by Victor Davis Hanson
Joe Biden’s advancing dementia and the long-standing media and political conspiracy to hide his vintage age from the public are the least of Democrats’ current problems.
Biden’s record as president may be more troubling than his cognitive decline. He literally destroyed the U.S. border by deliberately allowing more than 10 million illegal immigrants to enter. The plan of his heartless handlers was to import extremely impoverished voters in need of massive government services without regard for the current struggles of America’s battered middle class and impoverished.
The widespread poverty of the enormous up-to-date group of illegal immigrants could serve as an indictment of a “racist,” “unequal,” and “unfair” America—as if the residents of East Palestine, Ohio, or inner-city Chicago had anything to do with the centuries-old corruption and oppression in Mexico and Latin America that daily drives thousands of their poorest citizens north into a society built on very different ideals than those of their homelands.
Notice that the left, neither in Mexico nor in America, never asks why millions of these indigent people would choose to break into a supposedly racist America. Much less do they distinguish the principles and values that once made America prosperous, free and secure from their antitheses, which have unfortunately made most of Latin America mostly impoverished, unfree and insecure.
Biden inherited near-zero real interest rates and 1.4 percent inflation. Almost immediately, nihilistically, Biden did to a hearty economy what he did to a secure border. So he recklessly printed money at a time of spiraling, lockdown-ending demand and supply-chain disruptions. Middle-class wages have never kept up with Biden’s inflation, with basic-goods prices nearly 30 percent higher than when he took office.
The cost of servicing the ballooning national debt at high interest rates now stands at nearly $1 trillion a year. The world abroad is ablaze, lit up by Biden’s inexplicable withdrawal from Kabul, his mixed signals to Vladimir Putin on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine, his deliberate alienation of Israel, his concessions to Iran and China, and his defense budget cuts, combined with his woke war on mythical “racists” in the military.
Energy prices have soared even as Biden’s green agenda has proven unworkable, draining strategic oil reserves and begging foreign oil tycoons before a crucial election. Biden the “uniformist” has needlessly alienated nearly half the country, and in his debate performance, he reiterated why Trump supporters are unworthy of his attention. More ominously and recently, Biden blatantly told hundreds of donors that “it’s time to put Trump in the middle of the bullseye” — just days before his assassination attempt.
The greatest absurdity of the Biden White House is the gaslighting of Biden’s “accomplishments.” Biden’s actions over the past four years are not compensation for his vintage age that justifies his continued office, but again, unfortunately, act as force multipliers, amplifying claims of his dementia and his removal.
Joe Biden is not simply non compos mentis and in a normal world would be subject to removal from the 25th Amendment. He also seems increasingly unpleasant and repulsive, if not at times just plain weird. To achieve a moment of clarity, Biden either shouts at the audience or leans in and whispers in an eerie way.
He insults reporters and his staff. Every few sentences, without warning, he starts shouting. His face is fixed in a eternal, furious grimace. As a result, the public sees their president as an unappealing, furious vintage man — and in his selfish puerility, increasingly unlikable. Even after more than 40 months of media hagiography, Joe Biden still can’t get above a 40 percent approval rating, given that his rudeness is fueled by his mounting mental turmoil.
Biden, frankly, is a serial cheater. It’s not just that he keeps repeating Trump’s alleged insults ad nauseam — the “both sides” lie in Charlottesville, the “suckers” lie, the “bloodbath” lie. He continues to peddle absolute lies like the mythical 9 percent inflation he inherited, and Trump’s alleged intention to ban all abortions, and his drivel that after admitting 10 million illegal immigrants, Biden would have a closed, secure border if it weren’t for those selfish Republicans who somehow didn’t trust his ridiculous last-minute immigration proposal.
When Biden attacks Trump as a “convicted felon,” he has no idea that most Americans equate that accusation with his own warped legal attack on antique customs, as well as a reminder that his closest advisor is also a “convicted felon.”
