Does President Joe Biden actually believe that absent trashing the legislative filibuster and passing the misnamed Voting Rights Bill, that democracy in America is headed for extinction? Similarly, does Donald J. Trump really believe that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from him by the nefarious forces of the left?
If either, or both of them truly believe what is by any reasonable measure plain old nonsense, then they are fools, and delusional ones at that. Let’s be clear here. They are not fools because they believe either (or both) of these claims. It’s the other way around. They believe these claims because they are fools.
And self-interested fools at that. Or at least self-interested in the manner of adolescents who are unable to think beyond the whims of their peer groups. Which is why 15 year-olds, generally speaking, may not legally buy alcohol or get a drivers license.
Unfortunately we gave the keys to the car along with a glass of whiskey to Donald Trump in 2016 and repeated the error via Joe Biden in 2020.
Partly as a result, America faces daunting challenges. And the current occupant of the White House, by aligning himself with his party’s progressives, is doing his level best to make things worse. Consider for instance, the exploding crime rate. It is clearly related to the progressive effort to reign in police and redefine crime as a symptom of “structural racism”.
Or the ongoing rise in inflation that clocked in at 7% year over year just this morning. That’s the inflation that was supposed to be temporary—just like mask wearing was supposed to be temporary back in March of 2020. Then there are the school closings, a policy response utterly lacking in scientific merit, engineered by the teachers unions who are busy indoctrinating (or at least try to indoctrinate) grammar school children in the finer points of “anti-racism” and transgender ideology.
Offsetting these factors are foreign policy successes like the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that saw people desperately hanging on to departing planes before falling to their deaths. Not to mention the hundreds of Americans left behind, still trying to get out. Or the thousands of green card holders abandoned to their fate.
Which goes a long way toward explaining why Vladimir Putin feels confidant massing 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s border. And why Xi Jinping has been so aggressive stomping on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and threatening Taiwan. And why Turkey, a NATO member state, has acquired Russian S-400 missiles designed to bring down NATO war planes. And why North Korea recently tested what it claims is a hypersonic missile. And why Saudi Arabia is building ballistic missiles with China’s help. And why Germany is proceeding with the Nord-2 pipeline from Russia despite US objections.
In short, American power is no longer feared around the globe.
And so in a desperate attempt to change the subject, Joe Biden, a party hack, and not very bright one at that, has decided to salvage the clown show that is his presidency by claiming that he and the Democrats are all that stand between democracy and darkness. How do we know this? Because he said so in his Atlanta speech yesterday.
Quoth Mr. Biden:
“Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand. I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. And so the question is where will the institution of the United States Senate stand?”
Leaving aside the juvenile rhetoric, it is clear that Mr. Biden is urging that the Senate jettison the legislative filibuster so it can pass a progressive wish list designed to create and maintain a progressive hegemony over America’s governing institutions. The immediate target is the legislative filibuster that Mr. “I-know-where-I-stand” stoutly defended for 50 years.
“Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?” Mr. Biden asked in his speech. That is the same Mr. Biden who in days past was busy trying to win the favor of the very same George Wallace and his segregationist buddies. For instance, when Biden was campaigning in Alabama in 1987 for his first run at the Democratic presidential nomination he bragged about receiving an award from Wallace in 1973. (The mere fact that he was probably lying about it, makes it even worse.) He also boasted that his home state Delaware was on the South’s side in the Civil War.
And then there was Strom Thurmond the racist Dixiecrat turned Republican who was one of Biden’s pals. Thurmond once said “there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.” Thurmond specifically asked that Biden speak at his funeral, which of course Biden did when he eulogized him in July of 2003.
Other Senate pals of Joe Biden included segregationists like Jim Eastland (D-MI) a mentor of his, and Herman Talmadge (D-GA). With his buddy J. Willam Fulbright, Biden got a twofer; Fulbright was both an anti-semite and a segregationist.
So please, spare us the sanctimony. Biden is just a party hack who will say anything, no matter how absurd, to get himself elected. He is arguably different from Donald J. Trump in that Trump is not a party hack—he is an equal opportunity narcissist who will say anything no matter how wildly implausible—Stop the Steal, for instance,—to keep himself in the spotlight and in power.
Fortunately, it is beginning to look like both of these guys are headed for the ash heap of history. Trump’s January 6 rioters are starting to settle into the jail cells they so richly earned. And Trump himself appears to be losing sway among elected Republicans and the base voters silly enough to believe him. Perhaps the Republican Party will begin to gravitate toward sanity, but the jury is still out on that one.
The Democrats will almost certainly be shellacked in November. They could easily lose 50 seats in the House and with them their small majority. If there is a wave election, which looks increasingly likely, they will lose the Senate as well. There is nothing like a solid trouncing to bring a party to reacquaint itself with reality.
In 2023 both parties are going to have to think long and hard about growing up. The one that grows up first will win in 2024.
JFB
