"We the people must decide whether we’re going to sustain a republic where reality is accepted, the law is obeyed, and your vote is truly sacred."

Said President Biden in his speech last night. 

I'm reading the transcript. He's talking about the midterm elections and he's saying the main issue is — not the economy, not crime, not abortion — but democracy itself, as if we can vote for democracy.

We participate in democracy when we vote. But how do you vote for democracy? Is he trying to say a vote for a Democrat is a vote for democracy, and a vote for a Republican is a vote against democracy?

We the people must decide whether the rule of law will prevail or whether we will allow the dark forces and thirst for power put ahead of the principles that have long guided us.

Is that on the ballot? I'd like "a republic where reality is accepted," but my President is raving about "dark forces." I presume he means that anyone who questions the accuracy of the voting procedures and vote counts is failing to "accept reality" and maybe also that people who think like that are part of the "dark forces."

As for the "thirst for power," isn't every candidate thirsting for power? I'd say yes, and that's a "reality" I simply "accept," but I don't think the elections next week are about which candidates are thirstier. It would be silly — and not reality-based — to vote based on which candidate seems less thirsty and less dark. It's like we're in a comic-book movie. Biden purports to call us to well-grounded sanity, but he speaks a language of free-floating fantasy.

Biden proceeds to blame Trump: "American democracy is under attack because the defeated former president of the United States refused to accept the results of the 2020 election."

Every legal challenge that could have been brought, was brought. Every recount that could have been undertaken, was undertaken. Every recount confirmed the results. Wherever fact or evidence had been demanded, the big lie has been proven to be just that, a big lie.

I agree that the result should be accepted for the good of the country, but not that following the available legal procedures proves that the conclusion reached in those procedures is the same as what we'd get from longer, more nearly perfect procedures. It's an American tradition to go on inquiring into the results of concluded legal proceedings, even as we are also realistic about the practical need to accept court judgments and move forward.

This isn't the first time the Hitler-coined term "the big lie" has been used against those who still question the results of the 2020 election. If Biden really wanted to call us to sanity and calm reasonableness, would he speak to us this way?

With democracy on the ballot, we have to remember these first principles. Democracy means the rule of the people.... Autocracy... means the rule of one, one person, one interest, one ideology, one party.... Make no mistake, democracy is on the ballot for all of us.... Because democracy is on the ballot....

He keeps saying it, "democracy is on the ballot." It's not true, but I guess his people liked the sound of it. It would make more sense to say "democracy is the ballot."

"Democracy is on the ballot" is a way to say — without saying — that you ought to vote for the Democratic Party candidate. But Biden keeps it superficially nonpartisan: Just vote and then peacefully accept the results that emerge from the existing legal process.

A vote is not a partisan tool to be counted when it helps your candidates and tossed aside when it doesn’t... We don’t settle our differences, America, with a riot, a mob, or a bullet, or a hammer. We settle them peacefully at the ballot box....

 And don't be violent:

There’s an alarming rise in the number of our people in this country condoning political violence, or simply remain silent because silence is complicity.... All of us who reject political violence and voter intimidation, and I believe that’s the overwhelming majority of the American people, all of us must unite to make it absolutely clear that violence and intimidation have no place in America.....

I agree, of course. But questioning the announced results of elections is not violence. It is part of freedom of speech, and active, non-violent protesting is part of the American tradition. I lived through an especially vivid example of that here in Wisconsin in 2011, when protesters stormed the state capitol and chanted "This is what democracy looks like." Democracy wasn't just the election and the announced legal result, it was all the pressure the losing side could exert. 

As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America, for governor, congress, attorney general, secretary of state, who won’t commit, that will not commit to accepting the results of the election that they’re running in. This is a path to chaos in America. It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful, and it’s un-American....

They only need to commit to refraining from calling for violence. The rest — the protests, the dogged sticking to a losing position — is absolutely not unlawful — it's free speech — and absolutely not un-American. 

Biden ends with an idea that — at long last — translates "democracy is on the ballot" into something that does make sense:

This year I hope you’ll make the future of our democracy an important part of your decision to vote and how you vote. I hope you’ll ask a simple question of each candidate you might vote for. Will that person accept the legitimate will of the American people and the people voting in his district or her district? Will that person accept the outcome of the election, win or lose? The answer to that question is vital. And, in my opinion, it should be decisive.

"Democracy is on the ballot" = Vote against any candidate who would not make the promise to accept the results of the election.

So I get what he's saying. I wouldn't base my vote on the failure of a given Republican to take an oath foisted on him by Democrats, but perhaps the President's words will motivate some voters.