The next two months of partisan warfare will be the ugliest in recent memory…
Protests, riots, and looting have been occurring regularly for months. They are likely to get worse as the election gets closer.
America’s national political conversation is focused on coercing and destroying the opposition rather than any kind of movement to persuade the other side. There are even rumors and the occasional editorial piece that express concerns that the peaceful transition of power may not be a foregone conclusion in 2020. These are tense times.
But this scorched-earth mentality has been building for four years…
The Democrat party has convinced itself that whatever it takes to beat President Donald Trump is inherently justified. And Trump and his supporters, for their part, think the stakes are nothing less than the devolution of America into a socialist dystopia if the Democrats win. This is not a recipe for a happy nation in 2021.
Sitting in the background as all of this plays out is a man whose mental state is of equally fierce partisan discussion: Joe Biden.
It wasn’t always so. As recently as the Democrat presidential primary a year ago, even liberal journalists were willing to say out loud that Joe Biden was clearly past his prime.
Vanity Fair noted that listening to Biden was “like watching a young child wobbling without training wheels, except there’s no progress and the stakes are higher.”
CNN labeled him “a shadow of the witty, vibrant politician who fired off zingers in his debates under intense scrutiny earlier in the 21st century.”
And the New York Times went even deeper…
He takes circuitous routes to the ends of sentences, if he finishes them at all. He sometimes says the opposite of what he means (“I would eliminate the capital gains tax – I would raise the capital gains tax” he said in this month’s debate). He has mixed up countries, cities and dates, embarked on off-message asides and sometimes he simply cuts himself off.
For a man who has lived his entire life in the public eye, it’s impossible to miss Joe’s habit of saying things that are barely coherent and often absurd.
For a man who has lived his entire life in the public eye, it’s impossible to miss Joe’s habit of saying things that are barely coherent and often absurd.
While he was serving as No. 2 under President Barack Obama, these weaknesses were apparent, but it was far easier for the national media to cover up or ignore. While the vice president may be a heartbeat away from the presidency, as long as that heart keeps beating, the VP is mostly a walking, talking life insurance policy for the executive branch. Depending on the administration, the VP can become a serious player in policy or get relegated to the ceremonial and mundane.
Nobody really remembers much in the way of accomplishments for Biden during his eight years as VP. The most important part of his portfolio – foreign policy – was an unmitigated disaster for both of Obama’s terms. Originally, the Obama team picked Biden as VP because of his decades in the Senate handling foreign affairs. That his record showed a man who was reliably, consistently, and egregiously wrong on every major foreign policy question of the past 30 years didn’t seem to make a difference.
And don’t forget that Biden has been an also-ran in presidential politics, too…
His first attempt was in 1988, when the Soviet Union still clung to its last gasps of global power and the coolest gadget you could have was a Walkman. It was an ignominious run… collapsing in accusations of resumé inflation and speech plagiarism. He claimed to have marched in the Civil Rights movement, only later to admit that no, he hadn’t actually marched in it.
Fans of Biden politely call his tendency to make stuff up about himself “embellishments.” Lies would be more accurate.
Biden ran for president again in 2007, and unable to get past fifth place in the Democrat primary, dropped out. He was never able to get more than 1% of the primary vote. His name in the polls was right alongside bizarre curiosities in the Democrat field like Dennis Kucinich, a man whose biggest contribution to the election was introducing the concept of a “United States Department of Peace” to work against the Pentagon.
Biden was a third-tier politician with a fourth-tier mind until the Obama team needed a known quantity to add a little bit of foreign policy experience.
Now Biden wants the top job again… and he may get it.
Despite the surge of socialists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren during the 2019 primary, the Democrat faithful went with Joe Biden at the last minute. He’s the quintessential middling senator from Delaware, his clear limitations somehow failing to limit his rise. His campaign has been a tightly scripted, stage-managed presentation, mostly from the Biden basement in Delaware. Public contact with candidate Biden is strictly controlled by his handlers. If he wins the presidency, he will take office at 78 years of age.
For most of the Trump opposition, none of this seems to matter. Biden is not Trump, and that’s good enough for them. The signs of cognitive decline, lack of a meaningful political platform, and hyper-controlled campaign are a price that must be paid to get Trump out of office.
There’s also a widespread belief in political circles – one that Democrats won’t say aloud for fear of scaring off independents and swing voters in key states – that Biden would be a Trojan horse candidate for the far-left agenda of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democrat hardliners. More likely is that his imminent pick for VP will represent the real hopes and dreams of the Democrats, as one-termer Biden becomes a bridge presidency for his just-announced vice presidential pick Kamala Harris.
Few will remember the predictions of today come November, but observations have a longer shelf life. One that is difficult to avoid, whatever one’s politics, is the most straightforward of all: Joe Biden is not up for this, and his supporters simply don’t care.
Buck Sexton is host of the nationally syndicated talk radio program, The Buck Sexton Show, heard on more than 100 stations across the country. He’s also a former CIA and NYC police department intelligence officer.
