A Strategy of Spite Could Work for Biden

Credit Image: © Kyle Mazza/TheNEWS2 via ZUMA Press Wire

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During the 2022 midterm elections, President Joe Biden gave an angry speech with a menacing black-and-red background, calling his GOP opponents enemies of equality and democracy. It seemed like a sign of desperation — the tactic of a failing president trying to distract people from real economic problems by inciting hatred. Much of the country was unhappy, and Republicans expected to surf to victory on a “red wave.”

The wave was barely a ripple; the GOP lost many promising races. Mr. Biden’s strategy to limit the scope of the traditional midterm defeat worked. There’s no reason to change a successful strategy, and it appears Mr. Biden will do the same thing in 2024.

Mr. Biden recently gave two speeches that preview his campaign. The first was at Valley Forge. This was a strange choice because the American Revolution is almost irrelevant to many Americans today, especially the Democratic base. The Founding Fathers were white men, many of whom were explicit white advocates and slaveholders, and monuments to revolutionary heroes are coming down. Nonetheless, Mr. Biden still wants to claim the lingering symbols of the old America for his crusade. Thus, he began his speech by invoking George Washington, and reminisced about the time he was a Boy Scout.

Of course, George Washington’s statues are under threat and the Boy Scouts owe $2.4 billion to sex-abuse victims. Still, old-time symbols and nostalgic references are a way for Scranton Joe to soothe aging white voters who don’t want to acknowledge what the country has become.

After paying homage to the Revolution, Mr. Biden asked the question he thinks will be answered by the election: “Is democracy still America’s sacred cause? I mean it.” The Founders despised democracy, but never mind. Joe Biden said President Trump was responsible for “an attempt to overturn a free and fair election by force and violence.” He said he attended the funerals of police officers who “died as a result of the events of that day [January 6].” That was a lawyer’s dodge — the only people who died that day were Trump supporters, including Ashli Babbitt, shot dead by Capitol Police. The only Capitol Police officer who died in the line of duty in 2021 was killed by a Nation of Islam member.

Mr. Biden warned that President Trump wanted to invoke the “Insurrectionist Act,” and “deploy U.S. military forces on the streets of America” to stop BLM rioting. This, he implied, was part of President Trump’s plan to become a dictator. It was the military itself that rebuffed President Trump’s attempts to restore order during the most destructive riots in American history, a troubling rejection of civilian authority.

While blasting “authoritarianism,” Mr. Biden also bragged about sending Americans to prison because of January 6. “Since that day, more than 1,200 people have been charged with assault in the Capitol,” he said. “Nearly 900 of them have been convicted or pled guilty. Collectively to date, they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.”

Mr. Biden mentioned “dictators” seven times in the speech, but it’s the Biden White House that insists on its right to censor the internet. YouTube loves to censor (American Renaissance has been banned since 2020) but Mr. Biden wants it to do more. In June, he said not removing videos about supposed fraud in the 2020 election would “invite further democratic decay and potential violence.”

Mr. Biden praised what I believe is the most destructive sentence in American history:

We’re the only nation in the history of the world built on an idea — not hyperbole — built on an idea.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.

It’s an idea, declared in the Declaration, created in a way that we’ve viewed everybody as equal and should be treated equal throughout their lives.

We’ve never fully lived up to that. We have a long way to go, but we’ve never walked away from the idea.

“We” have. Whites are not treated equally. More to the point, “we” will never get to the end of that “long way to go” because equity is impossible and immoral. It is a recipe for unlimited government, unlimited tyranny. Mr. Biden unwittingly implied this when he intoned that America is “still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor.” Of course, he gets to define “hate,” but what does it mean not to give a basic human emotion “safe harbor,” especially in a country that supposedly has free speech?

It’s smart to appeal to the Founders, Mr. Biden’s family Bible, and the Constitution. It doesn’t matter that his de facto abolition of immigration enforcement undercuts his boasts about the “rule of law.” Swing voters may want to hear his message about defending traditional America.

Mr. Biden also gave a speech at the Mother Emanuel AME Church, where Dylann Roof killed nine people. Then-governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley then removed the Confederate Battle Flag from the South Carolina capitol grounds — which did Republicans no good. Not content with waving the (not very bloody) shirt of January 6, Mr. Biden evoked more horrors:

The lies that led to January 6th are part of a broader attack on the truth America today that we all have seen before. The same movement that, throughout the mob at the United States Capitol, isn’t just trying to rewrite history of January 6th, they’re trying to determine to erase history and your future: banning books; denying your right to vote and have it counted; destroying diversity, equality, inclusion all across America; harboring hate and replacing hope with anger and resentment and a dangerous view of America.

