America survived Bill Clinton and Barack Obama because the Democratic Party then was center-left. But America likely will not survive Joe Biden because the Democratic Party has become radicalized and is now a “progressive” or socialist party.
Many center-right voters who don’t like Donald Trump’s obnoxious personality and unpresidential behavior are thinking about voting for Joe Biden. Here’s why, and here’s why that would be a serious mistake.
Point. Their thinking goes like this: America survived Bill Clinton; we survived Barack Obama; and we’ll survive Joe Biden. Clinton and Obama were liberal Democrats, after all, and yet, Republicans lived to fight another day.
The republic did not end. Free-market capitalism endured. America remained free and prosperous. Surely, the same thing will happen if Biden is elected president:
Democrats and Republicans will have their policy disagreements, of course; and sometimes one party or the other will win; but we’ll return, at long last, to a state of political normalcy.
Quiet. “The first thing you’ll notice [in a Biden presidency] is the quiet,” writes New York Times columnist David Brooks.
There will be no disgraceful presidential tweets and no furious cable segments reacting to them on Inauguration Day…
It will become immediately clear that in a Biden era politics will shrink back down to normal size. It will be about government programs, not epic wars about why my sort of people are morally superior to your sort of people…
It will also become immediately clear that in a highly ideological age, America will be led by a man who is not ideological.
“I’m sure there are Republicans and independents who couldn’t imagine crossing over to support a Democrat,” said former Ohio Governor John Kasich, Republican, during his Democratic National Convention speech endorsing Biden.
They fear Joe may turn sharp left and leave them behind. I don’t believe that. Because I know the measure of the man—reasonable, faithful, respectful. And you know, no one pushes Joe around.
Counterpoint. Brooks and Kasich are wrong. The idea that a Biden Presidency would be a garden-variety, center-left Democratic administration is badly mistaken and wishful thinking.
To believe this, you have to ignore all of the political and cultural forces that, in the past decade, have been relentlessly driving the Democratic Party further and further to the left:
- Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, George Soros;
- Black Lives Matter, reparations, defund the police;
- the public option, Medicare for all, amnesty, open borders;
- end the filibuster, abolish the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court;
- ban fracking, end fossil fuels, enact the Green New Deal;
- D.C. statehood, Citizens United, Modern Monetary Theory;
- Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, the 1619 project, et al.
In short, the Democratic Party today is far more radical than it was when Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 and significantly more radical than it was when Barack Obama ran for reelection eight years ago in 2012.
Clinton ran for election as a “New Democrat” from the South, and he eschewed the liberal fundamentalism that had dominated his party for more than a generation.
Obama, meanwhile, campaigned as a non-ideological Democrat who rejected labels while espousing “hope and change.”
More importantly, Clinton and Obama ran in a Democratic Party whose center of gravity was well to the right of where it is now.
Today, by contrast, the intellectual ferment and activist energy lies entirely within the “progressive” or socialist wing of the party.
Biden is not a socialist, but that doesn’t matter: He is a weak and physically frail politician who will accommodate the progressive left because he knows no other way and has no other choice. As the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board explains:
What evidence is there today that Mr. Biden will restrain his increasingly radical party? Across his long career he has been the consummate party man, floating right or left with the political tides.
As a presidential candidate this year he has put no particular policy imprint on the Democratic Party—not one. The party has put its stamp on him.
Little wonder, then, that Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and “The Squad” are among Biden’s most fervent supporters. They know he will do their bidding.
Biden, in fact, has tacked left since winning his party’s nomination. Thus last summer he signed a 110-page “unity” manifesto with Bernie Sanders.
The manifesto “envisions the socialism of an all-encompassing welfare state, with virtually every need a right, and every right guaranteed by taxpayer funding,” writes economist (and former Texas Senator) Phil Gramm.
Sanders “may not sit in the Oval Office next year,” notes the Journal, but Mr. Biden will be implementing Bernie’s dreams.”
If the Republicans controlled Congress, or even one branch of the Congress, they might serve as a useful check on a Biden presidency that is otherwise preordained to swerve sharply left. But the reality is that if Biden captures the White House, the Democrats almost certainly will gain control of the Senate.
Our politics have become too polarized for much split-ticket voting. And the Dems are expected to retain control of the House of Representatives.
Clinton and Obama, by contrast, had to contend with a Republican-controlled Congress for six of the eight years that they each were president.
The bottom line: if Biden wins, his administration will be staffed by hardcore progressives working in tandem with the socialist left, both in and out of Congress, to pursue what the Journal rightly calls the most left-wing policy agenda in decades.
Irreversible Socialist Change. Bad public policies, of course, typically can be changed or reversed legislatively by future presidents and future congresses. But if Biden and the Dems take over, that may not be an option.
That is because the progressive left is hellbent on instituting structural “reforms” that will make it impossible for a future Republican president or congress to reverse their radical policy agenda.
- D.C. statehood, for instance, would add two very liberal senators to the Senate, thereby giving Democrats an all-but-guaranteed lock on that legislative body for at least a generation.
- Ending the filibuster would mean that, unlike in our nation’s past, major reform legislation no longer would require bipartisan support and cooperation.
Instead, the Dems could steamroll the Republicans while enacting new and costly tax-and-spend redistribution schemes, including reparations.
- Packing the Supreme Court with “progressive” justices who legislate from the bench would allow Democrats to create new and permanent “rights” for favored classes and reciprocal political and financial obligations for less favored and ostensibly “privileged” Americans.
- Repealing Citizens United would pave the way for the worst legislative and regulatory assault on free speech in American history.
Unprecedented. That is why this election is not like past elections; and it is why electing Biden as president would yield a very different result than what happened when Clinton and Obama were elected. This time, to a real and worrisome extent, America itself is at risk.
Indeed, when the Democrats are done, there likely will be no going back: A dynamic, diverse and freewheeling commercial republic will be replaced by a sclerotic and slow-growing statist democracy with fewer jobs, less opportunity, and more bureaucratic constraints.
Basic Constitutional liberties, such as freedom of speech, religious worship, and the right to bear arms will be under sustained assault. And our national memory and understanding of our political inheritance will wither away as the activists who have toppled statues now implement bureaucratic decrees that erase our nation’s history.
A Defeated Nation. Sure, all of this may happen quietly, as Brooks and others hope or expect. There will be no juvenile, cringe-inducing tweets from a President Biden, as there are too often from President Trump.
But the quietude will reflect the dull and subdued resignation of a tired and aging nation burdened with an entitlement state that it cannot long support and lacking the economic dynamism and cultural wherewithal needed to sustain and support its people.
Moreover, far from making politics a less invasive force in our lives, as Brooks hopes, a Biden presidency instead will extend the reach and influence of Washington, D.C. That, after all, is what the Democrats’ progressive base demands: a more assertive, domineering, and activist federal government.
This will be the “new normal” ushered in by the “progressive” or socialist Democrats who will dominate a Biden presidency. Be careful whom you vote for, we just might get it.
Feature Photo Credit: Political twins Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders (Elise Amendola, Associated Press, courtesy of Citizens Times).