June 25, 2024
Dear Friends and Family,
In the Introduction to the series, I stated for the nine policy categories (segment 2 – 10) that I would explain my ratings provided in the syllabus for each. The policy ratings were for my concerns going forward from today’s state. For governance, the rating was Serious Concern.
My Reasoning: The Biden administration has moved the country decidedly to the left – toward socialism – as the excepts report. If they have a second term it is clear they would continue that trend – meaning continued high spending powered by economic socialism; movement from merit to equity qualifications throughout the government (including the military); most probably continued inflation; censorship, politicized investigations, character assassinations; increased crime; and continued deterioration of our national security as well as our major cities, as the Left seeks to transform the country. In my judgment a move to the center is called for. Hence my rating of serious concern if the trend continues.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
In the Introduction to the series, I stated for the nine policy categories (segment 2 – 10) that I would explain my ratings provided in the syllabus for each. The policy ratings were for my concerns going forward from today’s state. For governance, the rating was Serious Concern.
My Reasoning: The Biden administration has moved the country decidedly to the left – toward socialism – as the excepts report. If they have a second term it is clear they would continue that trend – meaning continued high spending powered by economic socialism; movement from merit to equity qualifications throughout the government (including the military); most probably continued inflation; censorship, politicized investigations, character assassinations; increased crime; and continued deterioration of our national security as well as our major cities, as the Left seeks to transform the country. In my judgment a move to the center is called for. Hence my rating of serious concern if the trend continues.
Happy Learning,
Harley
THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
Opportunity: The forty-sixth president came into office with everything going for him. The Trump administration had produced strong economic growth. Prior to Covid, the unemployment rate hit 3.5%, the best number in fifty years. The jobless rate for African Americans, Hispanics, Natives, and Asians all hit record lows. Wages grew in every segment of the economy and jumped even faster for lower-income and blue-collar workers. The country produced new manufacturing and construction jobs; small-business optimism soared. Home ownership increased. Income inequality decreased. Inflation through the Trump years averaged 1.9%. Thanks to a fracking revolution and pro-energy policies, the U.S. in 2018 became a net exported of oil for the first time in seventy-five years. As the world’s biggest generator of oil, America became a “swing producer,” able to influence the quantity of world supplies and diminish OPEC’s longstanding position as price setter.
Covid lockdowns wreaked havoc in the first half of 2020, but even by the time of the election the economy was soaring back to life. During the third quarter of 2020, GDP jumped to an astonishing 33.1%. And by the end of the year the economy had more than halved its pandemic job losses, adding 12 million back on the rolls. Inflation on Biden’s inauguration day sat at 1.4%, and the price for a gallon of regular was $2.39. Millions of vaccines hit the states a full month before Biden took office, the last step in getting the rest of America back to work. All Biden had to do was sit back and honor those two election promises – see through Covid, unite the nation – and watch the good approval ratings roll.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberley Strassel (2023)
Biden’s Ambition: Joe Biden believed that he could save American democracy by transforming the country – passing monumental legislation, breaking with economic orthodoxy, redirecting its foreign policy to the challenges of the future.
Biden emphatically believed that he could pass massive pieces of legislation that would win him a place in the pantheon of great Democratic presidents. Biden hadn’t waited his whole professional life for the job just to be a placeholder. Biden’s primary point of comparison wasn’t Roosevelt; it was Obama. Biden was reliving the Obama presidency, but as the boss, like Obama, he needed to pass a massive piece of economic stimulus upon entering office.
The first months of his presidency would unfold in two acts: what he deemed “relief” and “recovery.” He would nurse the nation back to health, then set about transforming it. Because Biden favored simple declarative names, he called the first piece of legislation the American Rescue Plan. It would cost $1.9 trillion.
Source: The Last Politician by Franklin Foer (2023).
On March 2, 2021, President Biden held a secret afternoon meeting with liberal historians. Biden jotted down thoughts as the historians told him who, among Biden’s White House predecessors, they most admired and why. No conservative historians were present. The historians ranked the best and worst presidents. Joe Biden, it appears, was thinking about his place in history – and that’s why he was hell bent on accomplishing big things fast.
