dionne also spent some ink detailing how former President Trump is contributing to this Democratic offensive with his "lawless possession" of "secret government documents."
The columnist opened the piece with his theory that, "Elections and substantive policy battles alike are often decided by which side is playing offense and which is forced onto the defensive."
And as Dionne noted, "This week, President Biden is signaling that the Democrats’ strategy for this fall’s elections is moving sharply toward the attack. With a speech Tuesday about law enforcement and public safety, he challenged Republicans on ground the GOP thought it owned."
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Washington Post columnist argues that Biden's aggressive political attacks are putting Republicans on defense. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
"And in a prime-time address Thursday, he plans to bring the survival of democracy itself to the center of the 2022 campaign," he added, claiming that Biden’s new talking points reflect how Democrats are "shifting the public conversation" in light of Trump’s behavior.
Dionne explained, "Trump’s lawless possession of those documents, along with his party’s efforts to minimize it, is making a hash of the GOP’s law-and-order slogans. And the former president’s omnipresence in the news has short-circuited Republican hopes of making Biden’s unpopularity the centerpiece of the 2022 midterm campaign."
"That will become even harder if Biden’s ratings stay on the upswing," the column added.
Dionne claimed once more that Trump was hampering Republican chances, writing, "Day by day, Trump is making the playing field ever more difficult for his party, to the still-mostly-private consternation of many of its leaders." He also mentioned that "Trump loyalists are increasingly pressing Republicans to defend the indefensible — and to talk about the man many of them would rather see disappear into the shadows."
So now, "Biden, who has been reluctant for much of his term to mention Trump and has often stressed his dreams of bipartisanship, is ramping up the pressure."
The column spoke to Biden’s good timing on his recent talking points concerning Republican’s alleged lack of respect for law enforcement. "Six months ago, the president’s Tuesday address on crime and law enforcement in Wilkes Barre, Pa., would have been seen as a largely self-protective response to the GOP’s success in branding Democrats as the ‘defund-the-police’ party soft on lawbreakers."
President Biden delivering a speech at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania Tuesday. (Fox News)
However, after the Mar-a-Lago raid, Dionne noted that Biden’s lines are "rousing." "While Biden reiterated his consistent opposition to the defund idea, his address ended with rousing attacks on Republican calls to ‘defund the FBI’ and a denunciation of the Trump-inspired Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol," he wrote.
"Without mentioning Sen. Lindsey Graham by name, he assailed the South Carolina Republican’s barely veiled threat that there would be ‘riots in the streets’ if the Justice Department tried to prosecute Trump for illegally holding and potentially hiding documents," the columnist mentioned, and continued to play up Biden as some skilled rhetorician in response to GOP incitement.
"’No one expects politics to be a patty cake,’ Biden said. ‘It sometimes gets mean as hell. But the idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying, If such-and-such happens, there’ll be blood in the street? Where the hell are we?,’" the column read.
Bolstering Biden’s strategy, Dionne claimed that recent polling shows that "the topic of democracy is now in the ascendancy." According to a recent NBC News poll, "threats to democracy" have surpassed "inflation" as "the top 2022 issue."
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. called President Joe Biden's recent statements blasting the GOP "rousing." (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
"Biden has clearly moved in this direction himself," he wrote and quoted a Biden adviser who claimed, "The president truly sees this as an inflection point."
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Dionne then let his opinion fly, concluding, "The paradox of American politics is that the putatively conservative party now finds itself reviling established institutions, threatening political violence and, in the Trump documents case, embracing the wrong side of national security."
"It’s no wonder that Republicans are playing defense in an election that once seemed theirs for the asking," he added.