The bad news keeps coming fast and furious for Joe Biden. Underwater and trailing Donald Trump on almost every issue of significance to the American people – the economy, illegal immigration, crime, foreign wars, and of course inflation, now on the rise again – there is but one real issue and one fabricated issue on which Biden is now forced to base his entire re-election campaign: abortion and “democracy.”
In fact, while outrage poured out from the left over the Dobbs decision in 2022 sending the issue of abortion back to the states, Biden must have been privately grateful because the backlash from it by pro-abortion voters saved Democrats in 2022 and remains about the only thing propping up a presidential campaign making Democrats sweat profusely. Democracy has replaced terms like white supremacist and fascist as the hottest item in the left’s virtue-signaling lexicon as they attempt to convince the American people that Donald Trump will morph into Joseph Stalin upon assuming office for a second time.
But even both of those issues, abortion and democracy, have started to turn on Biden as well. You could sense the frustration on the left when Donald Trump announced his position on abortion. By refusing to support a national ban of any kind in favor of each state deciding for itself, he frustrated pro-life activists, but more importantly from a political standpoint, he refused to provide red meat for his enemies and softened the issue considerably. Some red states have adopted more restrictive laws than during the 50 years of Roe v. Wade, while some blue states are actually inviting out-of-staters to come and get abortions on demand. But Trump both assumed the appropriate constitutional position on the issue based on the unambiguous Tenth Amendment and short-circuited the left’s narrative about abortion extremism on the right.
Beyond that, Trump is boomeranging the issue by declaring that it’s actually the pro-abortion crowd that is extreme based on their support of the procedure all the way up to the point of birth, a position not supported by anywhere near a majority of the American people. Though his talk of Democrats’ radical position on the issue will undoubtedly fall on the deaf ears of elite media, he has adopted an approach that will prevent the issue from exploding on him.
Beyond Abortion and Democracy
At the same time, it hardly requires a brain surgeon to interpret pronouncements from the left about preserving democracy to be insincere at best, reckless and dangerous at worst. Having long hoped January 6 would carry them all the way to the finish line in 2024, they made a fateful decision to resort to another new term in the political lexicon: lawfare. Do they think the average voter cannot reach the obvious conclusion about their motives when Donald Trump has been indicted for everything except jaywalking? Do they believe Americans will respond to their cries of preserving democracy – as they attempt to remove the man leading the race for president from the ballot? Let’s just say self-awareness is not at its height in today’s Democratic Party.
But then, what else does Biden have going for him? He has failed to convince voters to distrust their own eyes or the inflated cost of living they face every day and believe that things are better than they appear. The much-ballyhooed Build Back Better (remember that?) and Bidenomics were discarded after going nowhere. In fact, they may have actually made things worse for Biden’s electoral prospects by drawing more attention to the issue. Even his embattled DHS Secretary now finally admits the border is in crisis, but Biden is paralyzed by his left flank and fails to act. Left-wing Democrats from New York to Georgia are obviously and transparently dishing out Soviet-style justice on Trump for all to see.
This president also can’t run on competence when he can barely make it through public appearances. He won’t be able to ask what Trump will ask, whether people are better off than they were four years ago, because they are not. He cannot convince people that the economy is bright when gas prices have risen 50% since he entered the White House, rising interest rates are paralyzing the housing market, and a bag of groceries that cost $100 when Joe Biden took office now comes in at $137. He won’t be able to talk voters out of the obvious conclusion that the southern border is out of control because of his policies, as it metastasizes across the land. And he has another thing coming if he thinks he can talk people out of their fear of lawless migrants and urban criminals set loose by far-left prosecutors foisting their failed social experiment on the American people.
Any political candidate is entitled to serve up pure demagoguery. Many do. But voters can sense desperation, and with even the two issues Democrats thought they could count on to take down Donald Trump no longer the flashpoints they once were, it seems Joe Biden will have to dig deeper and find something, anything more than abject fearmongering about his opponent if he expects to hold the Oval Office for four more years.
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