Clarence Page: This time Donald Trump makes the election stakes unusually high

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Sep 3, 2022

He also said he was financially supporting some of the Jan. 6 defendants, although he didn’t name names or say exactly how he was supporting them.

Nor did he explain how his support for the rioters who brutally beat police officers at the Capitol squares with his usual law-and-order support for the men in blue. About 140 members of law enforcement were injured during the riot, according to The Washington Post. One officer, Brian Sicknick, who had been sprayed with a powerful irritant, suffered a stroke and died a day later.

And McCarthy, among other Republicans, wonders why terms such as “semi-fascism” come up. Compared to my own feelings about those thugs at the Capitol, I think Biden was being polite.

Sure, I don’t have to be an Army veteran — although I am — to feel uncomfortable about watching Biden deliver a speech that sounded unusually political for an occasion in which he was flanked by two Marines standing at attention.

Yet, politics goes with the territory, especially when the “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” obviously is tied to the actions and attitudes of the most prominent figure in the rival party.

Indeed, politics and governance often go hand-in-hand. But this time around, as Biden said, this is not normal.

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said.

We’re witnessing the evidence in real time. With the midterms ahead, we, the people, have another opportunity to decide what direction our democracy is going to take — while we still have a democracy.

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)