Things staying as they are, the Democrats will lose the 2020 election. Republican voters will come out more passionately and in greater numbers than we have seen in recent times. With the Democratic party moving radically to the left of American politics, and the discussion of social politics sinking into grievance politics, independents will face immense pressure to hold their noses and pick the Donald again, because they will be faced between a choice of the devil and the deep blue sea, and you know how we hearken to the devil we know. Here’s a candidate-by-candidate series, starting with Uncle Joe, about how they’re all going to leave us feeling like we’ve drowned.
The election of Donald Trump upended all political norms. Anything any politico understood about the political makeup and understanding of American politics got thrown out the window on that ominous November night. This grasping of political understanding is now so up in the air that voters are getting tricked into thinking Joe Biden is a good candidate. When offered the option of Biden in the past, they overwhelmingly rejected him. He could never break double digits in a single primary, he squandered his political goodwill through hamfisted gaffs, and he made a general embarrassment of himself and his reputation. The greatest thing to ever happen in his career is his selection as the vice-president for the first “mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”, and in the story of Biden, that selection was “storybook”.
Joe Biden – Where to even begin.
Anyone in touch with the realities of politics and with any kind of historical memory will understand immediately and abundantly why Joe Biden is a terrible candidate. Let’s ignore the low hanging fruit of his inappropriate touching of women in a manner he’d never touch men, and instead just stick with policy (because that’s how American politics work, case you didn’t know. Ignore the par-for-the-course sexual assault, just focus on the politics). Biden lives in the Obama halo, and we are thus blinded to all else but those halcyon days. One would think Biden’s political career began mid-08 based on the current campaign, but this focus ignores most of his political career and glosses over the flaws of his time in executive office.
So let’s start there. Perhaps nobody shoulders more of the burden in the Obama administration for the situation in Iraq, other than Obama himself and the joint-chiefs, than ol’ Joe. In an effort to make amends for his initial voting for the war in the first place (and in a move of brilliantly cynical political calculation), Obama famously gave Biden the reins on ending things in Iraq, and oh boy did he. Joe Biden pulled out of Iraq about as successfully as the football team’s captain on prom night, and now the world has to deal with the unwanted pregnancy that is ISIS. This is not my own bias, but the words of senior officials in foreign affairs on all sides of the political divide. Robert Gates, former SecDef for both Bush and Obama says it best of Biden: “He’s a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis. Still, I think he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” As the ranking member on the foreign relations committee from ‘97 onwards, Biden took a clear position on most every foreign policy and national security issue since. I understand the political bias of appointees such as Gates, but even still, that’s quite the insult to bear.
His time in the Senate brings even more trouble. As head of the judiciary committee, Biden took point for a while on the “War on Drugs”. During this time, Biden co-wrote the law that created the harsh penalty difference between crack and powder cocaine. For you ignorant honkeys who don’t know, this disparity contributed excessively to the over-incarceration of blacks over whites at an exponentially greater rate, as crack cocaine existed prevalently in only the poor, and specifically black (and I mean SPECIFICALLY black, look it up), communities. To his credit, he has since seen the error of his ways, but is that enough? He also happened to oversee the famous overhaul of the criminal justice system under the Clinton administration that increased police officers, prisons, and sentencing of criminals across the United States, a large contributor to the current dysfunctional police state. No politician –particularly Democrat– in modern times owes more of an explanation for the current state of the criminal justice system than he, save for perhaps Bill Clinton himself.
