Lessons from Biden's Speech at Valley Forge
This week, I listened to Joe Biden’s speech delivered at Valley Forge on the eve of January 6th. I was immediately struck by the irony of his opening—he talked about the colonial rebels of 1776 rejecting an authoritarian regime and Washington’s faith in God, while he (Biden) vilified MAGA Americans, and his party denounces “Christian Nationalism.” It can be hard to listen to these speeches full of vitriol and lies, but Biden’s speech reminded me of a few important lessons from 2020 we should carry with us into this election year.
His speech stirred up in me memories and the accompanying feelings I have not experienced since those dark days of January 2021. Biden reminded me how empty Washington, D.C. was the week of his inauguration with barricades up everywhere and national guardsmen encamped in the capital. It was like that because we were witnessing an illegitimate regime completing its coup; it was a defensive and fearful show of force. Since that day, Biden has inflicted immeasurable pain and destruction on our country—from his withdrawal from Afghanistan to the open border, lives are shattered, and our nation has been assaulted in ways we will never be able to repair. The result of Biden’s coup is that the last three years have been extraordinarily painful for the average American and have destabilized the world.
Biden referred to the sixty court cases that “election deniers” lost, and this is a talking point we hear from both the Left and uninformed, centrist Republicans. The Campaign Legal Center compiled a list of 2020 election cases. Only ten of those cases were disposed of on the merits. The merits means the actual substance of the case—the substantive question presented to the court. Other cases were thrown out on jurisdictional (perhaps the court didn’t have authority to hear the case) or procedural grounds (the case was filed too late or filed improperly), so the courts never reached the merits. Of those ten cases, there are more than a few impressive dissents. So, first, the “evidence” was not closely examined, as Biden would have you believe, second, and the legal community was not in complete uniformity on the merits of the challenges.
As to the cases that we lost on the merits—some weren’t presented well and others lost because the judges and their law clerks did not see it our way. Just as Joe Biden stood at a podium and talked about how American democracy almost succumbed to the insurrectionists on January 6th—a laughable farce—so too, people can view the same facts in a legal case very differently. Most of the “elite” legal community accepted Trump’s defeat as obvious; lawsuits to the contrary barely received a glance.
The reality is that most judges are wary of rocking the boat, and the likelihood that any judge—Trump appointed or not—would change the status quo from a Biden victory to Trump victory was vanishingly small. Elections are political, and for the most part, we must win them at the ballot box, not in front of a court.
One lesson we should learn for 2024 is that, to be helpful, the aid of the courts must be invoked before the votes are cast, as was successfully accomplished in Texas. The Left wanted to steal Texas, and they launched multiple assaults to degrade the security of the vote before the election. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton doggedly defended each assault and, with the help of the conservative Fifth Circuit, won every challenge.
The primary lesson we should take from Biden’s speech (and the 2020 memories he stirred up) is that only we can save ourselves. Only grassroots action—not the courts—will secure the vote and result in America First victories. If we can secure the ballot box, the votes are there for us.
I listened to Biden as I did the dishes at my kitchen sink. Biden is the mouthpiece of a brutal (yes, brutal) regime that will take our liberty and our country from us if left unchecked. When I was done, I went to my home office and tried again to reach the woman who is the recently appointed chair of my precinct. This time, I finally got through. We had a nice long chat, and I told her I would co-host an initial coffee for the precinct. We want to meet the Republicans in our neighborhood, figure out where they stand on the political spectrum, and make a plan to proceed in 2024 to motivate our base in our neighborhood precinct. Because Biden was right about one thing, the American rebels of 1776 were outgunned by the British Empire, but they tenaciously pursued freedom with a firm faith in Almighty God, and, in the end, they prevailed.
In 2024, I am rebranding The Molly McCann Memo to the simpler Molly’s Memo. After more than a year of writing very little, one goal I have for 2024 is to return to writing more on politics. With that in mind, I will be trying to publish a weekly column here on Substack every Saturday. Molly’s Memo is free, so please share it with friends and family. This year, more than ever, we need to be informed and energized for our country.