All of the pages on Joe Biden’s campaign website carry a motto that sits — appropriately — at the upper-left corner of the page. It says “Battle for the Soul of the Nation.”
The site recently added a page that, beneath this ubiquitous motto, presents a statement from Biden urging the Senate not to vote on President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
What is Biden’s reasoning? He argues that many Americans are already casting their votes in this year’s presidential election.
“Election Day is just weeks away, and millions of Americans are already voting because the stakes in this election could not be higher,” says Biden. “They feel the urgency of this choice — an urgency made all the more acute by what’s at stake at the U.S. Supreme Court.”
And what does Biden believe Americans believe is at stake at the U.S. Supreme Court?
“They are voting,” Biden says, “because they don’t want Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for nearly half a century, to be overturned.”
Yes, this is a battle for the soul of America.
And Biden — with his very soul, apparently — is battling to make sure the Supreme Court continues to hold that killing an unborn child is a constitutional right.
With almost as much consistency as his webpages, Biden’s speeches are punctuated with references to the battle for our nation’s soul.
On April 29, 2019, four days after he officially announced his presidential campaign, Biden held an event in Pennsylvania. There he declared that the battle for the soul of America was the primary reason he was running.
“There are three basic reasons why I’m running for president of the United States,” Biden said. “The first is to restore the soul of the nation. And the second is to rebuild the backbone of the nation. And the third is to unify this nation.”
On Aug. 12, 2020, Biden presented his newly named running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, as a comrade in arms who would fight alongside him in the battle for America’s soul.
“I knew we were in a battle for the soul of the nation,” Biden said at an event in Delaware. “That’s why I decided to run, and I’m proud now to have Sen. Harris at my side in that battle, because she shares the same intensity I do.
“She is someone who knows what’s at stake,” said Biden. “The question is for all Americans to answer: Who are we as a nation? What do we stand for? And, most importantly, what do we want to be?”
What issues (other than abortion) had cemented this philosophical bond — this common understanding of our future — between Biden and Harris?
On March 13, 2019, Harris signed on as an original Senate co-sponsor of the Equality Act. “The bill,” says the official summary posted on the congressional website, “prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.”
In other words, the bill would prohibit preventing a biological male — who claims he “identifies” as a female — from using “a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room” that are set aside for biological females.
What about female basketball or track teams?
When the Equality Act came up in the House Judiciary Committee in 2019, Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Florida offered a commonsensical amendment — that failed.
“An amendment by Mr. Steube,” the committee’s report explained, “to add a rule of construction providing that nothing in the Act or any amendment made by it may be construed to require a biological female to face competition from a biological male in any sporting event was defeated by a roll-call vote of 10 to 22.”
Under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the full House approved the Equality Act on May 17, 2019.
Harris instantly applauded. “The Equality Act just passed the House, sending a clear message that discrimination against LGBTQ* people won’t be tolerated,” she said in a tweet.
“I urge the GOP to bring it to the Senate floor,” she added.
The Republican Senate leadership did not.
But what would a President Biden do with this legislation that was pushed through the House by Pelosi and co-sponsored in the Senate by his own vice president?
A page on Biden’s website — that, like all others, declares a “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” — says: “Biden will make enactment of the Equality Act during his first 100 days as President a top legislative priority.”
Would Biden actually require schools to let biological males play on the girls’ sports teams and use their restrooms and locker rooms?
If he doesn’t, he would be reneging on an explicit campaign promise.
“On his first day in office,” says Biden’s website, “Biden will reinstate the Obama-Biden guidance revoked by the Trump-Pence Administration, which will restore transgender students’ access to sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity.”
That — in addition to promoting abortion — is another way Biden plans to battle for the soul of our nation.
