bull connor biden

Bull Connor Biden - President Biden responded on January 19 to Republicans who took issue with Biden's rhetoric about voting rights. (Video: Washington Post)

In a speech last week in Atlanta pushing for voting rights legislation, President Biden asked elected officials how they hoped to be remembered.

Bull Connor Biden

“Would you like to side with Dr. King or George Wallace?" Biden said. "Do you want to side with John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to side with Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?"

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Biden was referring to Wallace, the segregationist and former governor of Alabama who fought to stop the integration of his state's flagship university; to Connor, the Southern sheriff and white supremacist who turned a fire hose and police dog into a civil rights activist; and Davis, Confederate President. And he's urging many of his former colleagues to stop crushing Democrat efforts to take on the two voting rights bills that have been languishing in the Senate.

Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) took to the Senate floor hours after Biden's words, angry that the president "accused some of my good and principled colleagues in the Senate of evil, even racist leanings."

"He alleged that voting on the bill would put us in touch with Bull Connor, George Wallace and Jefferson Davis," Romney said. "So much for bringing the country together and working across the aisles."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also blasted Biden the next day on the Senate floor for what he called a "divisive speech" and "rant" that he described as "wrong, incoherent, and ineffective." under the office."

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"He called for a bloody separation from the Civil War to demonize Americans who disagreed with him," McConnell said. "He compared the bipartisan senator majority to verbal traitors."

After his initial comments, Biden referred to McConnell as a "friend," and the next day he tried to stop by the minority leader's office during a visit to Capitol Hill, but McConnell wasn't there.

If the Republican response seemed over the top to some critics, it's not surprising, said Eddie Glaude, chair of African American studies at Princeton University, who called the response "inappropriate".

"So you're going to clutch your pearls when someone suggests you're on Bull Connor's side, when you make your decision based on the era Bull Connor is from?" said Glaude. "People care more about being called a racist than the racist consequences of their practice."

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However, the push is not limited to Republicans. Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) last week called Biden's analogy "striking."

"Maybe the president went too far in his rhetoric - some of us do - but the basic principles and values ​​at stake are very similar," continued Durbin, when pressed by CNN's Jake Tapper.

Biden's historical comparisons appear to be inspired by remarks by John Matcham, a historian who has advised Biden on messaging, made during a panel in the congressional lobby on the first anniversary of the January 6 attacks earlier this month. Speaking alongside fellow historians and Librarians of Congress, Matcham spoke of the need to "encourage" democratic behavior.

"How do you do it? I think one idea is history itself," Matcham said at the time. "What do you want the world to say about you? Do you want to be Bull Connor, or do you want to be John Robert Lewis? Do you want to be Jefferson Davis, or do you want to be Abraham Lincoln?"

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When Politico's West Wing Guidebook noticed that the lines in Biden's voting speech echoed Matcham's speech — which helped Biden deliver his commemorative speech on January 6 — Matcham told the publication, "I was involved in drafting the speech and am pleased to offer the president this language. can be used if he wants.”

In some ways, Biden is simply making broad rhetorical points about racial advancement—which, at least compared to the usual antics and sneers of political opponents by his predecessor, barely seem controversial.

"I think he's trying to remind us how far we've come from those days and how close we are to actually reliving them," said Peniel Joseph, a professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas at Austin.

Joseph adds that as a historian, he sees the period from 1965 to 2013 — from when the Suffrage Act was first passed, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting, to when the Supreme Court repealed its key elements — as "a particular era in American history".

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But Biden's attack — which comes as the president begins to adopt a tougher, more aggressive tone with Republicans in general — doesn't match his brand as far as being a bipartisan deal maker, the kind of leader who can unify a country.

Biden, however, has always urged his colleagues never to question a man's motives—as he did when he addressed a Yale graduating class as vice president, and said that as a young senator, he once criticized Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C. . .) for opposing Reporting against the Americans with Disabilities Act, only to find out later that Helms and his wife had adopted a child with disabilities.

"It's always right to question someone else's judgment, but it's never right to question their motives because you don't know their motives," Biden said at the time.

In response to the backlash, the White House argued that Biden was not actually comparing any members of Congress to well-known separatists and white supremacists, but simply saying that if they did not support the right to vote today, they would be judged by history in the same way. to those people.

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"He's not comparing them as people," White House press secretary Jen Pesci said last week, when asked whether Biden had abandoned previous promises of bipartisanship and unity. "He compared elections to figures in history and where they would have positioned themselves when they decided whether or not to support the basic right to vote."

Speaking at a nearly two-hour news conference on Wednesday, Biden dropped accusations that his words were offensive.

"I'm not saying they're going to be George Wallace or Bull Connor," Biden said. "I said we're going to have a decision in history that will be marked exactly the way it was. Either you go to the side - it doesn't make you George Wallace or it doesn't make you Bull Connor."

Later, when asked again about his comments, Biden became furious and told a reporter, "Go back and read what I said and let me know if you think I called anyone who voted for the position Bull Connor took that they were Bull Connor. "

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Still, the president said, no one forgets who was on Martin Luther King Jr.'s side. versus who's on Connor's side.

"You can't vote this way, and it goes away somehow," Biden said. "It will — stay with you for the rest of your career and long after you're gone."

Also last week, Biden made a similar case during the Senate Democrats' private lunch at the Capitol, explaining why he had tried to visit McConnell earlier in the day, said a person familiar with the exchange, speaking on condition of anonymity to share details. private discussion. Biden told the group he knew McConnell was upset, and he wanted to make it clear to Republicans that his point was that there were inflection points in history where politicians had to take sides, and this was one of them, this person added. .

However, many consider the stakes for the vote—and even democracy—to be so high right now that Biden's rhetoric can be justified.

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"The reality is that they are invoking the state's right to engage in or support practices that will make it more difficult for black and brown people and young, low-income people to vote," Glaude said. "So the absolute choice [is] whether they will actually commit to a multiracial democracy or not."

At least one critical person agreed with the content of Biden's statement but only wished he had updated his historical figure for the modern era.

"Nobody knows who Bull Connor is," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters last week. "You know, if we were to make a case for saying, 'We're going to have Martin Luther King or Bull Connor' - who would this be?"

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