Biden’s speech of last Thursday in Philadelphia was red meat for a Red base. Breaking it apart, “red meat” is rhetoric “that is forceful and poignant, as will excite or inflame their supporters”, and “Red” to characterize a political faction isn’t to be confused with the red/blue designations on US political maps. “Red” is drawn from the traditional color assigned to adherents of the socialist movement. It’s historical and dates back to the 19th century Socialist International with its red flag and workers-of-the-world-unite anthem, of which Karl Marx was the titular figure. Just to be clear.
The Democratic Party of today is the American manifestation of the many socialist parties around the world. The heart of the party’s most fervent members lies in the broader socialist movement. Notwithstanding the leaders’ proforma denials, the party’s political program meshes quite nicely with the socialist aim of greater government control of the economy and life, the same advocacy found in the Labor Party of the UK or any of the other European socialist parties. There’s a reason why Bernie, the Senate’s self-described socialist, caucuses with the Democrats. Birds of a feather. Don’t be fooled by the brush-off.
It was certainly fitting that the camera view of Biden at the lectern had a background bathed in red. From it, Biden spewed inflammatory words that had little place in rational discourse. This isn’t the tone of your local crisis counselor. It was a red speech for a Red cause.
I delayed my commentary till I could hear the speech in total and unfiltered. Bluntly put, it was shocking. Its only conceivable purpose was to rev up the base to forestall a long-anticipated Republican wave in November. It was filled with raw appeals to emotion, stoking fears, incoherent, and riddled with hypocrisy. It was the kind of stemwinder used to get the Parisian mob to storm the Bastille. And if you know anything about the Bastille events on July 14, 1789, you’ll know that the place only imprisoned a few, and they were the most heinous miscreants (the Marque de Sade among them). After the surrender, the guards were butchered, their heads cut off and mounted on pikes and paraded around Paris. Biden lifted a page from the playbook of the hate-filled rabble-rouser Paul Marat; I hope without the detached heads.
To kindle his partisans, he stood behind the trappings of the presidential office to deliver language more appropriate for a fire-breathing sermon. One ploy was the abundant use of the phrase “MAGA Republicans”. Mao wannabes need a neat word or phrase to encapsulate the “enemy”, a target, to roll up the opposition. Marx invented “capitalist” as a focal point of opprobrium, Stalin had his kulaks, and for Biden, his “MAGA Republicans”. Soon, afterwards, it was all over the airwaves as if the party’s media sycophants got the robo chain text.
Do you think that he limited his gaze to the MAGA subspecies of Republican? Not on your life. The speech’s language was fungible enough to tar any Republican, even the ones that Trump hates, if they continually stand athwart the political thrusts of his party’s radicalized base. Just lather them with “intimidated”, another gambit in the speech.
Rhetorical ground was laid to attack all of them since being pro-life and following the Apostle Paul on marriage were lumped together with January 6 “insurrectionists”. The constant reference to “going backwards” is the well-worn refrain of all revolutionaries. Progress is synonymous with revolution and neither has any room for the venerable and time-tested, no matter the allusion to the Constitution and rule of law. Both were cynically and repeatedly violated by this man bathed in red light.
I was waiting for the tag on Republicans as defenders of slavery (Biden golden oldie: “put you all back in chains”) and Jim Crow, completely oblivious to the fact that it was the Democratic Party that rammed through the secessionitis defense of slavery of the Civil War and constructed Jim Crow in the aftermath. These historical Democrat actions came about as reactions to the rise of the Republican Party. Biden and Democrats, get your facts straight!
In essence, Biden condemned the “MAGA Republicans” as subversives to our civil order under the banality of a “threat to our democracy”, leaving unsaid the simple fact that we don’t have a “democracy”. It’s a constitutional republic, something a bit more sophisticated than a simpleton’s 50%-plus-1 standard of mail-in ballots to decide public issues. The Constitution and the rule of law belts our public officials in all kinds of restraints in spite of Gallup.
Really, the threat that Biden had in mind wasn’t the clearly observable 574 riots, $2 billion in damage, 2,000 police casualties, and anywhere from 17 to 35 killed as a consequence of the 2020 Antifa/BLM summer of riots. No, for Biden, it was January 6 with the only death accruing to a Trump supporter. Sorry, Biden, no men in blue died in it.
