In a prior column, The Shadow Candidates, I ruminated over the history of the two main parties and how that history contributed to current candidacies that, for many, offer no choice such as Alan Dershowitz’s “the lesser of two evils”. The focus was mainly on Mr. Biden, who appears incapable of a second term. That incapacity is markedly enhanced by his equally incapable Vice President, Kamala Harris. Democrat desperation continues to grow in advance of their August convention, unfortunately returning to Chicago, the site of their most prominent political debacle in 1968. Republicans have begun to shift the focus of their attack ads from Biden, whose difficulties beyond possible family criminal entanglement is clearly recognized by all and now frequently alluded to by progressive journalists and infotainment pundits, to a more strictly anti-Harris campaign. They base this on the reasonable presumption that, if Biden is elected to a second term with Harris as the expected running mate, he will soon succumb to an age-appropriate medical event or finally demonstrate mental incapacity for the Presidency triggering the first Article 25 succession in our history. Harris’s incapacity for the Presidency has been clear since her own campaign for that office, while Biden’s has evolved over the past few years. If Biden cannot or will not step aside despite his promise to do so in his first term’s campaign, how can the Democrat Party hope to retain the Presidency under these publicly recognized limitations? Perhaps Biden will emulate his hero, FDR, once again, by selecting a different Vice-President for his final term.
A clue to how, who, and why arose in Biden’s recent fundraiser featuring the Troika: Obama, Biden, and Clinton. This three-headed dragon of progressivism is almost, in aggregate, as popular with Democrats as the fabled knight of Camelot, JFK. Biden may borrow from each. Clinton, initially as far left as Obama, survived a slap-down in his first mid-term Congressional election and used his remarkable charisma and political skills to shift to a JFK-style fiscal conservatism and social realism. After all, he won election by voicing what all the American people knew at the time; “It’s the economy, stupid!” And so, under Biden’s mismanagement aided by a self-deluding Federal Reserve, the economy is once again an Achilles’ heel when compared with that under his opponent. Biden seeks to make rain, to pour well-being out of the sky onto an economically shriveled public. While government figures of inflation may show gradual lessening, the public at large sees only progressive reductions in the purchasing power of their dollars. Most affected are those at the lower half of the economic scales. Despite all the heralded job growth and business expansion, the public sees the 99 Cents stores closing nationwide dropping 14,000 jobs, and the struggle of Dollar Tree and other low-end retailers to stay afloat. Those in California are about to see fast-food employees disappear and prices skyrocket as government mandated “living wages” are bureaucratically enforced. Other states may not be far behind, and a majority of non-wealthy Americans will directly experience this as well as continued increases in energy and food costs indirectly mandated by forced increases in clean energy technology and forced reductions in ever-cheaper fossil fuels. Those increases in expenses and decreases in resources are funded by monies removed from the private, productive economy via taxation, debt creation, and inflation. Most common-sense Americans subliminally recognize they are playing by these arbitrary and capricious rules for which they must pay. Four times.
But Biden’s administration knows, as do all politicians, that those last three “hidden” payments can be used to acquire specific desired political demographics. Buying votes in this manner is not considered bribery since it does not occur at the voting booth. Biden is buying future votes with an open border, secure in the knowledge that even as conservative a President as Ronald Reagan eventually felt compelled to agree to amnesty and incorporation of illegal aliens into our body politic. While the food, clothing, housing, transportation, education, healthcare, cellphones, and cash money provided via the above triplet of hidden funding (not yet provided to our own citizens or even our military veterans) does generate resentment among many, it energizes the progressive base(s). Not only may most of these new residents eventually, as “born-again” government dependents, become lifelong Democrat socialists as members of ever-expanding intersectional identities segregated from the disavowed American mainstream, but the administrative infrastructure and legal framework of these dependencies can then be gradually extended, justifiably in their minds, to all in our country, finalizing our enforced equitable utopia without concern as to how to deal with the bill when finally due. Progressives envision a circular economic society; well-being (the general welfare) flows from all to the state and thence is dispensed equitably back to all. Biden seeks to encircle more of our population.
Another version of this phenomenon is seen in Biden’s persistence, despite correction by our Supreme Court, in seeking to forgive the majority, if not all, of educational loans. These loans would have been repaid out of dollars privately produced to retire government debt. Instead, the outstanding amounts of principal and interest will be paid, effectively, by creating more government debt, socialized to the population as a whole in a greater amount over a longer time. This is a clear moral hazard, a variation on the tragedy of the commons. And the recipients, who failed to investigate and judge the worth of the education and the institution in which they chose to risk their future potential earnings, receive a valuable lesson in continued dependency and irresponsibility. They will know who buttered their bread, and who to thank at the polls. They are no more likely to evaluate the consequences of that financial rescue to their own and other’s future than they did when choosing a higher education. Note in this graph from the Wall Street Journal we’re talking about over 1.5 trillion dollars in outstanding debt continuing to accrue interest. Note also that most of that debt is owed by 25–61-year-olds. Biden is reaching out for more than just young new voters.
