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President Biden Thursday aimed to frame the state of U.S. politics as a battle between "equality and democracy" and a GOP allegedly assaulting those principles in a campaign-style speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
The president's address continues a recent pattern of increasingly aggressive and divisive broadsides against his political opponents. Biden recently said Republicans are embracing "semi-fascism."
The speech comes as Democrats feel they have increasing momentum ahead of the November elections, owing, they say, to voters motivated by a revulsion to GOP policies on social issues like abortion, and to former President Donald Trump himself.
"But as I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault," Biden added. "We do ourselves no favors to pretend otherwise."
The tone and setting of the speech underscored Biden's effort to portray the upcoming congressional elections as part of what a White House official said is "the continued battle for the Soul of the Nation." The president leaned on that sort of rhetoric regularly during his 2020 presidential campaign and appears poised to bring back some of those talking points ahead of the 2022 midterms.