The last point I want to reference regarding Biden, and trust me I could write all day on this, is that he oversaw the Clarence Thomas hearing, specifically the questioning of Anita Hill. I encourage all my readers to look into this more for themselves, but here’s my summary. There is a very real reason that the first thing he did in this presidential election is try and look for her acceptance of his apology, an apology she pointedly did not accept. Tasked with handling the hearing through the Senate as chair of judiciary committee, Biden sought an easy, calm process to ensure no repeats of the disaster with Bork’s appointment a few years earlier. Replacing Thurgood Marshall on the court, it seemed a near certainty that the replacement would be another black man to ensure the continued representation (lol, of course it’s only the race they worry about representing. Women? Who dat?). Clarence Thomas was the only black Republican justice they could find adequate to replace him (trust me, he wasn’t, he just so happened to be the only black Republican judge on the national level), so off to the races we went. All seemed to be going fine until Hill’s revelations of sexual abuse leaked. His hand forced, Biden had to let Hill have her moment to speak, but she only agreed to speak on the condition that she would not be the only witness. To be a lone woman –black woman at that– standing in opposition to the entirety of the Republican power-elite is a dangerous and fraught position, a limelight she did not desire to stand in alone for the sake of her own safety and life. Four other women came forward to confirm Hill’s allegations, confirming the sexual aggression Hill suffered. Biden agreed to let all four women present their case to the nation, and then let congress decide. Hill spoke first. Biden then betrayed her. In a backroom deal with Senate Republicans, Biden denied the other four women their chance to speak. Arguing that it would just sink into a debate on personal ethics, Biden instead sought to remove the entire debacle from national conversation and thus delegitimize Hill’s testimony. Biden agreed to let Thomas speak not just before Hill in the hearing, but also after she spoke. This allowed Thomas the right to defend himself before she spoke by disparaging her character, and after her allegations by giving him a chance to fully defend himself, an opportunity denied to Hill. Biden sacrificed Anita Hill for political expediency and cordiality with his Republican colleagues. He offered Anita Hill as a sacrifice to appease his base, in order that he defend the good-nature of the senate. This good-nature would then become completely soured and thrown out the window with the ascent of Newt Gingrich in the house, and the takeover of outrage politics by the right(the same outrage politics we now see being exploited by politicians on the left). In my mind, this stain on his record speaks volumes towards his “let’s all work together” ethos.
Herein lies the great Biden flaw. He’s old, and carries with him all the accumulated sins of the modern Democratic party. It may be “woke” now, but it slept through much of the late 20th century, and Biden helped soothe it to sleep more than nearly anyone else. Permanently hampered by the weight of ambition, Biden made sure to involve himself in the highest levels of Democratic policies, and so now must be held to account as we review the legacy.
The Democrats, largely under Bill Clinton but beginning beforehand, abandoned its left-leaning legacy for political power, and in these current primaries is being held to account for that–in modern times– original sin. The conservative baseline of modern American politics is conservative only because democrats abandoned the left side of the field. Unheard and ignored for decades, the left now comes again into the fore and demands a seat at the table, a table that Biden long helped keep too occupied for the leftist presence.
Biden represents more than nearly anyone else running today on either side, except maybe Bill Weld, the political elite. He fully embodies that which Trump opposed and claimed to want to overthrow. So long in power, Biden is truly disconnected from the realities of American daily life, which is why he continually calls himself middle class Joe. He wants us to believe his story in favor of his reality. He attempts to gaslight America into thinking that he is a common man, one of us, the people.
Biden leads the party because he’s familiar, and because we want to go back to the times before it all, before Trump, and radical change, and the need for political engagement by all individuals. We want to go back to the time when we could turn politics off and get on with our daily lives, and Joe Biden seems to represent that. Yet this is a false pretense. When it comes time to look closely and vote, the makeup will easily wipe from Biden’s veneer, and we shall see beneath the facade the cause of our modern political woes. The right shall paint Biden as Hillary 2.0, and the moniker shall fit. They two candidates both spent their political lives battling for the liberal international order as seen by the technocrats, and they shall be duly lynched by the mob because of it. The great sin of the democratic party in modern times pushed for globalization as the cost of their fellow Americans. Too much, too fast, they left too many behind, and the Republicans have sucked them up ever since. These fruits only fully come to bear now, and the voters will see that Biden smells rotten. All that floats him now is nostalgia, and nostalgia’s the bread-and-butter of Trump. Biden seems to me one of the weakest candidates for this election that I can imagine.
Up next, Senator Kamala H.
Editor’s thoughts: Anyone who caught the second democratic debate got a sense that there are some demons hidden (but not deep enough) in Joe Biden’s closet, particularly when dealing with race. This is just shining a small flashlight on that closet to reveal some of those demons to the American public. (Also blame the picture on the writer)