The historians reportedly told Biden exactly what he wanted to hear: Forget bipartisanship and playing by the rules. Now is the time to bulldoze anything that stands in your way, including such bipartisan niceties as the filibuster. Joe Biden, who ran for president as a bipartisan healer and a uniter, has unmasked himself as a sharply partisan, hard-left strongman president. He is ready to shove the levers of government as far to the left as they will go. And the leftist historians agreed. Go big and do it now. They confirmed Biden’s worst instincts, urging him to spend big, grow the size of government, expand the power of government, and become another FDR. As Axios observed, “Joe Biden loves the growing narrative that he’s bolder and bigger thinking than President Obama.”
In that meeting, Michael Beschloss filled Biden’s ears with the classic Progressive myth that FDR saved the nation from chaos and economic despair with his big-spending New Deal programs. So, Biden is determined to ram through Congress what Axios calls “a $5 trillion plus overhaul of America, and vast changes to voting, immigration, and inequality.” If achieving an FDR sized legacy means wrecking the rules and traditions of the U.S. Senate, so be it. Biden will pass his agenda without bipartisan compromise.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer (2021)
Initial Actions: His first act upon sewing up the nomination was to announce his team would immediately start crafting a “unity” agenda with Sanders – the guy he’d just defeated. Whatever independence Biden promised his supporters went out the door. They might as well have elected Bernie – by the end of the unity task force process, Biden had essentially adopted his rival’s platform. Biden’s Democratic Party is today monolithically left, and his presidency has been one surrender after another to the progressives.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberley Strassel (2023)
Joe Biden’s presidency began with a blizzard of executive action. On Inauguration Day he signed 17 executive orders, rejoined the Paris agreement on climate change and the World Health Organization and unveiled his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The next day Biden introduced his national strategy for the COVID-19 response, a whole-of-government plan to defeat the pandemic. In his first two weeks, Biden issued 45 executive orders, 10 presidential memoranda, and 5 proclamations.
Source: The Fight of His Life by Chris Whipple (2023).
Progressive Government is not Working: Progressive governance is clearly not working for the president either in substance or politically. His approval ratings have been in the tank since his first year in office. His administration has seen more than its fair share of debacles and milestones – Afghanistan, inflation reports, the end of the president’s first year, the 2022 midterms – moments it might have used as an excuse to pivot to a more palatable agenda.
Biden was warned of the risk of dumping more money on an economy that already had too much cash to spend, and too few things (thanks to Covid supply shocks) to buy with it. W. Michael Blumenthal, Carter’s Treasury secretary, told the Times in 2022 that “the basic problem that Biden faced is really not too dissimilar from the one that confronted Carter.” He urged Biden to abandon sweeping spending in favor of deficit reduction. Biden instead used Covid as an excuse to attempt to completely restructure the U.S. economy, with a spending agenda more radical than anything ever proposed by any Democrat.
Biden threw money at a hot economy – despite all the ‘70s taught us about inflation. He strangled an energy sector – despite the perilous warning of the ‘70s oil shocks. He imposed tax hikes and regulations that are winnowing supply and feeding stagnation – despite the demonstrated success of the Reagan years. He hightailed it out of Afghanistan and bent the knee to China. As the Carter years proved, U.S. weakness only invited more aggression.
Equity vs. Merit: Every Democratic president brings with them and army of regulators. But this was something else. Many of Biden’s nominees professed hostility to the very notion of private ownership, markets, and entrepreneurs. Most of Biden’s picks amounted to activists, academics, and ideologues – a lethal combination of market ignorance and business hostility. Many of Biden’s people were picked because they checked an identity-politics box. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity studied the experience of 68 top Biden officials whose job it was to help oversee the economy. The “average business experience was only 2.4 years.” It also discovered that 62% had “virtually no business experience.” The average Trump cabinet official, by contrast, had 13 years.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberly Strassel (2023).
Joe Biden has surrounded himself with two kinds of people: (1) loyalists – people who have worked with him before – and (2) people who check racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and gender boxes – people who (as Progressives like to say) “look like America.” The question “Is he or she the most qualified person for the job,” is just not an urgent priority.
This brief survey shows that Biden has assembled a team of people who, for the most part, have very little experience (like Mayor Pete) or the wrong experience (like Denis McDonough) or an unwillingness to speak up for America (like Antony Blinken). The Biden administration is a collection of some of the worst Obama-era retreads plus a number of appointments that serve only to check a box. America deserves better. This is no way to run a country.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer
Kamala Harris: Two days before Election Day 2020, Kamala Harris tweeted an animated video she had narrated called Equality vs. Equity. “So, there’s a big difference between equality and equity,” Harris said. “Equality suggests, ‘Oh, everyone should get the same amount.’ The problem with that not everybody starts out from the same place. So, if we’re all getting the same amount but you started out back there and I started out over here – we can get the same amount but you’re still going to be that far back behind me. It’s about giving people the resources and support they need so that everyone can be on an equal footing and then compete on an equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.” Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming retweeted Harris’s tweet, adding the comment: “Sounds just like Karl Marx. A century of history has shown where that path leads. We all embrace equal opportunity, but government-enforced equality of outcomes is Marxism.” It’s true. Kamala Harris’s little video is pure, distilled Marxism.
