Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
There is a Reason Joe Biden Looks Confused
Joe Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate nearly 50 years ago, at the age of 29, in 1972. That was the year that George McGovern managed to lose 49 states to Richard Nixon. Biden has been a Democrat politician for a long time. He spent nearly 40 of his years in the Senate serving with fellow Democrat Robert Byrd, a former KKK recruiter who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Democrat party has changed over Biden’s 50 years in the Senate. I’m not sure that Biden and many of the other old-time Democrats fully comprehend what has happened to their party.
Biden seems to take the Bob Dole / Hillary Clinton view of the presidential primary: “Vote for me. It’s my turn.” That approach worked out poorly for Dole and Clinton, and it seems to be working out even worse for Biden. There are many reasons for this, but one of them would appear to be that there is some internal debate about who is really in charge of that lovable, zany political “organization” which apparently can’t even count the votes in their own internal primaries. If Biden is anticipating an orderly transition of power, he’s not paying attention. Which is entirely possible.
The Democrat party started as an organization to centralize and control power at the expense of various minority groups, and has evolved into an organization which organizes various minority groups in an effort to centralize and control power. Democrats tell blacks, gays, women, and others that they are oppressed minorities, and that their only hope of achieving any political clout whatsoever in such a hostile environment is to vote Democrat: “Support us, help us get elected, and you get a seat at the table of power.”
This approach has some merit, but it is proving increasingly difficult for the Biden / Schumer / Pelosi / Clinton types to maintain control over such divergent groups who all have different goals, which are often at odds with one another. Biden helped create this organization. And now it won’t support him. He must find this disconcerting.
AOC is raising funds and developing a political organization within, but completely separate from, the Democrat party. Blacks are starting to wonder what they’ve gotten in return for 50 years of devoted support of Democrats. Antifa socialist thugs are making the Democrat party look like a bunch of socialist thugs. There are so many subgroups in the Democrat party vying for position that it’s become hard to define the Democrat party’s position on, well, on anything. Every Democrat party subgroup has a leader, all of whom hate Republicans and middle-class Americans even more than they hate each other.
You think the 2020 Democrat presidential primary is crazy? Just wait 10-20 years. It’s hard to imagine where this is going.
But it’s not going toward Joe Biden. He’ll still be running for president, as long as he’s still breathing. And he’ll still be wandering around Iowa livestock sales and New Hampshire diners looking like he can’t remember where he put his car keys. He looks confused because he is confused. This is not Biden’s Democrat party. Which is fine by me.
I don’t like the new Democrat party much more than the old one. But at least the party that Biden knows is no more. That’s good.
But I’m not sure how much better the new version is. That’s an incredible statement, considering how horrifying the Democrat party once was. But the new one is nasty and dangerous as well. In its own ways.
There are a lot of things which confuse Joe Biden. When it comes to the modern Democrat party, I’m sympathetic to his confusion. This really is getting crazy. But it’s his own dang fault. He helped build an organization based on hate and jealousy, to destroy his opponents. And then he found it hard to control. That’s too bad, Joe.
I suspect that Clarence Thomas is enjoying this.
Published in General
“When it comes to the modern Democrat party, I’m sympathetic to his confusion. This really is getting crazy. But it’s his own dang fault. He helped build an organization based on hate and jealousy, to destroy his opponents. And then he found it hard to control.”
This is the money quote. And it also represents part of what separates progressives & conservatives. Biden and establishment Dems are up against a radical chaos personified in Bernie, AOC, Sarsour, Tlaib, etc. I agree Biden feels entitled to the throne, but the far left wants to blow up the throne and put themselves in charge of a new socialist order. And because the left has made their legacy that of shouting truth to power & taking it to the man, Biden knows he is at the mercy of the next-gen idealists. It’s ‘join or be destroyed’. But conservatives on the other hand, are tied to a set of concrete principles that guide each new generation as built on the previous. Burke, Kirk, Buckley, Eliot… the movement is confined to ideas, whereas progressives trade on emotion-whatever the flavor of the day happens to be. It’s chaos. For so-called conservatives who turned in their badges (Tom Nichols, Jennifer Rubin, etc. they revealed themselves as putting self adulation, sanctimony, and elite preening over conservatism.
Sorry to rant. Great post!
“I know exactly how he feels!”
-Dr. Victor Frankenstein
I see no portion, no segment, no iota of the new version which is in any way better (for America) than the old version.
Exactly. How would anyone here find any plank that is better and none fit together to make a party platform.
Doc, your last line is priceless; and also accurate I’ll bet. But I doubt Justice Thomas is experiencing schadenfreude — he’s too nice a person.
