Joe Biden has become so unpopular that even Establishment media are starting to now throw him under the bus. The latest example is MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, who complained Wednesday that Biden campaigned as a moderate, governs as a radical, and “has failed miserably.” But the commentator is perhaps only partially right — and failed in his analysis.
Scarborough expressed his incredulity to a panel of guests, saying about Biden’s first year in office:
One of the great mysteries for historians — they’re going to look back and say, how is it that this guy ran against a dozen or so progressives? He was the only moderate. He ran as a moderate. He won as a moderate. Every single progressive got rejected. Like, those debates were crazy. They were talking about reimplementing busing. They were so far left. They wanted to give health care to illegal immigrants. Like, it was so — come across the border, and we’ll give you health care. It was so wildly out of the mainstream of where about 80 percent of Americans are.
Scarborough then lamented that Biden nonetheless has governed as a “leftist” and “has failed miserably in the expectations game” (video below). Yet the commentator apparently has a short memory — because Biden often campaigned as a leftist, too
Consider healthcare for illegals. While Scarborough implies that the ex-vice president parted company with his radical campaign competition on this issue, this is false. Just watch the 24-second video below, from a June 2019 Democrat debate, in which all the candidates were asked if their “government [healthcare] plan would provide coverage for ‘undocumented immigrants.’”
Every contender answered in the affirmative — including Joe Biden.
Of course, we should wonder how citizens could possibly know where candidates stand on the issues — and hence whom they should vote for — when many commentators apparently don’t even know. Perhaps Scarborough was so busy during the last campaign trying to convince viewers that Biden was moderate that he actually convinced himself.
But Scarborough is hardly alone in peddling his message. As Fox News’ David Marcus wrote last October:
If you have watched discussions in the news over the past few weeks you have heard pundit after pundit say that President Biden’s problem, especially regarding his wildly expensive Build Back Better agenda, is that he ran as a moderate and is governing as a progressive.
It’s a great talking point, [sic] it’s also flatly not true.
In May of 2020 Biden told New York magazine that he wanted “an FDR-size presidency.” Earlier that year he said he would be the “most progressive president in history.”
So where did this myth come from that Biden ran for president as a moderate when he clearly didn’t? This lie about “moderate Joe” was entirely an invention of his allies in the media.
Marcus later cited an October 2020 Washington Post piece by Dana Milbank entitled, “‘Moderate’ Joe Biden has become the most progressive nominee in history.” “‘Biden, temperamentally, is the very picture of moderation, restrained and mild,’” Marcus quotes the column as stating, before adding, “Journalists on the left knew that this manipulation — calling Biden a moderate when he was running as anything but — helped him win over voters and so it persisted.”
Yet even the idea that Biden is “temperamentally” moderate reflects, at best, superficial analysis. When Biden was challenged at campaign events and stops by disgruntled voters — such as when an 80-something Iowa resident asked him about his son, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine — the ex-vice president’s reaction was always the same: to lash out, be petty, get nasty. In the Hawkeye State voter’s case, Biden challenged him to push-up and I.Q. competitions and called him a “damn liar.”
Oh, Biden can throw on the charm in front of the camera, but it’s superficial. (Moreover, unlike Donald Trump, who attacks only other wealthy, famous people, Biden generally aims his fire downwards — e.g., branding much of the general population “white supremacists.”)
As for substance, Biden did at one time embrace more “conservative” positions. For example, he once “spoke about jailing employers who hire ‘illegals,’ said sanctuary cities shouldn’t be allowed to violate federal law, and argued a fence was needed stop ‘tons’ of drugs coming into the country from ‘corrupt Mexico,’” CNN reminded us in 2019.
We’re also told how Biden pushed something he’s now criticized for: the 1994 crime bill. Forgotten, however, was that this effort reflected Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” tactic. That is, aside from mandating tougher penalties for criminals, the legislation also included a left-wing aim: restrictions on certain semi-automatic rifles demagogically branded “assault weapons.”
The bottom line is that too many people, commentators included, make a mistake: Joe Biden is not a “progressive” man.
He’s not a “moderate” man — at least not first and foremost.
Rather, he’s mainly an empty man.
Overlooked is that most politicians aren’t normal. Too many enter politics for the same reason a pedophile may gravitate toward a field in which he can work with children:
They want to indulge their deepest urge — in their case, for power.
Benito Mussolini, for example, was a member of Italy’s socialist party until he was expelled for supporting involvement in WWI. He then helped found fascism and became its face (though, in fairness, socialism-to-fascism is sort of a lateral move).
And thus are Biden — and Kamala Harris, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and so many others — like water, taking the shape of the vessel in which they find themselves. They’d have raised the hammer-and-sickle flag in 1917 Russia; have done the goose-step in ‘37 Germany; sometimes feigned “moderation” in ‘90s America; and now, when it’s expedient, are wokesters extraordinaire.
This isn’t to say they don’t have emotional preferences for policy, only that preferences aren’t principles and will, with a megalomaniac, be subordinated to the power principle.
This said, the notion that political-realm “moderation” is by definition right is in principle wrong. A given society’s norms (its center) have never aligned perfectly with Truth. And so it is true that man’s “extremism” is too often God’s moderation, a sheep in wolf’s clothing thus attired by demagogic tailors adept at making good look bad — and bad, good.
