Have Republicans for Biden Given Us the Worst Possible World?
One Year Later and the Decision to Back Biden Appears to Have Delayed, Not Stopped a Second Donald Trump Presidency
The debate raged throughout 2020 as to what those on the right who were not on board with Trumpism would do. Should those who had issues with Trump back him anyway to stop the Democrats, vote for Biden to end Trump’s reign, or just sit it out or cast a protest vote.
I was on record where I stood:
Yet, there were plenty on the right who backed Trump. And there were some good conservatives who decided Trump was far more dangerous and voted for Biden.
Yet there were many people who voted for Biden, I couldn’t go with them, but I could understand their reasoning:
\I’ve made it clear that I don’t think there’s a point to issuing political excommunications based on how people voted in 2020. Politics is about building coalitions and politics is about addidition not subtraction.
That said, sometimes a strategy doesn’t work and it has to be said, so that people don’t go down the same path again.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a tricky proposition, however you frame it. It assumes a lot about your ability to discern all the consequences of the lesser evil.
I think that on January 6th, Republicans who voted for Biden had a good case they voted for the lesser of two evils. Someone who would do what Trump did and spend two months fueling baseless conspiracy theories and lies and invite Americans to the Capitol to stir them up to disrupt the certification of the electors was unfit for a second term without the fear of facing the American voter.
Could anything be worse?
Thanks to the Biden Administration, we may find out. President Biden had an awful week, which capped a miserable five months that began with his dishonorable withdrawal from Afghanistan. Inflation is raging out of control. So too, is COVID, thanks to new variants, and the Administration’s failure with testing and with cutting red tape for life-saving drugs.
Then came an awful speech comparing opponents of his voting rights bills to Jefferson Davis and George Wallace. Jonah Goldberg gave the speech a savage takedown. Among other things he cited was the President’s own inaugural:
We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. For without unity there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you we will not fail. We have never ever, ever, failed in America when we’ve acted together.
Less than a year after that, Biden is little more than an old man ranting impotently in order to appease young left-wing progressives on an issue that’s not America’s priorities.
Even when it comes to the defense of democratic norms, the Democrats have spent most of the year focused on a swing for the fences plan that doesn’t have the votes and has done nothing to reform the Electoral Count Act which was the big “legal basis” for the Electoral vote challenge.
President Biden has done one thing to prevent another January 6th-style coup attempt other than governing so poorly that Trump has a legitimate chance of winning outright in a rematch.
What could be worse than Trump winning a second term where he didn’t have to worry about facing voters again in 2020? Biden giving the country a horrendous term and Trump winning the same sort of term in 2024. If Trump wins in 2024, it’ll likely be with a large sycophantic GOP Majority in Congress. People of conscience who have opposed his lunacy are being pushed out of the party and out of Congress. A GOP where people like Liz Cheney (R-Wyo) are replaced by soulless hacks like Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is going to be so much more compliant and reverent than the sort of Congress would have faced in 2021. In addition, Mike Pence, will be replaced by someone who with even less integrity.
Heck of a job, pro-Biden Republicans.
I get why people voted for Biden. Anyone who says that the only reason people didn’t vote for Trump is that they didn’t like the “mean tweets” is either an idiot or playing one on social media. President Trump has no loyalty to the country, the Constitution, or anyone but himself. Him being the most powerful man on Earth. He was dangerous in the White House, and a second term would have been dangerous. But he’ll be even more dangerous come 2025 if the only choice is Biden and his lackluster demagogic party.
It’s time for some hard truths:
The Truth About Joe Biden
Biden is temperamentally unfit for the presidency. There were signs of this during the campaign with his insult to voters, in one instance, he called one voter a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” and in another, he insulted a voter’s physical condition and called him “fat.”
Biden is not the generally nasty person Trump is, but he has a nasty streak that has come out way too often during this Presidency and his speech in Georgia is just an illustration of that. Being more decent and presidential than Donald Trump is a low bar to clear and it’s not enough, certainly not to”heal the soul of America” or “defend norms.”
The President is not moderate, although his default stances make him seem so compared to the far left. His policies on a variety of social and economic issues are radically to the left. Socialism? No. But bankrupting the country and imposing radical social agendas. Yes.
The Truth About the Democratic Party
First of all, most Americans who are registered Democrats are just ordinary reasonable people, living their lives, doing the best they can.
The Democratic Party elected officials, the Democratic Party activist class is something else. The base of the party is a mix of grifting interests such as public employees unions, Democratic Socialists of America types, and socially liberal business interests.
The Democratic Party leadership is consumed with trying to keep these groups happy Many Democrats live in fear of the radical illiberal tactics of far leftists. It’s part of the reason why we’re told by the media that a lot of Senate Democrats agree with Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) but won’t speak up and leaves them to twist in the wind.
As a whole, the Democratic Party leadership and activists don’t care about the Constitution or about democracy. They care about getting their own way on policy and will use “democracy” as a pretext to demand the things they want. If Democrats were “pro-Democracy” they wouldn’t have offered frivolous challenges to electors in the last three Republican presidential victories.