Dr B, nice analysis. But you left one thing out, which is that Mr Biden looks confused because he is confused. He’s clearly suffering from frontal lobe disinhibition, the line to a supporter about being a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier” being yet another of a long string of exhibits. He’ll be demented in another few years, and the Dems know it. Biden getting the nomination would be a disaster for the country.
Biden is confused, but Trump! Insane!
At first, because the full title wasn’t shown in the sidebar, I thought the title was “There Is A Reason Joe Biden Looks Confident.”
I suppose “Confused” might work. But I was thinking “Constipated.”
The only good thing about the “new” Democrat party is that the craziness makes it even less likely to win elections and cause serious, long-lasting damage. I hope. The “old” Democrat party also caused great long-term damage, but was able to put on a mask that allowed too many people to vote for it. Now the mask is off, we just have to hope that enough people recognize that.
No @jennastocker, “passionate commenting”. Rants are boring; your comments are not.
Modern Wokism knows it is against what they consider colonialism and capitalism but they don’t know what they are for. Without knowing what you are for you spiral out of control as you have no center.
Biden winning the Presidency would be a disaster for the country. Biden getting the nomination would be a disaster for the Democratic Party and great entertainment as Trump rides to victory on Poor Slow Joe’s errors.
Joe Biden has never had a problem with contradiction. He flipped on abortion, the Iraq War, the nomination of Justice Thomas and much else. And he does so without apology and accuses his questioners of bad motives and poor memories when they point out the obvious. He just brazens it out. The creepiest part about Joe Biden is that he gives the impression that he believes what he has to know is complete and utter bullsh*t. The confidence with which he delivers nonsense and lies is troubling.
Biden almost single-handedly turned the victory in Iraq into a disaster. The process of riding herd on Maliki to protect promises made to Sunni local leaders to avert rebellion was tossed away despite detailed briefings. Biden instead announced, “Maliki is our guy” with a blank check to undo that which the “surge” had allowed to go into effect. And then simultaneously claimed that Obama should get credit for the victory he was about to throw away demonstrating a level of cluelessness that few eighth-grader mall rats could ever hope to attain.
I always suspected that the selection of Biden was an expression of contempt by Obama. Some dumb old white guy on the ticket to reassure the ignorant hordes of low-IQ God-and-gun clingers that it was safe to vote for the black guy, a level of contempt that was made clear by a refusal to endorse Biden this year.
Call me a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” but other than his obvious serious deterioration of mental acuity, Biden is the same dishonest narcissist he has always been and those traits are still largely honored in the Democratic Party.
Biden’s problem is that neither of the directions the Democrats have taken in the last 12 years are favorable to him. Obama’s election in 2008 wasn’t based on any experience or competency, but because of the ‘clean’ image wacky-but-lovable Uncle Joe used to describe Obama in the ’08 debate cycle. The Democrats saw Obama as a way to use one of their special interest groups and Alisnky-demonization tactics to elect the first African-American president, and then throw race cards at anyone who disagreed with Obama. It was the belief they could silence any opponents to their plans as hopeless racists that justified Obama’s election — Biden can run as Obama’s surrogate, but he can’t bring that factor back when people disagree with him.
But the other direction the Dems took after Obama was re-elected in 2012 also doesn’t work for Biden. Those are the Bernie Bros, who thought they didn’t have to follow the race card up with a gender card in 2016 and go with Hillary — they thought they could go with Sanders, but only because millenials and the party’s special interest groups had created a virtual lock on 240-250 electoral votes for anyone the Democrats nominated, including an avowed Socialist. Just campaign and win in Florida and/or Ohio had you had the White House locked up in perpetuity, because we were all Socialists now.
That’s turned out to be a stronger force within the Democratic Party than the race/gender card, especially after the gender card failed in 2016 because of Hillary’s quarter-century of negative baggage (Obama won in ’08 in part because he was a cypher moderates could project anything onto). Biden doesn’t have the 45-year history in Washington to run as the second coming of the original socialist Uncle Joe, so his whole justification was a return to the Obama years. But since the core party voters want to move the party way to the left of the Obama years, Biden simply doesn’t excite them.
Trump will officially be the oldest president elected if he wins a second term (he turns 74 in June). Reagan was 73 when he was elected to his second term and holds the current record.
Biden will be 77 on election day, but he’ll turn 78 on Nov. 20.
Bernie will be 79 (dear lord…).
Hopefully voters are paying close attention to who the VP candidates are.
At some point, straight, white male, non-pajama-boy Democrats will realize they aren’t at the table and never will be. I’m referring to white working class males, many of whom voted for Trump in 2016. With a track record on employment any President could only dream of, I can picture even more of these Democrats voting for Trump. As I stated in another comment on another post, I hope they vote Republican down the ticket . . .