As Biden goes on an almost daily tirade about the wealthy “paying their fair share,” he reminds us that his son also faces federal tax evasion charges for millions of dollars in undeclared foreign income, and that Biden himself, as the recipient of that same foreign cash, could find himself in the same legal jeopardy once he leaves office. So, to exploit Biden-ism, “how dare he” accuse wealthy Americans of the same crimes his own family is knee-deep in?
Biden’s prefaces of “no lie,” “this is how it is,” “no kidding,” and “no kidding” are little more than tics warning us of the outright fabrications to come, from the ridiculous story of his uncle supposedly being eaten by cannibals in New Guinea to his alleged heroism during the civil rights movement and his adoption as a child by various minority communities.
In this respect, vintage age has strangely served Biden as a crutch. He has paid dearly for plagiarism, fraud, racist tirades and evasions in the past, losing three presidential bids and earning a reputation as a Senate swaggering vainton. Now his press handlers conveniently dismiss his long-standing, habitual lying as a momentary mental “disorder.”
That being said, remember that Biden was supposed to be the “savior” of the Democratic Party. To this day, celebrities calling for his withdrawal from the race throw him a bone that he “saved the country by stopping Trump” — as if there were no wars, no stability abroad, no inflation, no low interest rates, and low energy costs to fear.
But four years of Biden pale in comparison to what could have been a Harris, Buttigieg, Warren, Booker candidacy or a Sanders presidency in 2016. It’s no wonder Democrats concluded there were no viable alternatives to the cognitively challenged Biden, precisely because Biden was the only available fig leaf for the up-to-date Democratic Party and its neosocialist agenda—which, if see-through, would have terrified the country it would soon all but destroy.
Biden’s Democratic critics are right: Getting Biden out is clever and necessary for the good of the country, but it won’t solve the growing public anger at the left. There will be no camouflage without even the appearance of wobbly vintage Joe from Scranton. And then the real leftist agenda will be served up to the American people raw—open borders, woke/DEI racial polarization, trans obsessions, inflation/stagflation, lots of wars abroad, a dead Pentagon, unaffordable energy, partial-birth abortions, and crazy ideas like packing the courts and making Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, states.
So what is the Democrats’ strategy to win the 2024 election? Certainly, an “open” convention would not produce a moderate Democratic candidate, or even a suitable replacement front. There are no moderate candidates in the running. If there were any sane candidates who could provide cover, the party would be in a eternal state of war with its vociferous and furious woke base. Joe is the last of his generation to offer a credible front. There are no more Diane Feinsteins or Bill Clintons to package a far-left agenda. If Harris cannot serve as Biden’s successor, someone like her or farther left will emerge as a speculative candidate.
The Democrats have no plans to run on a record. Their three-pronged strategy is as basic as it is tired and worn. First, expect a third chapter after the 2016 Russia conspiracy and the 2020 laptop disinformation scam — probably some October revelation from “experts” and “authorities” in the administrative state that Trump is a criminal, traitor, or spy, or is planning a coup to destroy NATO or something nuclear. Perhaps there’s another Access Hollywood tape, a porn star on ice, something to avoid discussing the damage done since 2017.
Second, there is still the final gasp of a dying legal war. Never underestimate the last legal attempt to immobilize, silence, bankrupt, or imprison Trump, however counterproductive such attempts have proven to be thus far.
Third, when all else fails, remember that in many swing states, 70 percent of the electorate will not vote on Election Day and will not present IDs. Millions of their votes will be harvested or sanitized by third-party activists. Recently, leftist journalist Molly Ball boasted about her “cabal” and “conspiracy” of substantial money and substantial tech that “saved” Americans from Trump.
These post-election confessions were not just a high-five, but also a warning of what was to come.
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Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness and a Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is an American military historian, columnist, former professor of classics, and scholar of antique warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004.
Photo “Joe Biden” by President Joe Biden.