The idea of equal outcomes for all was tried in the Soviet Union. Whether you work hard or slack off, whether you were efficient or wasteful, everybody got the same reward. Soon, Soviet citizens realized that there was no reward for extra effort and no punishment for inefficiency. People stopped being productive, and the Soviet economy stagnated. Kamala Harris’s lecture on equality vs. equity is a recipe for turning the USA into the USSR and rerunning the same failed experiment.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer (2021).
Her obsessive desire to avoid making mistakes, the pressure she applied in her internal monologue almost doomed her to make them. Harris possessed what one of her colleagues described as “rabbit ears,” Whenever there was a hint of criticism of her – either in the West Wing or in the press – she seemed instantly aware of it. She let criticism guide her. Instead of diligently sticking to the Central American assignment, she seemed to accept the conventional wisdom about it. It was a futile gig, so she let it fall to the side, missing an opportunity to grind her way to a meaningful achievement.
Source: The Last Politician by Franklin Foer (2023).
Abortion: The Supreme Court handed Biden an issue that could transform the contours of the coming election. All those Democrats who were dispirited were primed to rally to his side because of the fury over the decision. Biden seem to agree. But when he gave his speech, he couldn’t quite rise to the occasion. Squinting into the teleprompter, he said, “I know so many of us are frustrated and disillusioned that the Court has taken something away that’s so fundamental. I know so many women are now going to face incredibly difficult situations. I hear you. I support you. I stand with you” The tone was more sorrowful than angry, a little distant, and stood in contrast to images of protesters at the Supreme Court.
Rebecca Traister, the feminist essayist, wrote a piece titled “Joe Biden’s Dobbs Response Has Been Breathtakingly Awful.” The Washington Post reported the speech “Lacked the urgent tone that many Democrats felt was required, and that even some White House officials later said they wished the president had been more fiery.” Biden’s advisers resented being accused of incompetence when they felt the core problem was their boss’s indecision. Biden’s failure to channel his base’s anger with the Supreme Court began to cost him in the polls. According to a You Gov survey, one in four Democrats disapproved of his handling of the abortion issue.
Source: The Last Politician by Franklin Foer (2023).
Unification: In his inaugural address President Biden said, “This is a great nation, and we are a good people.” When I heard that line the first time, I thought I agreed. But later in the speech he accused his fellow Americans of “distrusting those who don’t look like you, or worship the way you do, or don’t get their news from the same sources you do.” This is what Progressives do. The lecture their fellow Americans about what terrible people they are. In his speech, Joe Biden called for unity – but he didn’t call out his own side, the cancel culture, the mockers in the news media, the rioters or the looters in the streets. He reserved all his scolding for those of us on the right.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer (2021).
The 2022 midterms were touted by Democrats as a referendum on democracy. President Biden implored Democrats to vote – implying that they need to save our democracy from the people who want to Make America Great Again. He demonized Trump’s seventy-four million voters as “extreme” and intimated that supporting Trump was comparable to “semi-fascism.” “They’re a threat to our very democracy,” Biden claimed. “They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace … embrace political violence! This is why in the moment, those of you who love this country – Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans – must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving America than the MAGA Republicans are to destroying America.”
Source: The Puppeteers by Jason Chaffetz (2023).
When it came to communicating, Biden tried to do two things that were contradictory: unify the country and call out the Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election. “Our principle has always been that we want to unify the country around shared values,” said Ron Klain, Biden’s Chief of Staff. “And we’ll continue to do that. But there are people in this country that don’t share those values – people who stand for white supremacy or for votes not counted in an election. That’s what the battle for the soul of the nation is all about.” Biden thought he could persuade most Americans to treat one another with respect, to compromise, and to respect the truth – and, faced with a lethal pandemic, to wear masks and take vaccines. But nearly 40% of the country wasn’t listening. Biden’s reputation for competence had been damaged by the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was hastily planned and poorly executed. His damn-the-torpedoes determination to end the war trumped a plan to do so safely and competently. The episode accelerated a slide in his approval rating over the summer of 2021.
