Inflection point

Biden calls summit 'inflection point' for democracies

“We stand at an inflection point in history, in my view,” Biden told his fellow world leaders.

By QUINT FORGEY

President Joe Biden invoked the late civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis and pledged that he would continue to push for the passage of federal voting rights legislation when he commenced his administration’s virtual Summit for Democracy on Thursday.

In his opening remarks at the outset of the two-day event, Biden hailed Lewis — the Georgia Democrat who served in Congress for more than three decades and was the youngest leader of the 1963 March on Washington — as “a great champion of American democracy and for civil rights around the world.”

Biden went on to quote from a New York Times op-ed that Lewis authored shortly before his death last July following his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer: “He reminded our country, quote, ‘Democracy is not a state. It is an act.’”

Addressing the 110 world leaders participating in his long-planned summit, Biden vowed his administration would “keep fighting to pass two critical pieces of legislation that will shore up the very foundation of American democracy: the sacred right of every person to make their voice heard through free, fair and secure elections.”

That pair of voting rights measures — the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — remained stalled in the Senate amid opposition from Republican lawmakers. But Biden on Thursday said the bills would “remain a priority for my administration until we get it done,” adding that “inaction is not an option.”

Biden also touted the executive actions and legislative achievements under his administration that he argued would help bolster democracy at home — including the signing of a sweeping infrastructure bill into law last month, as well as the announcements of the first-ever national Strategy on Countering Corruption and Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality.

“We stand at an inflection point in history, in my view,” Biden told his fellow world leaders. “The choices we make … in this moment are going to fundamentally determine the direction our world is going to take in the coming decades. Will we allow the backwards slide of rights and democracy to continue unchecked? Or will we … [have] the vision and courage to once more lead the march of human progress and human freedom forward?”

“I believe we can do that, and we will, if we have faith in ourselves and our democracies and each other,” Biden continued. “That’s what this summit is about.”