Benard Goldberg

Bernard Goldberg - Biden's Other War -- the One Inside His Own Party Joe Biden wants us to believe that things aren’t as bad as we think they are, that we don’t appreciate all the good things that he’s done for us. But as Maureen Dowd recently put it in her New York Times column, “Exhausted, confused, isolated and depressed Americans are not buying the Democratic line that things are better than they look.” But it’s not only Republicans who aren’t buying the fairy tale about how wonderful we have it now that Joe Biden is president -- and we're not even talking about what's going on in Ukraine. No, we're talking about a revolt going on right here at home, inside the tent, among Democrats themselves. I mean, when you lose a committed lefty like Bill Maher – who’s riled up over what he’s called the “insane excesses of the left” – it’s time to wake up and take notice. And plenty of Americans have. The party is losing adherents – and despite what the president’s handlers are telling him, hitting their message harder won’t solve the problem. The problem is the message itself. Who exactly do Democrats still represent these days – besides people who live in big cities, some suburbs, or hang out in Ivy League faculty lounges? Blue-collar white voters abandoned the party a long time ago, thanks to Ronald Reagan. Now even working class Blacks and Latinos are cozying up to the GOP. Democrats certainly don’t represent a vast majority of the folks who live in flyover country. An Associated Press headline didn’t pull any punches: “‘The Brand is So Toxic’: Dems Fear Extinction in Rural U.S.” Biden, a pol all his adult life, surely knows that Americans have had enough of inflation, of Covid, of masks, of crime, of illegal immigrants on our southern border, and of the woke, progressive educational establishment looking down their elite noses at parents who want a say in what their kids are being taught in school. But he also knows that voters aren’t going to blame his party's favorite bogeyman for all of that. Pinning the tail on Donald Trump has gotten old. They’re going to blame the guy currently sitting in the Oval Office. That’s how politics works. Never underestimate the power of likability -- or un-likability. And right now, Democrats have very little of the former and a lot of the latter. And it’s why the apocalypse is heading their way, with an arrival date of Tuesday November 8, 2022. People just don’t feel good about things in general. More than 60 percent of Americans think we’re on the wrong track – several polls have that number at over 70 percent. Democrats don’t need better marketing. They need better ideas – and a leader who can articulate them without reading notes off a piece of paper. Americans are rightly concerned about the surge in crime across America. And they notice when Biden talks about “gun violence,” as if guns have a mind of their own and decide to go out and commit crimes – but is less enthusiastic when it comes to talking about actual criminals. He wasn’t always that way. This is from a New York Times story from 2019: “In 1993, he warned of ‘predators on our streets.’ And in a 1994 Senate floor speech, he likened himself to another Republican president: ‘Every time Richard Nixon, when he was running in 1972, would say, ‘Law and order,’ the Democratic match or response was, ‘Law and order with justice’ — whatever that meant. And I would say, ‘Lock the S.O.B.s up.’” That was the old “law and order” Joe Biden. The new Joe Biden has been taken captive by the progressive wing of his party – and progressives don’t like talking about crime, unless the alleged crime has Donald Trump’s name attached to it. In his State of the Union speech, as Dan Henninger at the Wall Street Journal noted, "Mr. Biden said he was for the police and funding them. But his speech made clear his primary goal for our embattled cities is 'equal justice.' His Justice Department will 'hold law enforcement accountable.' There was no suggestion that progressive theories on crime and prosecution need revision. Like Europe’s dangerous minimizing of self-defense, Mr. Biden was whistling past the graveyard. The crime will persist." The new Joe Biden seems afraid of offending progressives who believe that criminals are the real victims -- victims of poverty and racism and all sorts of inequities. So he doesn’t take on his party’s progressive district attorneys who don’t especially like prosecuting what normal people consider serious crimes. At least one of them, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco is facing a recall election later this year – and George Gascón in Los Angeles may face a recall vote too (after an earlier one failed to get enough signatures to meet the filing deadline). Take note, Mr. President, this is happening in overwhelmingly liberal, Democratic cities. Nor does he take on the dangerous idea, concocted by the left wing of his party, of no cash bail laws that allow even violent criminals to get back on the street before the ink is dry on their paperwork, many of whom immediately go back to what they know best – committing more violent crimes. People also notice that the president shows more concern for the sanctity of the Ukrainian border than he does for the sanctity of America’s southern border. And they notice that he won’t take on his benefactors at the teachers unions – who had enough clout with the Democratic Party to shut down schools during the pandemic -- and still want kids to wear masks while they’re in the classroom. Last November, a revolution came to life in Virginia – a rebellion by parents who wanted a say into what their kids were being taught in school, mainly about race. So they dumped the incumbent, Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, who actually said that, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” – and elected a newcomer to politics, Republican Glenn Youngkin, who spoke up for parents’ rights. Then the rebellion moved West, to San Francisco, a city so blue that you’d have a better chance of winning the lottery two weeks in a row than bumping into a registered Republican. Fed up with a school board that put its woke ideology over the interests of the kids, voters overwhelmingly tossed out three progressive board members for obsessing over supposedly racist names like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on the city’s public schools. They spent months on their nonsense and all the while, during the pandemic, they kept the city’s public schools shut down. Parents had had enough. And while the parents’ revolt may have begun in Virginia before moving on to San Francisco, odds are it won’t stop there. And the idea of a parents’ rebellion moving from city to city must be frightening to Democrats. At least it should be. So here’s a bulletin for Joe Biden and his party: The more they allow themselves to be defined by their progressive wing, the more trouble the Democratic Party will be in with voters across America. Joe Biden has a choice: Go to war with progressives in his party now -- or wait until Democrats get their heads handed to them in November. One way or another, the civil war is on. And disgruntled, old school Democrat voters are already on the front line. Joe Biden may want to catch up with them – after all, he’s supposed to be their leader.