Think about this. House Democrats won a vote to call witnesses in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial However, they ended up calling no witnesses to really expose what had happened. The reason? Biden Ally Senator Chris Coons (D-De) told the Chief House Impeachment Manager people wanted to go home for Valentine’s Day.
So understand that in terms of Democratic priorities, preserving democracy ranks somewhere below enjoying a long Valentines Day weekend.
It’s also funny that many socially conservative or moderate folks will put aside their own views to support “Democrats” and democracy. When’s the last time you saw someone on the left putting the breaks on their radical agendas so that they can build a wide coalition “for Democracy?”
It’s almost as if they don’t think “saving Democracy” is actually more important than their big culture war goals.
This is also like the columns that proliferate the Bulwark in which people on the right give Democrats good, solid advice to be moderate, reasonable and build winning coalitions. ‘
Pieces like Charlie Sykes suggestion of four Sister Souljah moments Joe Biden needs to have are written with the assumption that they are writing to receptive political friends, who will see their missives as the sage advice of allies and give them due consideration.
It’s sad.
I feel like breaking out my best Doctor Phil imitation and telling them, “They don’t love you! They’re never going to love you! They don’t care what you think!”*
3. Policy Matters
I get the idea that the 2020 election was seen as “not about policy” but the problem is that policy matters and it moves voters.
Many on the Bulwark spectrum, people like Project Lincoln or Republican Accountability Project imagine that they’ll have an army of people ready to take a break from caring about policy until they’re sure Democracy is safe.
There’s a big problem with that. Policy drives so many of the votes that go to Donald Trump. Many have bought into totalizing narratives about people who like the cruelty or racists or kooks backing Donald Trump. And while you can find a lot of those people backing Trump, that’s not enough to explain him winning one presidential election and coming close to winning another.
It’s also not why the Democrats are being abandonned in droves by people from working class backgrounds of all stripes. People are upset about inflation. They may not have solutions, but they know the Democrats aren’t working for them.
Some are quite unsympathetic like ex-Republican Tom Nichols who mocks voters concerned about inflation:
The best thing to say about this is that it shows what Marie Antoinette’s Twitter account would have looked like had she had one. Obviously, inflation (brought about by decdes of bi-partisan over-spending) has had very negative consequenes beyond such trivialities, which shows a bit of an ivory tower approach by man of these folks.
It’s unintentionally hilarious. They demand support for democracy as an abstraction:
Voters: I want to vote for a government that represents my views, priorities, values, and interests.
Bulwark Conservatives: Don’t do that! You need to support democracy!
Democracy as a mere abstraction isn’t sustainable. People support democratic ideals and systems when they believe they work or can work. When citizens believe that Democracy’s not workable, they’ll abandon it for something else.
Let me preach the same message again. America desperately needs a new political party that will advocate policies to address issues that voters truly care about in a non-Trumpist way. Until we get actual solutions, any effort is a very passive attempt that’s really doomed to fail because of the flaws of both Republicans or Democracts.
At this point, no one seems ready to tae the steps necessary to do that because of the challenges of starting a third party. THose within the GOP such as Liz Cheney or Peter Meijer site it for staying Republicans, while others cite it as why we all need to vote Democrat. Both parties are broken beyond repair and need replaced and if we fail to do that. the Republic is in danger of falling. Yet, it seems that political activists on all sides of this issue would rather see it fall rather than the challenge the current two parties.
Letting the country fail to save the two parties is ludicrous.
Though, I will say it’s a better excuse than wanting off for Valentine’s Day.
My Opponents are All Hitler (Florida Edition):
When I think of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fl), I think of him as an unprincipled politician who has used his time as Governor of Florida to prep for Presidential run by playing to the GOP base of vaccine skeptics, etc. He’s a very smart man who plays to people he thinks of as stupider. He’s like Ted Cruz only less obnoxious and possessing political instincts.
One thing I don’t think of? Hitler. But one of DeSantis’ Democratic opponents, State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried went there in a recent interview.
It’s an absolutely ludicrous and offensive statement by Fried. Mayeb she got inspired by Biden’s speech? Her clean up of the statement makes it worse:
So Hitler or you know any historical example that floats yours boat.
The idea that Hitler’s interchangable with any other historical bad guy is a problematic, particularly for a state that’s known for it’s high number of Jewish retirees.
I think the chances of her being elected are zero. To be fair, any Democrat’s going to have a hard time with this year looking to be a GOP wave election. However, I could see the national environment moving slightly towards the Democrats and them able to run against him for using his office as a way to please Republican Primary voters rather than serve the people of Florida. However for that to work, the Democrats would need someone serious and level-headed that peoplee could trust to do the job. This statement is so over the top, I doubt voters can see Fried that way.
*Also Joe Biden is incapable of a Sister Souljah moment.