Biden's great walkback only manages to remind us again 'who he is'

[bonnie]

September 3, 2022

Biden's great walkback only manages to remind us again 'who he is'

By Monica Showalter

 

 

Joe Biden's "soul of the nation" Independence Hall speech apparently didn't go over the way he thought it would with the voters.

That's the only conclusion one can reach now that he's walking back his grandly staged production's bloodcurdling message about President Trump's supporters being "threats to democracy."

According to the New York Post:

I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence, fails to condemn violence when it is used, refuses to acknowledge when an election has been won, insists upon changing the way in which they can count votes, that is a threat to democracy."

Biden added, "When people voted for Donald Trump and support him now, they weren't voting for attacking the Capitol, they weren't voting for overruling an election, they were voting for a philosophy he put forward.

"So I am not talking about anything other than that it is inappropriate and it is not only happening here, but other parts of the world — the failure to recognize and condemn violence whenever it is used for political purposes, failure to condemn any attempt to manipulate election outcomes, failure to acknowledge when an election has been won or lost."

This completely contradicts what he said the night earlier, on that eerily lit black and blood-red stage, waving both fists, denouncing President Trump, and demonizing President Trump's voters, as threats to democracy.

According to the New York Post:

[T]he president called "MAGA Republicans" and supporters of his predecessor and potential 2024 rival, Donald Trump, a threat to "the republic."

"Too much of what's happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," Biden said feet from Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

"There's no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country."

...and...

"MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth, but in the shadow of lies. Together, we can choose a different path," Biden said in the speech.

Walkbacks are a normal thing for Joe and his chaotic administration.  It's "who they are."

But on this one, the internal polling in the wake of that speech must have been horrific.  After all, Joe was actually there to walk it back to the press and not on some Rehoboth Beach vacation, as he always is whenever an authentic crisis plagues the nation.  This was a crisis, all right, but only to his political prospects, which had been looking up for the past few days.  So he showed up this time for the walkback, not letting his incompetent spokeswoman try to spin it for him.  Oh, and note that this in itself confirms that the speech was political, contrary to his claims, based on that alone.

His own spin, though, claiming he wasn't really talking about Trump voters, despite doing just that, was very, very bad. 

What the hell was he talking about?  He's the guy running the country through executive order and sweeping mono-partisan legislation.  Democracy is under threat?  Yes, it is, but not the way he thinks it is.

In his walkback, he claimed he was talking about merely those Trump-supporters who endorse violence, which is a reference to the few hundred Trump-supporters who got caught up in the January 6 crowd control incident, which delayed his ratification as president by a few hours.  That's the biggest threat to our country?

He's got those people in jail, for extended periods awaiting trial, under inhuman terms with politicized jailers taunting them, and placing them in freezing, roach-infested cells, at least one committing suicide, before handing them long prison terms the average Manhattan subway pusher or shop-trashing loot mob has no fear of getting.

He also claimed he was only attacking those who don't accept the legitimacy of elections, which, of course, is a reference to the last one, which he happened to benefit from.  Left unsaid: The specter of fraud, which huge swathes of the public is convinced happened in his case, and with many good reasons.

That's the biggest existential threat to our country?  We've got inflation at a 40-year high, crime out of control, the border literally left unguarded with millions of indigent foreigners, some from terrorist states or members of criminal gangs pouring in, oil production stymied, education on the rocks, Russia, Iran, and China on the march, the labor force signing off...and Biden thinks the biggest problem this country faces is the jailed January 6 protesters and the entire MAGA voter base who are convinced that he's sitting in office fraudulently.

Actually, that's the biggest threat to his occupancy of the White House, but he's unable to distinguish the interests of the country from his own interests.

"I am the state," as one 17th- to 18th-century proto-fascist once said.  Or to get more modern, "I am the people," as Hugo Chávez used to say.

Who needs "semi-fascism" when Joe offers the real thing, complete with the imagery?