What’s The Significance Of Team Biden’s Apocalypto On Wednesday?
I didn’t watch President Joe Biden’s 20-minute harangue against Republicans – excuse me, mega-MAGA Republicans, or whatever stupid epithet he flung at his political detractors – on Wednesday night. I didn’t need to; I already knew what he was going to say after I’d seen his press flack Karine Jean-Pierre doling out the hatred for the new brand of conservatism during the daily press gaggle.
And I heard the same crap out of the mouth of Hillary Clinton as well the day before…
This is the Democrats’ closing narrative. They can’t use racism, which has been their go-to over the last several cycles, because there are so many black and Hispanic Republican candidates in congressional races who are poised to win. And they can’t talk about policy at all – the only thing on the policy front they thought they had going was abortion, but the more they pushed on that issue the more they found out two things they didn’t like: (1) it turns out that even among the suburban white women abortion is supposed to be the magic app for landing at the ballot box, it pales as an issue to things like inflation and crime, and (2) the Democrats’ core position on abortion is that instead of advocating for “safe, legal and rare,” which used to do well for them, it’s now “any time, all the time, and free.” That is a fringe position more than 80 percent of Americans disagree with, and so the public looks at the new post-Roe reality and feels reasonably comfortable, after a fashion, with state control of abortion. Perhaps there will be a federal backstop to that 10th Amendment-friendly reality, perhaps not, but it’s certainly better than forcing the rest of America to emulate the radical abortion regime of New York and California.
So they’re running out of options, and rather than trying to grab a slice of the middle they’ve decided an apocalyptic screeching is the slant they’re going to take as the midterms loom large.
I’ve wondered before whether screechy television addresses are simply all Joe Biden, in his diminished state, has left, and therefore the White House has decided to just roll with it rather than attempting to jam a square peg into a round hole.
But after Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I’ve changed my mind.
I don’t completely agree with Andy Hogue, whose post today at RVIVR is a must-read, but I think he’s definitely on to something. Andy says the Left is planning to respond to next week’s catastrophe with a new commitment to lulling America to sleep by assuming the role of the nice guys in politics, and he gives lots of examples of that. I think that’s definitely something bubbling up to the surface right now, as lots of Democrat political consultants have been talking about how preachy, screechy leftists are becoming a problem for their party. Even Barack Obama, who’s as preachy and screechy as they come when he wants to be, lamented not long ago that Democrats can be a “buzzkill.” And Andy is right that Obama, after decrying the “threat to Democracy” the GOP represents in a Michigan speech, then acted passive and aggrieved when a heckler disrupted his address.
Kevin Boyd also has a must-read post here at RVIVR on this topic of fear as the chief message on the Democrat side, noting that “our Democracy” is in the lurch if a democratic result turns Democrats out of office. It’s incredibly dumb messaging, but they’re unquestionably committed to it.
I’m going to deliberately ignore the part of Biden’s Wednesday night ramblings where he suggested folks should be patient if it takes a few days to count the votes. Some have taken that as a tell that Democrats are planning to steal another election. After all, you have key Senate and/or gubernatorial races in basically all of the same states you had problems in during the last cycle – Georgia, Michigan (governor’s race), Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin and Arizona. And prior to the 2020 presidential election Biden bragged he had the best “voter fraud operation” ever, which seemed like a gaffe but actually might have been a careless disclosure of the truth.
Instead, I’m going to say that was just babbling. At the moment it looks like it would be a lot harder to make stick the kinds of shenanigans that went on in 2020 this time, though Pennsylvania is going to be suspicious until it isn’t.
What I took from the parts of Biden’s speech, plus the utterances of Jean-Pierre and Clinton was the same conclusion that Bob Aderholt, the Alabama Republican congressman, came to on The Jeff Poor Show earlier this week on Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5.
“The problem is – is now you have such a large faction in the Democrat Party that are so far to the left that they unwilling to do that. Back when Bill Clinton — he did moderate some and did work with Republicans after Republicans took control in 1994. But I just think at this juncture, you have got so much pressure that is going on the Biden administration, you know, like the Elizabeth Warrens and the Bernie Sanders – there is a large contingency there across the country. Now they’re not a majority, but they’re very vocal.”
“I think they’re putting so much pressure on Biden and his administration that they just don’t have any room to go there,” Aderholt continued. “So, I would be very surprised, and this is my prediction, this is just my thoughts entirely – but I would be very surprised if the Biden administration is willing to do much work with a Republican Congress.”
I’ll go further than Aderholt. I think not only is there no plan for Team Biden to work with Republicans in Congress, I think this militant narrative signals something a lot uglier. I think this screeching is a sign that they’re conceding this midterm, and they know they’re going to be looking at a big GOP majority in the House, at least 240 seats and probably more, and now it’s at least a 53-47 GOP spread in the Senate and, with Don Bolduc pulling ahead in New Hampshire and even surprising strength in Colorado and Washington it’s starting to become possible the Senate majority could even be as much as 56-44.
I think they know this is coming and they’re powerless to stop it, and I think they’re seeing so much weakness in key constituencies like Hispanics and Asians and even within black voters (and particularly younger black males) that they realize the urban machines simply can’t help them paper over their deficiencies.
They don’t think they can stop this wave, or survive it. And they’ve given up trying. You don’t use the kind of screechy rhetoric calling the other guys a bunch of fascists and threats to democracy if you’re actually trying to persuade undecided voters, because it’s not persuasive.
So what this signifies is something Andy suggested, which is that they’re going to attempt to paint a GOP majority on Capitol Hill as intransigent and their supporters as nuts and terrorists while attempting to stonewall them and act on that characterization to put the country on a crisis footing.
In other words, the idiotic narratives about white nationalist terrorists get blown up even more, and the FBI is sent out to do more SWAT raids and arrests of ordinary Americans who dissent from Team Biden’s governance. And the more the GOP in Congress protests the more it’s all sold as an “insurrection” and a continuation of January 6.
Which, you understand, the American people are already fed up with and have not responded to. It’s a stupid play on their part, but they’ve convinced themselves they’re right and they’ve also fallen in love with cancel culture as a way of winning arguments by forfeit.
And what’s more, they think the GOP leadership in the House and Senate isn’t made of stern enough stuff to stand up to it. They think Republicans will roll over and not have the backs of the conservative activists Team Biden will be going after.
They think that because Team Biden is Team Obama, and they remember how they were able to crush the Tea Party without so much as a peep from the GOP on Capitol Hill in retaliation. Experience tells them that if they first warn America that these are bad people, and then do bad things to them while acting as though they’d like to turn down the temperature, they’ll be able to sink the MAGA/revivalist movement inside the GOP like they did the Tea Party.
I’m going to say it won’t work because there are simply too many Lauren Boeberts, Jim Jordans and Josh Hawleys now, and the new breed is not going to allow their own voters to be persecuted. But Team Biden is going to try it. And they’re going to turn the next two years into an even uglier political trench war than we’ve seen yet.
Clearly, they will. That disaster of a speech signaled it loud and clear.
