OPINION:
Throughout his campaign, presumptive President-elect Joe Biden said that there were “no red states, no blue states, just the United States.” In his speech on Nov. 7, where he addressed a packed-in tight crowd (since social distancing is evidently only an applicable term when it is not for Democratic political gatherings or “mostly peaceful” riots), he echoed the same sentiment. So, let’s consider the validity and affordances of this aphorism.
For four years, Joe Biden and the Democrats told the American people that Republicans were racist, bigoted, White supremacists. Republicans were called every -ism there is, and more were being manufactured every day by those with social science Ph.D.s in the ivory towers of academia.
Republicans were caricatured as malevolent people who desired the destruction of this nation. They were a bunch of stupid uneducated homophobes who gathered in crowds of their own at Trump rallies and waved American flags, (while it was all fine and dandy for the other side to gather in the holy name of social justice and burn down cities for nights on end.)
In many cases, the president of the United States was referred to as Hitler by the left. Imagine it, seriously; a duly-elected president who brokered several historic Israeli peace deals, moved the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, and has Jewish children and grandchildren, likened to a tyrant who killed more than 6 million Jews. Right.
But apparently, none of it matters. None of it. Now that Joe Biden is the presumptive president-elect, you see, he will miraculously unite the country and bring the Republicans along with him. Forget about the ad hominem. He will be the president for us all. See, the Democrats were just joking when they countlessly referred to all Republicans as racists. Please. It was all political opera.
But, as we know, this is as unrealistic as Mr. Biden remaining fully-functioning for four years. Mr. Biden and his coalition were either (a) being 100% serious when referring to Republicans as racists or (b) just blatantly lying. If the former is true, why would Mr. Biden be a president for all people? Why would he want to be president for 70 million “racists?” And how is it possible for him to “not see red states,” but just the United States if some of those red states are supposedly home to Hitler-esque monsters?
See, if the Democrats actually consider that Republicans are the awful racists that they led folks to believe, it would be completely illogical for them to cease to alienate this base. They would want to eliminate them. And if Donald Trump is truly the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, you would assume that the left seeks to send him and his supporters in the gulag. Otherwise, the second scenario is possible.
If the latter scenario is true, that Democrats were just touting knowingly erroneous accusations in order to get elected to the highest office — by promulgating exaggerations and corrupting with fearmongering — then a great evil would have been committed for partisan gain. Democrats would have coerced Americans into believing such a divisive ideology and there is no reason those on the right should, henceforth, give Mr. Biden one inch of favorability. None whatsoever.
The Republican policymakers should return the favor with the Democrats and play hardball (cue a Chris Matthews joke). Because we all know the “when they go low, we go high” stuff was only ever applicable on their own terms.
Either way, the two scenarios make Mr. Biden’s idealistic statement fall flat on its face. Albeit, we arrive at the same conclusion.
Republicans must not forget the four years they were labeled and likened to domestic terrorists by a disgruntled Democratic Party. They must not forget the four years of hell that millions of Americans were put through for supporting a candidate — President Trump — who did not fit into the Democrats’ minuscule narrative of what, frankly, deep-state politics ought to look like.
And, it is doubtful that the 70+ million Americans who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 will do so. And why should they? If all Republicans are supposedly radical White supremacists, it would be quite ironic in conjunction with the fact that Mr. Trump won the most non-White voters in the 2020 presidential election since Richard Nixon, circa 1960. Are 32% of Hispanic/Latino voters in the U.S. racist bigots? — 31% of Asians? — 12% of African-Americans? And so on? The exit polls do not lie. But clearly many politicians do.
The rhetoric from Mr. Biden concerning how it is “time to heal” is all nice and well — for television purposes that is — but those on the political right should find it preposterous, and they inevitably will, to back a political party that used juvenile ad-hominem assaults to alienate 50% of this country nonstop for four years (not including all the years prior of generalized name-calling by the Democrats). The left can try their best to fan the fire of a divided nation, but it turns out it is mightily difficult to put out a fire that they stoked in the first place.
• Gabe Kaminsky is an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is a member of the College Republicans. He can be reached at GKaminskyContact@Gmail.com.
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