By almost every metric ever invented to describe politics, economies, and governments, Joe Biden is well below par as a president of the United States. But it is worth considering, given the depths to which his presidency has sunk whether he is actually the problem here. Yes, the gaffes are embarrassing, and yes, we don’t actually know who is “allowing” him to take questions or not. But in terms of running the country the problem is not Joe Biden. The Problem is the Democrat Party.
Let’s try a thought experiment. Excluding the oddball outsiders like Andrew Yang, Mike Bloomberg, and Tulsi Gabbard, which major candidate who stood on a primary debate stage with Biden in 2020 would be doing better, or would be doing anything at all differently? Pete Buttigieg? Kamala Harris? Corey Booker? With Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren things would likely be much further off the rails than they are under Biden.
If you list the major issues of the day, otherwise known as the litany of Biden failures, you have inflation, the border, energy prices, education, hysterical COVID-19 policies, crime and protecting women’s sports. Is there a single one of these issues in regard to which any major Democrat in the White House would be doing anything substantively different than what this administration is doing? It sure doesn’t seem like it; in fact they have been cheerleaders for Biden.
Elon Musk titillated his new toy Twitter this week with a meme showing that since 2012 the American Left has gone far Left while the Right stayed in roughly the same place. Arguments ensued about who had really changed, but this all rather misses the point. The real problem is that Left and Right used to be points on a spectrum of a shared political philosophy, a basic American political philosophy that balanced democracy and the common good with individual liberty. The Democrat Party, through concepts like “equity,” has abandoned that balance entirely.
The difference between equity and equality is that the latter refers to opportunity, while the former refers to outcomes. Democrats disingenuously frame every issue in this way. Student loan forgiveness, they claim, provides more equitable outcomes for black and brown college grads, even though it’s a regressive benefit. Lowering incarceration rates by setting criminals free is “ending systemic racism” even though it’s black and brown kids who get killed by the criminals. Transgender ideology must be taught to 6 years olds to protect transgender youth, even though there is strong evidence of social contagion that is confusing our kids.
Even in combating disinformation our new Ministry of Truth Tzar Nina Jankowicz has stressed how important online content moderation, or censorship, is to protecting “marginalized communities.” Marginalized communities are like a magic wand to Democrats. Whatever hairbrained scheme they come up with they defend on the basis of some phantom benefit to “marginalized communities.”
Clearly whatever cloistered cabal is twisting Biden’s Foosball handles behind closed doors is completely on board with everything listed above. Almost any other Democrat in their clutches would be clobbered in the polls and the country would be no better off. What this potentially leaves is a huge, wide open political lane for a very small and shrinking number of Democrats who have not yet entirely devoted themselves to wokeness on the record. Those ranks include Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, maybe even disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. None of these seem to be very likely 2024 candidates for president right now, but if the red wave really crests high atop the Capitol in November, that could change.
The Democrat Party is facing an existential crisis unlike any in decades, at least. The institution of the Democrat Party and the institutions which support it, like teacher’s unions, and progressive billionaire PACs, live in an echo chamber completely cut off from the voters who are abandoning their party like the cops showed up.
If the expected losses in November materialize for America’s oldest political party, this problem of institutional insularity is only going to get worse. That’s because the Democrats who lose seats will be more moderate than the bright blue members of the far Left in Democrat forever districts. If there is some personality or political alignment that can get the Democrats out of this death spiral it is not apparent just at the moment.
Joe Biden ran for president promising to be the most progressive president in history, and so far he is. Let it nevermore be said that “real progressivism has never been tried…” because here it is folks. Not a joke. The administration has taken a progressive policy approach to nearly every inch of the executive branch’s portfolio. The result in almost every case has been disaster. We can wish for a Joe Biden of years gone by – a neoliberal, moderate, Catholic Democrat who really no longer exists – a Bob Casey Sr. But that Joe Biden is long gone. The party is the president, today. And the party will reap the ill fruits of its failures.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.