The bombast left unsaid the many ways that he was soiling the Constitution and rule of law. No separation of powers for Biden with the lawmaking authority in a Congress and a president limited to executing the laws. In 2021, he tried to extend an eviction moratorium although simultaneously recognizing its illegality. He knew that he was violating the Constitution, which was later confirmed by a Supreme Court decision (Alabama Association of Realtors, et al v. Dept. of Health and Human Services, et al, Aug. 26, 2021). Most recently, he invented student loan forgiveness out of thin air in direct contradiction to the previously announced position in June of his fellow-traveler, Speaker Pelosi.
It’s not just his cutting loose from the Article II restraints which limits him to carrying out laws made in Article I (Congress). He even ignores his Constitutional duty to perform the carrying out. Item #1: immigration law. The US code is chock full of provisions that define law-abiding and non-law-abiding immigration. Word has spread like wildfire in the troubled regions of the world that the border is such an open sieve that localities east and south have been emptied of their residents to join caravans in the long trek to a border manned by a Border Patrol that has been morphed into a Welcome Wagon. After a greeting by the Border Patrol, the illegal crossers are awarded plane travel to a destination of their choice.
Don’t forget, these aren’t refugees from Cuba or Middle Eastern jihadist goons. Biden, in effect, has redefined refugee in such a way as to declare 8 US Code Section 12 (Immigration and Nationality) null and void under the guise of “prosecutorial discretion”. That’s right, “discretion” is stretched to cover the nearly blanket non-enforcement of 8 US Code Section 12 by imperial presidential dictat. Hardly can Biden wrap himself in the Constitution and rule of law when his actions make him eligible for impeachment. The word is projection: hiding your intentions behind false accusations of your opponents doing what you have done.
A pattern of Democrat campaigning is evident: don’t tack to the middle, but gin-up your party’s normally uninterested, ill-informed, and lackadaisical voter base to counter the enthusiasm of the other side. It worked for Obama in 2012, Pelosi and Schumer in 2018, and Biden in 2020. The heart of the strategy is to embrace the Left, not run from it. Use absurdities, gross hyperbole, and illusory threats to get your people to the polls. For 2022, it is to make the campaign a referendum on Trump and not on the party in power with much to answer for. And all of this bombast was present in Biden’s speech.
The speech was an insult to the office of the presidency. Fear of the electorate punishing your party at the polls is no excuse for turning Independence Hall into a Nuremburg Rally. People quite rightly have an aversion to escalating food and fuel prices, shortages, crime surges, their cities becoming open sewers, their children suffocating behind filthy masks, their schools being turned into woke reeducation camps, blackouts, greenie fanaticism, the socialism – i.e., the general Democratic Party program and its consequences. Biden would profit from Clinton’s dose of sobriety after the Republican blowout in the 1994 midterms (the R’s gained 54 House seats): “The era of big government is over.” Instead, Biden gave us red meat for his Red base.
Doubling down on stupid may work if it gets Biden’s Red-oriented base to show up. Sad, but true.
RogerG
Sources:
* Numbers of casualties and damage attributed to the 2020 summer riots are curiously hard to come by. They can be found if a person expands the search beyond Wikipedia, the CNN/MSNBC nexus, and legacy media. Other than vague generalities, specifics are nowhere to be found in those venues. Here’s a list of some sources with specifics:
“More Than 2,000 Officers Injured in Summer’s Protests and Riots”, Police Magazine, Dec. 3, 2020, at https://www.policemag.com/585160/more-than-2-000-officers-injured-in-summers-protests-and-riots
“Riot deaths ignored by major networks; watchdog finds 99.3% of protest coverage focused elsewhere”, Washington Times, June 4, 2020, at https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/4/riot-deaths-ignored-by-major-networks-watchdog-fin/
“2020 BLM/Antifa Riot Deaths”, National Conservative, at https://national-conservative.com/extremist-files/2020-blm-antifa-deaths/
“Police chief association releases number of officers injured during violent riots”, Fox News, Dec. 1, 2020, at https://www.foxnews.com/us/police-chief-officers-injured-riots?fbclid=IwAR0wFsq7Ndyhr7HyBQQnZ10Gn4WI_eJz4gH67vbg5ehPJ8u6WBGCKgF80H8
“RIOTS BY THE NUMBERS: POLICE CASUALTIES, PEOPLE KILLED DURING ‘PEACEFUL PROTESTS’”, Louder with Crowder, July 31, 2020, at https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/riots-by-the-numbers-police-casualties-people-killed-during-peaceful-protests