“They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6 brutally attacking law enforcement, not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger at the throat of our democracy, but they look at it (them) as patriots,” Biden said.

“They see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections. This time they are determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.”

Still, Biden’s speech should not be seen in isolation. While he was speaking as America’s head of state, his remarks also sounded like a campaign stump speech, delivered in a critically important battleground state that he will have visited three times within the span of a week by Labor Day. He left no doubt that he was targeting his predecessor, and potential future rival, who will also be in Keystone State this weekend.

And Biden seems to have had a point. Hours before he spoke, Trump appeared to validate the ex-President’s warnings about the threat that he poses.

“I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons. Full pardons,” the ex-President said on Wendy Bell Radio. “I mean full pardons with an apology to many,” he said.

His comment at this point is hypothetical and depends on a long, complex road to power. But it was also a stark reminder that he often crushed the principles of democracy and the rule of law in office. Here as before, Trump is viewing the presidency as a tool of personal power to be used to reward his allies and to punish his political opponents. In effect, Trump would be pardoning supporters he called to Washington and incited to violence to try to overturn an election he lost. Had he succeeded, he would have replaced America’s 250-year experiment with democracy with autocratic strongman rule.

This development followed weeks of televised hearings by the House select committee probing the January 6 insurrection that have painted a damning picture of Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election and then to incite violence when his efforts failed. Multiple courts and Trump’s own Justice Department found there was no evidence that the 2020 was marred by massive fraud.

That is exactly the kind of vision of autocratic power vested in one man that the founders — who signed their names in history in the hall that formed Biden’s backdrop on Thursday night — broke away from two-and-a-half centuries ago.

Biden defines the political battle of the modern age

Biden’s speech and the intensifying swirl of attacks on the election system from Trump’s world underscore how the most critical divide in politics right now is not the age-old duel between liberalism and conservatism. Those fights have raged intensely and often with ill-feeling in a deeply divided nation, but they mostly took place between two parties who fundamentally respected the electoral system.

Increasingly, the political battle of our time is between leaders who see democracy as under attack (mostly Democrats but with increasing recruits from conservative dissidents like Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney) and the Trump machine, which is ready to use any method, including undemocratic ones to win power.

So far, Biden’s tactic seems to be working as he grafts this strategy onto Democratic attempts to highlight the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion, which has galvanized liberal voters and enthusiasm in his party’s base, and the recent passage of a significant climate and health care law. All of this is an attempt to transform the election from a referendum on his own low approval ratings and the worst inflation crisis in 40 years into a choice between himself and Trump, who alienated moderate and suburban voters in elections in 2018 and 2020.

Democrats tried something similar in a 2021 off-year election but it foundered when Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin stressed education and rising prices and won the governorship in a state Biden had won by 10 points a year earlier.

But this year, Trump effectively is on the ballot given his endorsement of many candidates whose main calling card is total loyalty to his false claims of voter fraud. And even out of the White House, he’s part of the news every day in the wake of the FBI search of his Florida home, which is reminding voters of the chaos and fury of his presidency as he and his allies threaten and try to intimidate institutions like the FBI.

Biden’s bet is an attempt to reframe the midterm elections

Still, the unanswered question of 2022 is whether voters will be won over by an argument that democracy is at risk — a somewhat esoteric concept outside Washington — or will seek to punish the President for the pain many feel from budget-busting grocery bills.

Biden’s approach is not without risks. With his remarks about fascism last week and his relentless assault on “MAGA Republicans,” he is in danger of branding all Republicans as extremists. Millions of people voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 because they embraced his anti-establishment creed or his hostility to globalization. Some just liked his blunt speaking. But that does not mean that they have given up on democracy.

“President Biden has chosen to divide, demean, and disparage his fellow Americans. Why? simply because they disagree with his policies,” McCarthy said. “That is not leadership.”

“The first lines out of his mouth should be to apologize for slandering tens of millions of Americans as ‘fascists,'” the California Republican added.

Biden tried to hedge against McCarthy’s criticism by insisting that not all Republicans are radicals. But the distinction is unlikely to be heard in the pandemonium of a national election campaign. McCarthy, of course, is guilty of his own transgressions against democracy. Briefly after the Capitol insurrection, he said Trump bore some responsibility. But he soon flew to Florida to make up with the ex-President on whom he seems to think GOP hopes of a House majority and his dreams of becoming speaker depend.

If nothing else, Biden’s speech set a fire under the midterm election campaign. His recently hardened rhetoric and Trump’s relentlessly inflammatory behavior prove two things: The ex-President remains a threat to democracy. And Biden’s thinks it’s his destiny to stop him.