OPINION:
It was well past midnight in Chicago. Straining to smile, President Biden was led backstage after a speech that was delayed, angry and bitter — a reflection of a man who failed to lead and who had been politically marginalized since his administration began. With his exit, something profound has happened in our nation’s politics: the final death knell for traditional liberals in the Democratic Party.
Over the last 15 years, we’ve watched the Democratic Party go from Frank Capra to Franz Kafka, morphing from the amiable liberal establishment of President John F. Kennedy, House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill and President Bill Clinton to a juggernaut for American socialism.
True, Marxism has been marching through our institutions for decades, unchecked by conservatives who lack the stomach for the fight. This transformation, however, is more than the installation of a new set of big government types who think the New Deal and Great Society programs were well intentioned but poorly implemented.
Pushing Mr. Biden off the Democratic ticket is an unmitigated victory for the far left, which is now in control of the party establishment. It’s a victory for people who have a different worldview than the vast majority of Americans.
Mr. Biden was never part of the leftist club. He was a vestige of a time before President Barack Obama’s silver-tongued, almost conservative-sounding rhetoric masked a revolution within the party, driving it toward central planning and weaponization of the executive branch, political violence, radical social policy, censorship and degrading the nation’s legal framework.
Mr. Biden is not a sympathetic figure. He’s morally reprehensible and corrupt. But he was also never one of the extremists. Before being snared by the Obama movement, he was a traditional liberal. He could vote with Republicans, be friends with Republicans and work toward reasonable compromise on the issues of the day.
That meant the new left never trusted him. Mr. Obama never trusted Mr. Biden to execute the remaking of America that he, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others among the new party elite envisioned.
Mr. Biden was handed an agenda for his own administration written by Mr. Sanders as a condition of his nomination in 2020. He made a deal to put a Black woman on the ticket at the behest of Rep. Jim Clyburn and others on the far left. He chose the one senator with a more extreme voting record than even Mr. Sanders, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist, to fill that post.
The 1968 party platform encouraged people to move from welfare to work. The words racism, reproductive rights, abortion and regulation did not appear.
By 2020, the party platform mentioned abortion five times, reproductive rights or services 15 more times, systemic racism five times, racism 13 times, federal programs 80 times and transgender rights 15 times.
Today, former first lady Michelle Obama talks about people who “take more than they need.” Today, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is proposing “free” money for new homes from the government, “free” college from the government and Washington wiping out medical debt. The party supports government-sponsored abortion at home and abroad and even government-sponsored gender transition surgery for children.
Today’s Democrats embrace government censorship and speech codes as they seek to be the arbiter of truth. They advocate interfering with both religion and the scientific method. They back programs to make it easier for noncitizens to vote in our elections. They equate sexualizing children with freedom. Tampons in the boys’ room? Boys stripping in girls’ locker rooms? They’re all in. Mr. Clinton’s positions on border security and immigration would have him blasted as a MAGA racist on CNN today.
Recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to X to blast the party of his father and uncle: “The RFK/JFK Dems were allies of Main Street, cops, firefighters, and working people. VP Harris’s is the Party of Big Tech, Big Pharma and Wall Street. My dad and uncle’s party [were] the champion of voting rights and fair elections. VP Harris’s is the party of lawfare, disenfranchisement, and the coronation of its candidates by corporate donors and party elites.”
This isn’t progressivism. It’s the slow progression of change that former Democrat Ronald Reagan warned us about in the 1960s and 1970s, where what was once called liberalism would be the vehicle for fascism and socialism.
The metamorphosis is complete. Democrats went from flag-waving Mr. Smiths-gone-to-Washington to wealthy elites who are triggered by the flag and want true central planning, dominion and control over every aspect of your life.
Mr. Biden’s presidency may have been a failure on many levels, but as those who have more in common with true socialists ascend to the top of the Democratic Party, many Democrats may actually come to miss him.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV and a columnist with The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.