Source: The Fight of His Life by Chris Whipple (2023).
The Blame Game: Jimmy Carter’s self-righteous language left the impression he was blaming problems on everyone else but himself. Biden doesn’t leave an impression. He outright blames problems on everyone else. It’s fair to say that not once in office has Biden taken responsibility for any mistake – not even ones that were flamingly obvious (like his horrific Afghanistan withdrawal). He either denies a problem exists entirely or faults others. The excuses have started to make voters question his leadership.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY
Americans Deep Disillusion: Americans are deeply disillusioned. They live in what is supposed to be the most vibrant political system in the world, yet they are astonished by the daily failure of competence. Congress seems no longer capable of legislating. Democrats have abandoned federalism, the electoral system, and the concept of equality. The administrative state rules all. President Biden grandstands, even as he resolutely refuses to work with Republicans. He waves his magic scepter and decrees lawless eviction moratoriums, vaccine mandates, and student loan forgiveness. The left no longer believes in the value of work or family and characterizes America as systemically racist and a threat to the globe. This is out of step with first and second-generation immigrants who still believe in “el sueno Americano.” And the final, important point. All signs point to a Democratic Party that will move even further left. Polls suggest that the portion of the Democratic electorate least enthused with Biden is the progressive movement. For all the president’s radicalism, this faction is still dismissive of his efforts and hostile to a renomination. “He’s deeply unpopular. He’s old as shit. He’s largely been ineffective,” Corbin Trent, a cofounder of the progressive No Excuses PAC, and a former communications director for Alexandris Ocasio-Cortex, told Politico in early 2023. There is little to indicate the Democratic Party will embark upon an ideological correction.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberley Strassel (2023)
Advantage Democrats: The Democrats designed the system, and they are positioned to use it to dominate politics over the next several decades. If they do, they will institutionalize wokeness at a rapid rate, our institutions will be politized even more than they are now, the collapse of our cities will accelerate, tax rates will rise, and our energy policy will place the ideology above practical realities. If we are not asked to fight in more foreign wars, we’ll certainly be paying for them. Maybe even the end of Americanism as we know it is in the offing. The stakes are high, and things could get pretty bleak pretty fast. Unless … Unless other emerging trends win out.
Discussions of slavery reparations have been a constant in recent years, particularly in the free state of California. When I grew up there in the 1990s and 2000s, there was almost no discussion of race, positive or negative. Now here we are. Basic standards of professionalism are now considered white supremacy. Punctuality is white supremacy. Speaking “perfect English” is white supremacy. These are the new rules of the modern Left, the same group of people who run the Democrat establishment.
Advantage Conservatives: The Left employs constant censorship, politicized investigations, and character assassinations to get what they want; these are all signs of a movement that lacks confidence in its own arguments and its own people. Besides, why would they be confident? As their constituents get older, they often switch parties, which means they have to keep the border open to ensure replacement voters flow in. The public is coming to the knowledge that our foreign policy has served the defense industry more than the American people, our energy policies are antihuman, and authoritarian pandemic responses did not serve their stated intent of shutting down the virus.
Source: Breaking Biden by Alex Marlow (2023)
The Democratic Party & Authoritarianism: America is unraveling. Our founding and history are under assault. Our families and faiths are being degraded. Individualism has been substituted for groupism. Color blindness is now racist. Capitalism and prosperity are being devoured by economic socialism and climate-change fanaticism. Classrooms have become indoctrination mills for racism, segregation, bigotry, and sexual perversion, and teachers’ unions are hostile to parental involvement in critical decisions about the health and welfare of their children. In America, free speech and academic freedom are shrinking, and the police state is growing – as is monitoring and spying on citizens. The government is banning and regulating more and more household products, from incandescent lightbulbs to dishwashers, while creating shortages and driving up costs of others. Crime is out of control on our streets, public transportation, and schools, while police budgets are slashed, and many prosecutors and judges coddle criminals. Our borders are wide open to millions of foreigners who seek entry into the country, as drug and criminal cartels ship killer drugs into our country by the tons and brutalize migrants by using them as indentured servants and sex slaves. The list goes on. The Democrat Party is responsible for most of this and much more.
