Photo: Gage Skidmore
By Dave Andrusko
It’s a pure coincidence but pro-abortion President Joe Biden and pro-life former President Donald Trump both wrapped up their respective party’s presidential nomination two days before tonight’s State of the Union address. This is not exactly a bold statement, but everyone should expect Mr. Biden to deliver a super-charged, highly partisan, and deeply personal attacks on Republicans in general, Mr. Trump in particular.
It’s going to be really, really ugly.
I looked back at what I wrote about Mr. Biden’s Inaugural Address delivered on January 20, 2021. Here are a few observations.
President Biden’s rhetorical tuning fork was off. In his call for “unity,” he contrasted what he said he will do with behaviors virtually no one would defend. But if you listened carefully and read the transcript, you might wonder how long his enemies’ list will be. Certainly commentators urged him to cast his net wide.
Biden opened his Inaugural Address with “This is America’s day. This is democracy’s day.” There could be a chance for this to be true if his actions bear out this promise: “I will be a President for all Americans. I promise I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as those who did.”
But even a cursory glance at the way he acted during the campaign testifies that he lashes out when someone (including reporters) dares to ask a tough question, let alone disagree. It’s no secret that the self-described “scrappy kid from Scranton” angers easily.
In his inaugural speech, Mr. Biden promised to be a unifier.
And so today, at this time, in this place, let’s start afresh, all of us. Let’s begin to listen to one another again, hear one another, see one another, show respect to one another. Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path.
Biden has done nothing but pour on gasoline, making what was always going to be tough sledding (remember the race was extremely close) into a “raging fire.”
Like a drowning man, Mr. Biden will reach for what he is sure is his life preserver: abortion. He will demagogue the issue in such a fashion that there is no room for pro-lifers in polite society. No doubt in castigating you and me, Mr. Biden will convince himself that these attacks are a key component in “saving our democracy.”
Two other quick comments. First, Biden’s coalition—to be polite—is fraying. The subhead to Democrat William Galston’s piece for the Wall Street Journal is “Young, suburban and Hispanic voters are deserting him, giving Trump a lead in presidential election polls.”
He writes
Broadly speaking, the coalition that gave Mr. Trump 47% of the vote in 2020 remains intact, while Mr. Biden’s winning coalition has frayed significantly. According to the New York Times/Siena poll, 97% of those who voted for Mr. Trump four years ago intend to do so again in 2024, compared with 83% for Mr. Biden. Ten percent of Mr. Biden’s former supporters say that they will switch to Mr. Trump. This helps explain the top-line numbers: Mr. Biden outpolled Mr. Trump in 2020 by nearly 4.5 points but now trails him by 2.1, a 6.6-point swing.
Second, Lisa Lerer ,of the New York Times, offers a column on Wednesday which borrows liberally from Kübler-Ross’s famous Five Stages of Grief—Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.
After weeks of campaign ads, political speeches and voting in more than two dozen primary contests, Americans are coming to terms with a reality that many have tried to avoid: a rematch.
For months, large swaths of Democratic, independent and moderate Republican voters have moved through familiar emotional stages, processing the prospect of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump fighting it out, once again, for months. They have dealt with denial, believing other candidates would emerge, and bargaining, entertaining fantasies about last-minute entrants, nationally viable third-party candidates and speedy legal prosecutions. They have fought depression, as options failed to materialize.
And now, slowly but surely, acceptance has begun to arrive.
Her point is that some/many Democrats are coming to terms with Biden as their nominee, giving up dreams of last-minute alternatives.
It’ll be interesting to see what the commentators make out of tonight’s State of the Union address. My guess is regardless of how poorly Mr. Biden makes his case, the legacy media will spin it as the beginning of a great comeback.