There’s something interesting going on in the secret, woke-filled rooms where the Left’s agenda is crafted and propagated. Joe Biden, who many on the Left lament, with 20/20 hindsight, might-have-been-their-President, is now approaching persona-non-grata status. He’s being wrapped up in his own MeToo imbroglio, with his long-known awkward handsiness suddenly a Big Deal.
Conservative pundits, such as Peggy Noonan and Jonah Goldberg, have taken notice. And, indeed, his polling and betting market numbers reflect that others have as well. Biden’s prospects for the Democratic nomination have taken a hit in recent days.
Theories abound, so, of course, I’m going to offer my own.
There’s an echo-chamber anger and petulance at play, the continued belief that Trump’s victory was a combination of shenanigans and Hillary Clinton, and that there’s no way this nation will elect him again. Indeed, even on the Right there are people who want to see him challenged in a primary, and Tucker Carlson speculates as to whether he even wants to win in 2020. His “negative” polling numbers bear some of this out, and all this combines to offer a motivated reasoner the conclusion that 2020 is a near-lock for the Democratic nominee, as long as he or she runs a decent campaign.
Biden is a savvy political animal, having survived and thrived for decades despite his propensity to say absurd things. He’d make a good run at the White House, and conventional wisdom suggests he’d be a strong opponent for Trump, one able to stand up to the Untethered Orange Id’s knack for put-downs and WWE-style smack talk.
But, Biden is not woke. He’s not on board with the Democratic Socialism agenda, and while he’d likely pursue all sorts of liberal agenda items as President, he’s not remotely as lefty as Sanders is and as the balance of the candidacy pack aspires to be, nor will he modify his views or plans to become so.
And there’s the problem.
If you’re a frustrated socialist who thinks your team has a lock on the Presidency, you’d be inclined to shoot the moon in terms of a candidate. You’d see a singular opportunity to put someone as far-left as possible into the White House, to get socialized medicine, to pursue the Green New Deal, to tax the snot out of the rich, to kill carbon energy in America, to increase the minimum wage, impose family leave, sick leave, and other mandates on employers, to institute a reparations policy, to redo that which Obama did and Trump undid, to make all the Central Americans flooding across the border citizens, to pack the Court so it doesn’t get in your way, and to do all sorts of things that a Democrat of yore would not be inclined to pursue.
Biden is not the guy to do that. He’d certainly pursue a host of long-standing Democratic policies, but I doubt he’d come close to chasing the woke, half-baked, sorta-socialist, pixie dust agenda that Bernie has cobbled together and it-girl Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is flogging.
This all reeks of “we have a golden opportunity against a hated President, let’s go all-in” dreaming. And, since there’s plenty of historical record to suggest that much of the Press follows the lead of certain taste-makers (cough, cough, New York Times), it shouldn’t surprise us that the machine has decided Uncle Joe isn’t to be the one. Whether it’s Bernie, or Kamala, or Beto, or perhaps even rising-star Pete Buttigieg, time will tell.
I do think the Dems are deluding themselves, though. This reeks of Nixon-McGovern, and most of us know how that turned out. The problem with going all-in is that, if you lose, you’re wiped out. If the Dems’ thinking that America is so tired of Trump that they can win on a wildly progressive platform turns out to be false, they may find themselves sky-screaming in impotent rage all over again.
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