Mr. Biden is not suddenly worried about the fact that dissidents can’t sell books on Amazon. “Banning books” refers to efforts by some school boards and state officials to take what is essentially homosexual pornography out of school libraries. Standing up for “diversity, equality, inclusion” is explicit support for DEI bureaucracies — whether or not he deliberately said “equality” instead of “equity.” “Erasing history and your future” means black history and the future of black people.

Mr. Biden took credit for establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday and bragged about an Emmett Till monument. Of course, there is always more to do:

You know, we’re growing back — Black wealth, and we have a lot more to do. The racial wealth gap is the smallest it’s been in 20 years under my watch. More Black small businesses starting up than in decades in the ultimate act — opening a new business, the ultimate act of hope.

We’re taking on housing discrimination in many ways. So, a home owned by — today, a home owned by a Black family on one side of a highway, built by the same builder on the other side of the highway and a white guy living in it, the white guy’s home is valued more than the Black guy’s. [The reverential capitalization of “Blacks” but not for “whites” is from the White House’s official transcript.]

Democrats are not backing down on their monocausal explanation for inequality. It is always discrimination and always justifies government intervention.

Mr. Biden called 2020 a “historic movement for justice,” bragged about imposing police reform by executive order, and said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is “smarter than the rest of these guys.” He also said “more Black women have been appointed to the federal circuit courts than every other president in American history.” He added: “We deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.” This, of course, means treating people unequally.

It’s fitting that pro-Palestine protesters interrupted Mr. Biden’s speech. To many young Americans, Joe Biden is just another white racist, supporting white racists in Israel. The Israel-Hamas war could be a problem for the campaign. Mr. Biden is a typical pro-Zionist Democrat, but many young Democrats, who are likely to be non-white, oppose Israel. Some polls find that President Trump is actually leading Mr. Biden among young voters, with Israel a major reason why.

Mr. Biden will probably keep attacking “insurrectionists,” “MAGA Republicans,” and other supposed threats to democracy, even though it may seem risky to brag about defending “democracy.” Just 28 percent of Americans are happy with the way “democracy” is working, though Democrats and more educated people are more likely to be happy with it. The public may grumble, but it may not blame Mr. Biden if he can find a scapegoat.

Mr. Biden says there have been “ferocious backlashes” on our road to equity, and “MAGA Republicans” are only the latest. Big media will echo his view that he is defending democracy against racists and dictators. He may even paper over divisions over Palestine if he can get enough Democrats charged up over white racism.

Mr. Biden won cheers from the black audience in the church when he called January 6 the “second lost cause.” He repeatedly called President Trump a loser. Smearing the American Right as both terrifying and pathetic — both a major threat and incompetent and stupid — seems like a contradiction, but that is the way big media talk about conservatives.

Mr. Biden’s approach could work. He raised one million dollars in just 24 hours after his January 6 speech. President Trump’s standing in the polls has fallen slightly in the new year, and Nikki Haley may mount an unexpectedly strong challenge in New Hampshire. Republicans should quietly help get Cornel West on the ballot in swing states to drain votes from Mr. Biden. The incumbent also has a lot more money, and ballot harvesting will also work in his favor.

The white majority that wants efficient government, property rights, and low crime may be gone. It could be outnumbered by a coalition of managerial elites who run programs and control our behavior and their huge number of non-white clients and dependents, thousands more of which cross the border every day.

White advocates are public enemy number one, and censorship will be justified to defend Our Democracy. Journalists and Democrats must be astonished at their success in rigging the national debate. With Republicans almost silent on the issue, there is sure to be more repression.

For decades, Democrats ignored white advocates. Today, Mr. Biden wants to put us at the center of the debate. Ironically, that could help us take over the American Right. White backlash politics, if not quite white advocacy, is increasingly mainstream. The 2024 election may be the greatest opportunity yet to move forward, especially because Mr. Biden seems determined to keep talking about us.

“The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who,” said the late Kevin Phillips, the Republican strategist who helped develop the New Republican Majority for Reagan and Nixon. Mr. Biden is betting that status-conscious voters will choose fear and resentment over any positive program, and his Strategy of Spite could work, especially if foreign policy doesn’t get out of control.

American liberalism is clearly exhausted. Who believes the current system can really help with medical care, housing, crime rates or immigration? The Biden Administration doesn’t seem to want to try. But exhausted systems can stagger on for decades, especially if they unite around a common enemy. Mr. Biden has found one: us.