Biden rules as an autocrat. Biden has said that he wants his legacy to be as big or bigger than Franklin Roosevelt’s who did in fact radically change the nature of the federal government and its relationship with the citizen. And Biden is being urged to continue the transformation of America away from the founding ideals toward an Americanized Marxist model. The Republican Party, while often anemic if not ignorantly contributory to the Democrat Party’s power grab ambitions is nonetheless, an impediment by its mere existence. Clearly, the power-sharing is not, and cannot be, part of the Democrat party’s agenda. Frankly, like autocratic parties everywhere, the Democrat Party is intolerant to opposition and insists on absolute total control. A democracy or republic consisting of multiple political parties competing for power is simply unacceptable to and incompatible with Marxism or any form or in any country, including the United States. Yet that is the unmistakable goal of the Democratic Party.
Source: The Democrat Party Hates America by Mark R. Levin (2023)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
Opportunity: The forty-sixth president came into office with everything going for him. The Trump administration had produced strong economic growth. Prior to Covid, the unemployment rate hit 3.5%, the best number in fifty years. The jobless rate for African Americans, Hispanics, Natives, and Asians all hit record lows. Wages grew in every segment of the economy and jumped even faster for lower-income and blue-collar workers. The country produced new manufacturing and construction jobs; small-business optimism soared. Home ownership increased. Income inequality decreased. Inflation through the Trump years averaged 1.9%. Thanks to a fracking revolution and pro-energy policies, the U.S. in 2018 became a net exported of oil for the first time in seventy-five years. As the world’s biggest generator of oil, America became a “swing producer,” able to influence the quantity of world supplies and diminish OPEC’s longstanding position as price setter.
Covid lockdowns wreaked havoc in the first half of 2020, but even by the time of the election the economy was soaring back to life. During the third quarter of 2020, GDP jumped to an astonishing 33.1%. And by the end of the year the economy had more than halved its pandemic job losses, adding 12 million back on the rolls. Inflation on Biden’s inauguration day sat at 1.4%, and the price for a gallon of regular was $2.39. Millions of vaccines hit the states a full month before Biden took office, the last step in getting the rest of America back to work. All Biden had to do was sit back and honor those two election promises – see through Covid, unite the nation – and watch the good approval ratings roll.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberley Strassel (2023)
Biden’s Ambition: Joe Biden believed that he could save American democracy by transforming the country – passing monumental legislation, breaking with economic orthodoxy, redirecting its foreign policy to the challenges of the future.
Biden emphatically believed that he could pass massive pieces of legislation that would win him a place in the pantheon of great Democratic presidents. Biden hadn’t waited his whole professional life for the job just to be a placeholder. Biden’s primary point of comparison wasn’t Roosevelt; it was Obama. Biden was reliving the Obama presidency, but as the boss, like Obama, he needed to pass a massive piece of economic stimulus upon entering office.
The first months of his presidency would unfold in two acts: what he deemed “relief” and “recovery.” He would nurse the nation back to health, then set about transforming it. Because Biden favored simple declarative names, he called the first piece of legislation the American Rescue Plan. It would cost $1.9 trillion.
Source: The Last Politician by Franklin Foer (2023).
On March 2, 2021, President Biden held a secret afternoon meeting with liberal historians. Biden jotted down thoughts as the historians told him who, among Biden’s White House predecessors, they most admired and why. No conservative historians were present. The historians ranked the best and worst presidents. Joe Biden, it appears, was thinking about his place in history – and that’s why he was hell bent on accomplishing big things fast.
The historians reportedly told Biden exactly what he wanted to hear: Forget bipartisanship and playing by the rules. Now is the time to bulldoze anything that stands in your way, including such bipartisan niceties as the filibuster. Joe Biden, who ran for president as a bipartisan healer and a uniter, has unmasked himself as a sharply partisan, hard-left strongman president. He is ready to shove the levers of government as far to the left as they will go. And the leftist historians agreed. Go big and do it now. They confirmed Biden’s worst instincts, urging him to spend big, grow the size of government, expand the power of government, and become another FDR. As Axios observed, “Joe Biden loves the growing narrative that he’s bolder and bigger thinking than President Obama.”