Umm, I don’t think any of them took it for granted, and I don’t think Biden is either. When you lose, it seems like you took it for granted. But going back a few decades you could say that Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush were all next in line and they won. No one thinks they took it for granted because of the outcome. If they had lost…
Biden looks confused because (1) he has been exposed as giving his son (and other relatives by the way) graft jobs and (2) because the Democratic Party is no longer a blue collar party and Joe doesn’t have the flexibility to adjust.
I think we can simplify further: The Democrat nominee will be a disaster. If the Democrat wins the White House, it will be a disaster for the country.
Yes!! Joe was the way to pacify all the latent racism in Obama voters. It’s kind of amazing Democrat voters don’t see through this stuff, but they’ve never been known for cogent awareness.
I think these things do affect Biden’s demeanor today, confuses his established pattern.
Ironically, it may have been worse for Joe that his competition in the Party have not brought up his son’s graft job. If they did at least he could put up some sort of excuse that might alleviate the issue. Right now it just lingers above his head unresolved, an elephant in the room. He doesn’t seem to know if it’s better to address it or not. That’s part of his confusion.
I was appalled at Obama’s choice in Biden. I thought that might doom him. But I didn’t fully account for the media’s ability to cover him (up).
But the chickens come home to roost. Joe, you don’t have to do this. Spoken in the style of a compassionate musician friend discouraging me from auditioning for first violin chair in the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Vice Presidents are well protected from controversy, attending state functions, award ceremonies, funerals, and making pedestrian speeches.
In a very real way, the cover-up media lulled most of the Democratic Party to sleep with their, um, unchallenging coverage for the last eight years, preceded by decades of the previous soft coverage.
And as has been stated here already, he was certainly chosen for his working-class-white-guy brand he meticulously crafted. Joe was never that bright, so he, and more importantly they, stereotyped him as working-class relatable. Once you catch on to how these people see the world and operate, it’s hard not to see it.
The media’s relationship to Democrats is becoming like a teacher’s treatment of a Special Ed class.
Except the teacher is Special Ed, too.
We saw the Clarence Thomas documentary Saturday. It is excellent. What was interesting was seeing Joe Biden during those hearings. He was as goofy then as he is now. I assume he never had serious Republican opposition in his elections.
Can you give me a short summary illustrating this that I can use on my annoying uncle?
He’s losing it. Take a look at this:
https://news.grabien.com/story-biden-calls-skeptical-new-hampshire-voter-lying-dog-faced-po
This reminds me of Hillary’s “deplorables” moment. Maybe this is Joe’s equally illustrative moment . . .
I agree about Bush but I don’t think you can say that about Nixon or Reagan. Reagan was running against an incumbent and with very weak support from his own party. People seem to have forgotten how hated and feared Reagan was after his 1976 run at Ford. Ford was the quintessential Establishment guy for the GOP. The only bomb thrower in Ford’s cabinet was Bill Simon, forgotten now.
What is it about today’s Democrat party that is better than the old one?
For decades, the Democrat party has been a conglomeration of competing constituencies, whose only common characteristic is that none of their goals can be achieved without the coercive power of government forcing people to act and behave in ways they would not freely choose to do. This is in contrast to conservatism for which the coercive power of government is legitimately used only for preserving liberty. Just think of any Democratic policy objective, and compare it to the conservative alternative. The Democrat objective can’t be achieved without government force; the conservative alternative either needs no coercive government force, or less of it.
It seems to me that the willingness of Democrats to use force to coerce others has increased, not decreased. The assault on free speech is the first example that comes to mind.
This is a relatively recent development. Lyndon Johnson had more to do with this development than Roosevelt. Roosevelt had a Democrat Congress almost all his time in office. I would have to look to see if he ever dealt with a Republican House. Yet, his court packing scheme failed and resulted in electoral punishment. I think he was a terrible president for the economy but he was a good war president. Several of his major cabinet positions were held by Republicans.
What changed was the enormous power of government. Before Johnson, it was limited. After, the sky was the limit. Nixon ignored domestic politics and put many Johnson people in charge. Reagan had a Democrat Congress which allowed him to win the Cold War as long as he let them spend. After Reagan, Bush began the slide. After 1994, the GOP Congress did nothing to control government.
Democrats did better in the Senate in ’72 than expected in the McGovern fiasco. Biden narrowly beat the incumbent. He has had no serious opposition since.
GOP had a shot at the other Senate seat held by backbench zombie Chris Coon in 2010 to replace then VP Biden. Nutball Christine O’Donnell beat nine-time GOP congressman Mike Castle in the primary (who routinely won 60-40 or more statewide) with tea party support on the theory he was too liberal. Disaster. State has been solid blue since ’92.