Even when it seems like Joe Biden can’t make things look any worse, he does.
Looking beyond the still-contested presidential election to actually being sworn into office, the former vice president took to a stage in Wilmington, Delaware, on Tuesday to warn his countrymen and women that they’ve nothing to look forward to in the foreseeable future when it comes to the coronavirus crisis.
This is pretty much exactly what Americans don’t need to hear as the new year of 2021 beckons. Some might remember way back when the coronavirus crisis was just a “flatten-the-curve” situation, with two weeks of shutdowns expected to make sure the coronavirus didn’t overwhelm the medical system.
Now, a man who’s at least pretending to the presidency is making speeches that raise the specter of nationwide lockdowns — exactly the kind that aren’t working so well now in California and other Democratic-run states.
Biden and his boot-lickers in the establishment media tried to play it off as a politician leveling with the public, but for conservative critics, it came across as something different entirely.
“One thing I promise you about my leadership during this crisis: I’m going to tell it to you straight. I’m going to tell you the truth. And here’s the simple truth: Our darkest days in the battle against COVID are ahead of us, not behind us,” Biden said, according to Fox News.
“As frustrating as it is to hear, it’s going to take patience, persistence and determination to beat this virus,” Biden said. “There will be no time to waste in taking the steps we need to turn this crisis around.”
Maybe it’s escaped the doddering Democrat’s notice, but the current White House resident, President Donald Trump, has already taken a considerable number of those steps we need to “turn this crisis around.”
It’s thanks in large part to Trump’s Operation Warp Speed — and over the skepticism of liberals — that not one but two vaccinations have received emergency use authorization for the coronavirus that’s plagued the world and global economies since apparently being unleashed by China in late 2019.
That’s a bona fide reason for at least some optimism in the dwindling days of December 2020, but acknowledging that might actually raise American expectations for the future. And above all else, Biden and his supporters don’t want to raise expectations.
Any prospective Biden presidency is going to have a tough enough time meeting the dismal ones that are in place now.
Even leaving aside the growing scandal surrounding Biden’s son Hunter and the mounting evidence that the former vice president himself is almost certainly corrupt, any honest appraisal would have to conclude that Biden simply doesn’t have a lot to offer that his country needs, or wants.
After all, this is a lifelong political hack whose career was probably best summed up by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates as having been ”wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
This is a presidential prospect whose time on the campaign trail was ludicrously limited, ostensibly by fears of the coronavirus but much more likely by aides petrified that the gaffe machine that is Joe Biden would finally say something so over the top that even an establishment media devoted to ousting Trump from the White House wouldn’t be able to cover it up.
(They knew they didn’t have to worry about something as routine as, say, a sexual assault allegation that could be buried. But they had real reason to wonder what Biden would do to himself.)
It’s safe to say not even Trump’s biggest haters have very high expectations of a potential Biden presidency as a good thing for the country. The best they can hope for realistically is a bigger slice of the grievance pie for themselves and their particular tribe – whether that’s defined by race, sex, sexuality or some other put-upon sector of the population.
But Biden is aiming lower anyway.
As Twitchy pointed out, Biden was singing a different tune in late October, when he vowed in a Twitter post to “shut down the virus, not the country.”
Conservative author and radio and TV host Mark Levin has an explanation for the change that matches perfectly with tenor of the Biden campaign, but also with intelligent observation of the senator-turned-vice-president-turned-potential president:
1. Joe Biden wants you to think our darkest days are before us so if he slithers into the Oval Office he will abuse his powers in the name of a medical emergency; and when the Trump vaccines wind up saving millions, Biden will claim his brilliant leadership saved the day.
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) December 23, 2020
2. Biden is and always has been a fraud and empty suit.https://t.co/RN6opV3fP2
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) December 23, 2020
“1. Joe Biden wants you to think our darkest days are before us so if he slithers into the Oval Office he will abuse his powers in the name of a medical emergency; and when the Trump vaccines wind up saving millions, Biden will claim his brilliant leadership saved the day,” Levin wrote.
“2. Biden is and always has been a fraud and empty suit. “
As usual in the social media world, liberals swarmed to attack Levin, but he had plenty of supporters too.
1. Joe Biden wants you to think our darkest days are before us so if he slithers into the Oval Office he will abuse his powers in the name of a medical emergency; and when the Trump vaccines wind up saving millions, Biden will claim his brilliant leadership saved the day.
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) December 23, 2020
Also, when his policies fail, he will claim that things would be much darker if he had not implemented them.
That he would claim it is almost as sad as the fact that others would believe and repeat the claim, or repeat it even though they see it for a lie.
— David Lindstrom (@DLandTheBeard) December 23, 2020
Honestly, all he has to do now is "nothing" for 6 months, when the vaccines have snuffed out the pandemic, & the economy will be roaring.
Then take credit for being a genius.
The only thing he can do is screw it up – and he will – not in huge ways, but he'll screw things up
— Squiddy McCephalopod (@squiddy61) December 23, 2020
That last tweet just about sums up any realistic expectations of a potential Biden presidency, but it’s likely much too optimistic:
“The only thing he can do now is screw it up — and he will — not in huge ways.”
It’s a pretty good rule of political life that committed liberals, or politicians beholden to committed liberals, can and will screw up in precise proportion to the power they wield.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for instance, is extremely vocal and just as annoying, but realistically speaking, it weren’t for the fact that she’s a good deal more physically attractive than, say, Jerry Nadler, she’d be ignored. She’s basically a nonentity where real power is concerned. She can say a lot, but she can’t screw up much (at the moment).
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, is in a position of enormous power, and one where she’s used it repeatedly to do enormous wrong to the entire country — the Obamacare disaster that passed during her speakership in the 111th Congress and her leadership of the impeachment fraud at the end of 2019 going into 2020, to name just two.
In the post of president, Biden would essentially be hostage to a Democratic left wing longing for the day when the radical Kamala Harris might step into Biden’s shoes. He’s in a position to do unspeakable harm to the American political system — if only by going along with the wilder elements of his party.
Should Democrats pull off upsets in the Georgia Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5, and should Biden in fact accede to the presidency later that month, the United States will be in for dark, dark days indeed, and they’ll have nothing to do with the coronavirus.
Because even if it’ll look like Joe Biden couldn’t make things worse, he will.
Story cited here.