In that meeting, Michael Beschloss filled Biden’s ears with the classic Progressive myth that FDR saved the nation from chaos and economic despair with his big-spending New Deal programs. So, Biden is determined to ram through Congress what Axios calls “a $5 trillion plus overhaul of America, and vast changes to voting, immigration, and inequality.” If achieving an FDR sized legacy means wrecking the rules and traditions of the U.S. Senate, so be it. Biden will pass his agenda without bipartisan compromise.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer (2021)
Initial Actions: His first act upon sewing up the nomination was to announce his team would immediately start crafting a “unity” agenda with Sanders – the guy he’d just defeated. Whatever independence Biden promised his supporters went out the door. They might as well have elected Bernie – by the end of the unity task force process, Biden had essentially adopted his rival’s platform. Biden’s Democratic Party is today monolithically left, and his presidency has been one surrender after another to the progressives.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberley Strassel (2023)
Joe Biden’s presidency began with a blizzard of executive action. On Inauguration Day he signed 17 executive orders, rejoined the Paris agreement on climate change and the World Health Organization and unveiled his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The next day Biden introduced his national strategy for the COVID-19 response, a whole-of-government plan to defeat the pandemic. In his first two weeks, Biden issued 45 executive orders, 10 presidential memoranda, and 5 proclamations.
Source: The Fight of His Life by Chris Whipple (2023).
Progressive Government is not Working: Progressive governance is clearly not working for the president either in substance or politically. His approval ratings have been in the tank since his first year in office. His administration has seen more than its fair share of debacles and milestones – Afghanistan, inflation reports, the end of the president’s first year, the 2022 midterms – moments it might have used as an excuse to pivot to a more palatable agenda.
Biden was warned of the risk of dumping more money on an economy that already had too much cash to spend, and too few things (thanks to Covid supply shocks) to buy with it. W. Michael Blumenthal, Carter’s Treasury secretary, told the Times in 2022 that “the basic problem that Biden faced is really not too dissimilar from the one that confronted Carter.” He urged Biden to abandon sweeping spending in favor of deficit reduction. Biden instead used Covid as an excuse to attempt to completely restructure the U.S. economy, with a spending agenda more radical than anything ever proposed by any Democrat.
Biden threw money at a hot economy – despite all the ‘70s taught us about inflation. He strangled an energy sector – despite the perilous warning of the ‘70s oil shocks. He imposed tax hikes and regulations that are winnowing supply and feeding stagnation – despite the demonstrated success of the Reagan years. He hightailed it out of Afghanistan and bent the knee to China. As the Carter years proved, U.S. weakness only invited more aggression.
Equity vs. Merit: Every Democratic president brings with them and army of regulators. But this was something else. Many of Biden’s nominees professed hostility to the very notion of private ownership, markets, and entrepreneurs. Most of Biden’s picks amounted to activists, academics, and ideologues – a lethal combination of market ignorance and business hostility. Many of Biden’s people were picked because they checked an identity-politics box. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity studied the experience of 68 top Biden officials whose job it was to help oversee the economy. The “average business experience was only 2.4 years.” It also discovered that 62% had “virtually no business experience.” The average Trump cabinet official, by contrast, had 13 years.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberly Strassel (2023).
Joe Biden has surrounded himself with two kinds of people: (1) loyalists – people who have worked with him before – and (2) people who check racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, and gender boxes – people who (as Progressives like to say) “look like America.” The question “Is he or she the most qualified person for the job,” is just not an urgent priority.
This brief survey shows that Biden has assembled a team of people who, for the most part, have very little experience (like Mayor Pete) or the wrong experience (like Denis McDonough) or an unwillingness to speak up for America (like Antony Blinken). The Biden administration is a collection of some of the worst Obama-era retreads plus a number of appointments that serve only to check a box. America deserves better. This is no way to run a country.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer
Kamala Harris: Two days before Election Day 2020, Kamala Harris tweeted an animated video she had narrated called Equality vs. Equity. “So, there’s a big difference between equality and equity,” Harris said. “Equality suggests, ‘Oh, everyone should get the same amount.’ The problem with that not everybody starts out from the same place. So, if we’re all getting the same amount but you started out back there and I started out over here – we can get the same amount but you’re still going to be that far back behind me. It’s about giving people the resources and support they need so that everyone can be on an equal footing and then compete on an equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.” Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming retweeted Harris’s tweet, adding the comment: “Sounds just like Karl Marx. A century of history has shown where that path leads. We all embrace equal opportunity, but government-enforced equality of outcomes is Marxism.” It’s true. Kamala Harris’s little video is pure, distilled Marxism.
The idea of equal outcomes for all was tried in the Soviet Union. Whether you work hard or slack off, whether you were efficient or wasteful, everybody got the same reward. Soon, Soviet citizens realized that there was no reward for extra effort and no punishment for inefficiency. People stopped being productive, and the Soviet economy stagnated. Kamala Harris’s lecture on equality vs. equity is a recipe for turning the USA into the USSR and rerunning the same failed experiment.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer (2021).
