WASHINGTON, DC — Critics, pundits, and ‘MSM’ reporters alike feigned surprise after President Joe Biden decried his predecessor and “MAGA Republicans” in last night’s primetime address. They aren’t Philly. They don’t know the gritty historic city. Brendon Boyle does. He represents the city in the U.S. House and couldn’t help but dismissively laugh off those swamp-soaked crocodile tears on his way home from the speech.
“To the extent that Joe Biden is a scrappy fighter – which he is – that is something that will only help him in my neck of the woods. In Philly, we are not shy. We like a fighter,” Boyle told Raw Story from his cell phone.
Scrappiness doesn’t necessarily mean instigator (think Mama Bears). Rather, it means fighter, even survivor. To Biden, Boyle, and most Democrats, America is one election away from becoming untethered from America’s foundational ideals. On Jan. 6, 2021, the nation was some 40 feet – not yards; feet – and a noose away from eviscerating anything united about our diverse states.
It’s not fear mongering, they argue, just a lot of fear-filled contemplation. To Boyle, there’s no time to waste. When lawmakers return after Labor Day, the congressman says Democratic leaders need to make overhauling – or updating? – the Electoral Count Act a top priority. He calls it a “ticking time bomb.”
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“As concerned as I am about what happened on Jan. 6, I'm actually more concerned about what may happen the next Jan. 6,” Boyle said of the presidential election lurking just around the bend.
That trepidation mirrored the president’s own.
"Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," Biden told the nation from Independence Hall, the birthplace of the uniquely American rebellion.
Domestically the debate has focused on the politics – or lack thereof? – of Biden’s address. That’s not the point, according to Boyle. This summer, America sent the world a steady stream of stories increasingly ripe with salacious and scandalous palace intrigue. It started with the House Jan. 6 hearings but now encompasses Mar-a-Lago, the FBI, and ‘deep state.’
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President Biden, Boyle argues, surely needs domestic politics to sway in his favor if he’s to continue signing his agenda into law. But they’re both foreign policy guys. Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Boyle serves as a leader of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly where he interacts with lawmakers from across the globe.They’re who he was thinking about on Thursday as Biden spoke.
Boyle’s a Philly boy, so he gushed a tad – “Oh, this is so cool,” he remembers feeling on the gorgeous summer eve – but underneath that broad, homegrown smile was a sense of odd American pride. Remember that whole shining city on the hill promise (that’s been rarely, if ever, realized)? Boyle says President Biden was putting some shine back in that rusty beacon.
“Over the last several years, the number one most often asked question that I get from my colleagues who serve in their respective parliaments ask me, ‘Will democracy survive in the United States?’” Boyle told Raw Story. “So those are the kinds of stakes that we're talking about.”
Boyle is in disbelief these days.
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“It still sounds – even when I hear myself say it – it still sounds crazy that we're talking this way about the United States of America, but here we are. I mean, those were the stakes of the aftermath of the 2020 election and Jan. 6, and they're still the stakes,” Boyle said. “I mean, the Republican who won the primary for governor of Pennsylvania won it openly on the promise that he would appoint a secretary of state who would never certify a Democratic victory.”
Boyle says his party – which still controls the House, Senate, and White House – would be derelict if they delayed debating and reforming the Electoral Count Act.
“The fact that you only need one House member and one Senate member to raise an objection, and then that triggers two hours of debate," Boyle said. "And then…let's say there was a majority in the House and Senate that refused to recognize the results, then suddenly it would be the House and Senate substituting their own judgment for the will of the voters? I mean, that's, that's frightening.”
While post-Roe v. Wade politics have many political observers sensing electoral shifts, to Boyle, the nation can’t risk a Kevin McCarthy speakership.
“McCarthy only cares about being speaker and is willing to do or say anything to achieve that. If he were to become speaker, I am reasonably fearful of the things he may do just to be able to hold on to power within his caucus,” Boyle said. “He will do whatever Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Donald Trump tell him to do.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, Boyle says McCarthy stood up, and he’s wondered where that leader has been ever since.
“For a few days there, it seemed like he discovered a spine and a conscience. And then he saw that, ‘You know wait a minute, Trump might not be fading away,’ so he quickly flipped again and got on the first plane he could to fly to Mar-a-Lago so he could bend the knee and take a picture with Donald,” Boyle lamented to Raw Story. “Trump calls him ‘My Kevin’ for a reason.”
