Biden’s State of the Union got one big thing right

During Thursday night’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden issued an unmistakable warning about the threat Donald Trump poses to American democracy. The speech also implicitly made a more subtle point about democracy: that defending it can require uncomfortably blunt talk.

One of democracy’s core premises is that elections are not like armed conflict, where either you win or you die. Since all parties accept the basic rules of the game, like competitive elections and free speech, the stakes of elections are not existential. Political opponents are less enemies than rivals; disagreement isn’t disaster.

Authoritarian populists like Donald Trump win by attacking this foundational democratic norm.