Her obsessive desire to avoid making mistakes, the pressure she applied in her internal monologue almost doomed her to make them. Harris possessed what one of her colleagues described as “rabbit ears,” Whenever there was a hint of criticism of her – either in the West Wing or in the press – she seemed instantly aware of it. She let criticism guide her. Instead of diligently sticking to the Central American assignment, she seemed to accept the conventional wisdom about it. It was a futile gig, so she let it fall to the side, missing an opportunity to grind her way to a meaningful achievement.
Source: The Last Politician by Franklin Foer (2023).
Abortion: The Supreme Court handed Biden an issue that could transform the contours of the coming election. All those Democrats who were dispirited were primed to rally to his side because of the fury over the decision. Biden seem to agree. But when he gave his speech, he couldn’t quite rise to the occasion. Squinting into the teleprompter, he said, “I know so many of us are frustrated and disillusioned that the Court has taken something away that’s so fundamental. I know so many women are now going to face incredibly difficult situations. I hear you. I support you. I stand with you” The tone was more sorrowful than angry, a little distant, and stood in contrast to images of protesters at the Supreme Court.
Rebecca Traister, the feminist essayist, wrote a piece titled “Joe Biden’s Dobbs Response Has Been Breathtakingly Awful.” The Washington Post reported the speech “Lacked the urgent tone that many Democrats felt was required, and that even some White House officials later said they wished the president had been more fiery.” Biden’s advisers resented being accused of incompetence when they felt the core problem was their boss’s indecision. Biden’s failure to channel his base’s anger with the Supreme Court began to cost him in the polls. According to a You Gov survey, one in four Democrats disapproved of his handling of the abortion issue.
Source: The Last Politician by Franklin Foer (2023).
Unification: In his inaugural address President Biden said, “This is a great nation, and we are a good people.” When I heard that line the first time, I thought I agreed. But later in the speech he accused his fellow Americans of “distrusting those who don’t look like you, or worship the way you do, or don’t get their news from the same sources you do.” This is what Progressives do. The lecture their fellow Americans about what terrible people they are. In his speech, Joe Biden called for unity – but he didn’t call out his own side, the cancel culture, the mockers in the news media, the rioters or the looters in the streets. He reserved all his scolding for those of us on the right.
Source: Radical Nation by Sean Spicer (2021).
The 2022 midterms were touted by Democrats as a referendum on democracy. President Biden implored Democrats to vote – implying that they need to save our democracy from the people who want to Make America Great Again. He demonized Trump’s seventy-four million voters as “extreme” and intimated that supporting Trump was comparable to “semi-fascism.” “They’re a threat to our very democracy,” Biden claimed. “They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace … embrace political violence! This is why in the moment, those of you who love this country – Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans – must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving America than the MAGA Republicans are to destroying America.”
Source: The Puppeteers by Jason Chaffetz (2023).
When it came to communicating, Biden tried to do two things that were contradictory: unify the country and call out the Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election. “Our principle has always been that we want to unify the country around shared values,” said Ron Klain, Biden’s Chief of Staff. “And we’ll continue to do that. But there are people in this country that don’t share those values – people who stand for white supremacy or for votes not counted in an election. That’s what the battle for the soul of the nation is all about.” Biden thought he could persuade most Americans to treat one another with respect, to compromise, and to respect the truth – and, faced with a lethal pandemic, to wear masks and take vaccines. But nearly 40% of the country wasn’t listening. Biden’s reputation for competence had been damaged by the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was hastily planned and poorly executed. His damn-the-torpedoes determination to end the war trumped a plan to do so safely and competently. The episode accelerated a slide in his approval rating over the summer of 2021.
Source: The Fight of His Life by Chris Whipple (2023).
