OPINION:
In all the propaganda offered by both sides about this month’s election, two landscape features seem obvious.
The first is that a bunch of Democrats are talking about how the party needs to get back to its old-time religion and start talking about issues and policies that voters care about rather than identity politics. Even James Carville, who last won an election 30 years ago, noted that his party’s emphasis on identity and disregard for public safety led to electoral ruin.
The Democrats’ new leader in the House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, said, “We all have to do a better job of meeting the needs of everyday Americans who are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck.” He added that high prices for food, housing and gasoline also needed to be addressed.
Rahm Emanuel, Sen. Chris Murphy, David Axelrod and pretty much everyone in the Democratic Party to the right of Sen. Elizabeth Warren has joined the self-flagellation. For the most part, they have blamed the left side of the party for their electoral losses.
That’s probably good and healthy. Unfortunately for them, it is way too late. They don’t seem to understand that the party’s architecture, as it currently exists, was constructed and controlled by the revolutionary vanguard of Marxists. The entire operation is marinated in Marxist nonsense about oppressors and the oppressed and the systems that create and perpetuate the outcomes Marxists don’t like.
To collectivists, the only remedy available is the redistribution of things — whether cash or cars or power — and, at least in other places, they aren’t particular about whether such a redistribution occurs with or without violence. Think about that as we wander into tax reform next year. The Democrats, despite all the jawing about needing to reorient their party, are reliably going to advocate the redistribution of wealth, irrespective of whether one worked for that wealth or not.
Here’s the problem. Once you conclude that the system is inherently unfair, the only possible answer is the system’s disintegration — by force if necessary. Until the Democrats confront the uncomfortable fact that nearly all their members under the age of 40 believe that, they will continue to have trouble.
The second obvious thing no one wants to discuss is that it looks as if President Biden wanted President-elect Donald Trump to win. Not only did he step all over Vice President Kamala Harris’ message — most egregiously when he called those not aligned with her message “garbage” — he seemed almost relieved the morning after the election, announcing that he would do whatever he could to ensure a smooth transition of power.
He even went out of his way to spend a couple of hours with his predecessor and successor and offer up a solid if unspectacular photo-op for the incoming president. That’s odd, given that way back at the beginning of November, he was arguing that Mr. Trump was a fascist with eyes on becoming the Maximum Leader.
At the same time, Ms. Harris has been notably absent from the public eye.
Perhaps it is his payback for how he was summarily dismissed as the duly elected presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. Perhaps he is pleased that history will note he was the only candidate to have beaten Mr. Trump. Perhaps he is just happy not to have to go through the motions of being president anymore.
Or maybe Mr. Biden correctly senses that despite all the noise coming from the few remaining moderates in the Democratic Party, he is likely to be the last Democratic presidential candidate who could even pretend to be an old-line moderate with vestigial attachments to identifiers of normalcy such as religious beliefs, enthusiasm for cars or whatever.
He alone knows.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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