Ellen, one of my most loyal readers, says I make an unfair assumption when, in my last post, I wrote:
What’s more, it is highly doubtful that Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or any other Democratic presidential wannabe would have responded any earlier or more effectively [to the coronavirus pandemic], given their obsession with “racism,” “bigotry,” and “xenophobia.”
This obsession likely would have prevented a Democratic president from acknowledging Chinese culpability early on and then confronting China.
But as I pointed out in the piece, I don’t think this requires any great leap of faith or logic, given what Biden, Sanders, and other leading Democratic officeholders said (and did not say) when the coronavirus first emerged as a public health concern here in the United States—and “given the Democrats’ obsession with ‘racism,’ ‘bigotry,’ and ‘xenophobia.’”
I should have included that first italicized thought in the piece, and have since updated the post accordingly. Still, even without that specific thought, the argument—and the evidence—is there, I think.
Democrats MIA. Simply put, back in January and February, when it became increasingly apparent that the coronavirus was a ticking time bomb waiting to happen, top Democrats, like Trump, were slow to recognize the problem. Dave Seminara observes in the Wall Street Journal, for instance, that:
Democratic candidates held five televised debates, lasting nearly 11 hours from Jan. 14 through March 15. They offered no policy proposals that haven’t already been enacted and said little about the virus in the four events in January and February…
At no point during any of the debates did a Democratic candidate suggest that the country should have been locked down or taken other social-distancing measures sooner.
As Arthur Conan Doyle observed: “It is easy to be wise after the event.”
On the other hand, it it is true that, as Tony Blinken observes, Biden said this in the Feb. 25, 2020, Democratic presidential debate:
I would be on the phone with China and making it clear: “We are going to need to be in your country. You have to be open; you have to be clear; we have to know what’s going on. We have to be there with you.” And insist on it—and insist, insist, insist.
Blinken is Biden’s senior foreign policy adviser. He served as Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy National Security Adviser for Obama.
In this Biden campaign video, Blinken makes a compelling indictment of Trump for being soft on China. However, his case for Biden’s prescience re: the coronavirus is much weaker.
Yes, Biden made this one tough comment about insisting on access to China. However, to the best of my knowledge, it is one comment made in isolation, and it lacks follow-through in anything else Biden has said.
Moreover, a month before Biden sounded off (once) against China, Trump already had established his coronavirus task force, while declaring COVID-19 a public health emergency.
Trump already had imposed his so-called China travel ban; and, two days earlier (Feb. 23), he had requested a $2.5 billion supplemental specifically to combat the coronavirus.
Biden, meanwhile, reports Robert C. O’Brien in the Wall Street Journal
criticized the president’s “xenophobia” and “fear-mongering.” He stressed that “diseases have no borders.” It took until April 3 for Mr. Biden to do a 180 and come out in support of the president’s travel restriction.
O’Brien is Trump’s National Security Adviser.
Democrats’ obsession with “racism,” “bigotry,” and “xenophobia” is a real problem: it distorts their thinking and prevents them from seeing clearly looming threats, both domestically and internationally.
And even the toughest-minded Democrats can’t help but be adversely affected because they have to work within the confines of a political party obsessed with, and paralyzed by, racialist thinking and racialist modes of analysis.
Note, for instance, that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s first response was to attack Trump’s China travel restrictions as “just an excuse [for the president] to further his ongoing war against immigrants.”
Biden, moreover, bizarrely is being accused now of “racism” and “xenophobia” because of a perfectly legitimate campaign ad that says Trump “rolled over for the Chinese.”
Massachusetts Democrat Seth Moulton, likewise, withdrew his support of a bipartisan congressional resolution condemning China’s coronavirus response “following criticism that it played in President Donald Trump’s attempts to blame China for the global pandemic,” reports Boston.com.
Moulton is a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War and a promising national security hawk within the Democratic Party. Yet, even he felt compelled to apologize (!) for supporting this bipartisan Congressional resolution condemning China’s communist dictatorial regime.
Incredible—but, sadly, unsurprising. Moulton faces a “progressive” primary challenge and knows he must toe the line. The far left, after all, rules the Democratic Party and composes the lyrics which Moulton, Biden, and other center-left Dems must sing—or else.
Then, of course, there is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who downplayed the threat of the coronavirus during a Feb. 24 walking tour of San Francisco’s Chinatown, ostensibly because she wanted to combat… yes, you guessed it: “racism” and “discrimination”!
The bottom line: although Trump was slow to recognize that the coronavirus was a public health emergency which required strong and decisive preventative action, there is little reason to think his Democratic opponents, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, would have responded any earlier or more effectively.
And a big reason for this is the Dems’ inability to forthrightly confront threats when doing so might invite the wrath of the PC police and bring down upon them the dreaded, albeit utterly false, charge of “racism,” “bigotry,” and “xenophobia.”
Consequently, they cannot be trusted to protect America and defend Americans.
Feature photo: CNN.