The Blame Game: Jimmy Carter’s self-righteous language left the impression he was blaming problems on everyone else but himself. Biden doesn’t leave an impression. He outright blames problems on everyone else. It’s fair to say that not once in office has Biden taken responsibility for any mistake – not even ones that were flamingly obvious (like his horrific Afghanistan withdrawal). He either denies a problem exists entirely or faults others. The excuses have started to make voters question his leadership.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY
Americans Deep Disillusion: Americans are deeply disillusioned. They live in what is supposed to be the most vibrant political system in the world, yet they are astonished by the daily failure of competence. Congress seems no longer capable of legislating. Democrats have abandoned federalism, the electoral system, and the concept of equality. The administrative state rules all. President Biden grandstands, even as he resolutely refuses to work with Republicans. He waves his magic scepter and decrees lawless eviction moratoriums, vaccine mandates, and student loan forgiveness. The left no longer believes in the value of work or family and characterizes America as systemically racist and a threat to the globe. This is out of step with first and second-generation immigrants who still believe in “el sueno Americano.” And the final, important point. All signs point to a Democratic Party that will move even further left. Polls suggest that the portion of the Democratic electorate least enthused with Biden is the progressive movement. For all the president’s radicalism, this faction is still dismissive of his efforts and hostile to a renomination. “He’s deeply unpopular. He’s old as shit. He’s largely been ineffective,” Corbin Trent, a cofounder of the progressive No Excuses PAC, and a former communications director for Alexandris Ocasio-Cortex, told Politico in early 2023. There is little to indicate the Democratic Party will embark upon an ideological correction.
Source: The Biden Malaise by Kimberley Strassel (2023)
Advantage Democrats: The Democrats designed the system, and they are positioned to use it to dominate politics over the next several decades. If they do, they will institutionalize wokeness at a rapid rate, our institutions will be politized even more than they are now, the collapse of our cities will accelerate, tax rates will rise, and our energy policy will place the ideology above practical realities. If we are not asked to fight in more foreign wars, we’ll certainly be paying for them. Maybe even the end of Americanism as we know it is in the offing. The stakes are high, and things could get pretty bleak pretty fast. Unless … Unless other emerging trends win out.
Discussions of slavery reparations have been a constant in recent years, particularly in the free state of California. When I grew up there in the 1990s and 2000s, there was almost no discussion of race, positive or negative. Now here we are. Basic standards of professionalism are now considered white supremacy. Punctuality is white supremacy. Speaking “perfect English” is white supremacy. These are the new rules of the modern Left, the same group of people who run the Democrat establishment.
Advantage Conservatives: The Left employs constant censorship, politicized investigations, and character assassinations to get what they want; these are all signs of a movement that lacks confidence in its own arguments and its own people. Besides, why would they be confident? As their constituents get older, they often switch parties, which means they have to keep the border open to ensure replacement voters flow in. The public is coming to the knowledge that our foreign policy has served the defense industry more than the American people, our energy policies are antihuman, and authoritarian pandemic responses did not serve their stated intent of shutting down the virus.
Source: Breaking Biden by Alex Marlow (2023)
The Democratic Party & Authoritarianism: America is unraveling. Our founding and history are under assault. Our families and faiths are being degraded. Individualism has been substituted for groupism. Color blindness is now racist. Capitalism and prosperity are being devoured by economic socialism and climate-change fanaticism. Classrooms have become indoctrination mills for racism, segregation, bigotry, and sexual perversion, and teachers’ unions are hostile to parental involvement in critical decisions about the health and welfare of their children. In America, free speech and academic freedom are shrinking, and the police state is growing – as is monitoring and spying on citizens. The government is banning and regulating more and more household products, from incandescent lightbulbs to dishwashers, while creating shortages and driving up costs of others. Crime is out of control on our streets, public transportation, and schools, while police budgets are slashed, and many prosecutors and judges coddle criminals. Our borders are wide open to millions of foreigners who seek entry into the country, as drug and criminal cartels ship killer drugs into our country by the tons and brutalize migrants by using them as indentured servants and sex slaves. The list goes on. The Democrat Party is responsible for most of this and much more.
Biden rules as an autocrat. Biden has said that he wants his legacy to be as big or bigger than Franklin Roosevelt’s who did in fact radically change the nature of the federal government and its relationship with the citizen. And Biden is being urged to continue the transformation of America away from the founding ideals toward an Americanized Marxist model. The Republican Party, while often anemic if not ignorantly contributory to the Democrat Party’s power grab ambitions is nonetheless, an impediment by its mere existence. Clearly, the power-sharing is not, and cannot be, part of the Democrat party’s agenda. Frankly, like autocratic parties everywhere, the Democrat Party is intolerant to opposition and insists on absolute total control. A democracy or republic consisting of multiple political parties competing for power is simply unacceptable to and incompatible with Marxism or any form or in any country, including the United States. Yet that is the unmistakable goal of the Democratic Party.
Source: The Democrat Party Hates America by Mark R. Levin (2023)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
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