These are two of the most obvious current examples. We will forgo discussing the “whole of government” efforts to redistribute government and private advantage and largesse based on reparations to race rather than merit. Given the economic advances seen during the prior administration amongst many groups compared with the stalled or even failed advances for these same groups during the current administration, these redistributive efforts do not seem to have the broad appeal amongst the American unwealthy of all classes and races that was expected.
How to reach that broad populace with growing economic disaffection? Like Bill Clinton, Joe Biden (or rather his advisors) is not stupid. Americans perceive their lifestyles and futures progressively pinched by a reduction in purchasing power of their dollars, and a vague awareness of tightening credit due to a “shrinkflation” of banking assets brought on by prior quantitative easing now trapped by inflationary interest rates. Despite apparent good news of a recent drop in unemployment, review of data since January 2023 shows the overall “curve” of unemployment gradually rising. The magic cure for public opinion doldrums would be a reduction in Federal Reserve rates, signaling that happy days are here again. Our lackluster recovery from the government induced Covid retraction has been buoyed for weeks now by the Fed’s “hint” that rates will probably be reduced three times this year. Over the past week that bright promise has been tarnished by observation of economic realities, and the Fed has signaled some reluctance to go through with perhaps all three of those rate reductions. Timing is everything in politics and the market, so we can expect the pseudo independent Federal Reserve to lower rates in at least two steps this year to jolt the economy and public opinion in Biden’s favor. The first of these might be in June, as recently hinted, but more likely in July, so that our media’s gushing response will still be fresh for the Democrat Convention that nominates Joe Biden for a second term as placeholder. The second rate drop will likely be this year’s October surprise, boosting Biden’s last-minute electability in time for the November election. Presuming his re-election, the third would be planned for December, to end the year on an ecstatic economic note in time for Biden’s second inauguration and setting the stage for an accelerated progressive agenda of Democratic socialism in the new year.
Thus Mr. Biden observes the genius of Bill Clinton’s mantra on the economy, which still and always matters most to most of the electorate. However, Joe Biden need not follow Clinton’s pivot to the center seen in that second term. Here Biden can invoke the ongoing lessons of the other member of the Troika, Barack Obama. Joe Biden has been following Obama’s playbook from the start, immediately eschewing all his campaign promises of moderation. After all, many of those advisors who have been serving as Edith to Biden’s version of a stroked-out Woodrow rolled over from the Obama administration. The Democrat party as a whole, despite its loud-mouthed fringes, has largely treated Joe Biden’s Presidency as the third Obama term. This suits everybody fine, as when Mr. Obama was asked whether he would have run for a third term if allowed he replied along the lines of “I’d rather seek to run the Presidency than serve in it again.” No one other than Joe Biden is currently in play to continue Obama’s legacy. Bernie Sanders is too obviously extreme and no demographic advantage over the devil we know. And Kamala is not acceptable or dependable, for reasons already noted. She is increasingly viewed as the albatross around Biden’s neck. One obvious new Vice Presidential candidate awaits the call to save Joe Biden’s second term, replace him when required, and carry on the Obama tradition.
That is Michelle Obama. Sophisticated personally and politically, now rich and influential, with her daughters now of an age to not obstruct her personal ambitions, she would be the massive booster for Joe’s rickety rocket. The subliminal context of her candidacy, besides being qualified by nature and education, would be her added degree of intersectionality beyond Kamala Harris’s simplistic branding. Michelle Obama’s ability to express herself puts the current Vice President’s verbal advocacies and appearances well into the Court Fool’s category. Michelle Obama is supremely electable on her own, all the more so as not only Biden’s replacement but also as a firm guiding hand as long as he remains the titular, if not actual, President. While she clearly has her own beliefs and agenda perhaps differing from that of her husband, she could nonetheless be expected to largely continue his progressive and Balkanizing agenda to enhance greater control over the lifestyles of almost all Americans. Thus, Joe Biden’s truncated second term would truly be a third Obama term, perhaps magically followed by two full terms of Michelle Obama as President. Her intrinsic abilities qualify her for the job, and her status as a Black woman make her irresistible to Democrats and perhaps most Independents. Many of those independents, and some Republicans, voted for her husband as enthusiastic participants in an historic event, and that phenomenon, not quite satisfied by Hilary Clinton, would be repeated. A final benefit of a well-timed announcement of the new Vice-Presidential candidate could be a reduction in the likely demonstrations and violence that might, under current circumstances, plague this years’ Chicago Democrat Convention. The foreseeable prize would be five “Obama terms”, a full twenty years that offers the opportunity to change America forever in ways only hinted at by FDR’s unprecedented and unrepeatable tenure.
An unlikely fantasy, for many legitimate reasons. Remember, you read it here first.