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Has Democratic Party’s Far Left Hijacked Joe Biden’s Presidential Campaign?

I&I Editorial

Former Vice President Joe Biden seems quite content to run for the presidency from the depths of his home basement. Maybe that’s not so surprising, given recent indications that he no longer actually controls his presidential campaign.

Sadly, even with the help of a Teleprompter, Biden seems incapable of speaking these days without losing track, going wildly astray and muttering nonsense as he tosses one word salad after another.

Two recent examples stand out.

Queried in late April by a Miami TV newsman about his son Hunter’s highly questionable and possibly illegal business dealings with Ukraine, Obama’s former No. 2 responded: “My son’s business dealings were not anything where everybody that he’s talking about, not even remotely, number one.”

That’s an exact transcription. Go ahead. Make sense of it.

Just weeks earlier, speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” he had this to say about the COVID-19 pandemic:

“We cannot let this, we’ve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and elections, and at the same time correct the public health.”

We’re not poking fun here. This may or may not be incipient signs of senility or a more serious medical condition in someone who is, after all, now nearing 78 years old.

Whatever it is, you can see by just those two examples why Democratic Party insiders would be getting nervous. We are too, but for entirely different reasons.

Biden in the past has resolutely referred to himself as a “moderate” or “centrist.” And the media have been all in on that trope, with everyone from NPR to the New York Times to CNN hailing him as a moderate or a centrist.

It’s been key to his victory in the primaries against far more left-wing candidates. A Pew Research poll in early March showed that just 30% of Democrats thought Biden was “liberal,” while 31% called him “moderate” and, laughably, 20% called him “conservative.”

Rank-and-file Democrats who still cling to the idea of Biden as a moderate may want to recalibrate their opinion after recent developments.

With the summer now in full swing and the election a mere four months away, Biden’s campaign has veered sharply and noticeably leftward, to the point where he is now virtually indistinguishable from the socialists, extreme progressives and neo-racist wings of his party.

How far left has Biden veered? On Monday night, 76-year-old Angela Davis, a Marxist supporter of terrorists, gave her support to Biden. On Russian TV, no less. That’s how far left Biden has moved.

We have begun to wonder: Has Biden’s campaign been hijacked by the Democrat far left, which now clearly controls the party? Have we witnessed a coup, a kind of leftist putsch, especially as Biden seems to be mentally struggling at times?

We ask, because on Friday Biden gave a speech outlining his economic plans for the economy if he should win the presidency. Americans would be wise to read his plans carefully, as the media have refused to do.

As Alfredo Ortiz of Fox Business News noted, the media reported a Trump-lite spate of proposals by Biden, “including boosting manufacturing, renegotiating trade deals, reducing dependence on China, and implementing buy-American provisions.”

Sounds almost like Trump, right? Don’t be fooled.

Last week, socialist former candidate Bernie Sanders called Biden “the most progressive president since FDR.” High praise indeed from one of the most consistently far-left members of Congress in history.

But of course, Sanders wasn’t really speaking about Biden’s speech, which got a lot of coverage from a biased mainstream media eager to turn “moderate” Biden into a viable candidate in fall.

No, Sanders was speaking about what emerged from the so-called “Biden-Sanders unity task force,” which amounts to a blueprint for taking the U.S. to full-on socialism within a decade.

Think that’s an exaggeration? Just read this 110-page monstrosity for yourself, linked above.

Broadly speaking, it would end Americans’ economic freedom, nationalize major parts of the U.S. economy, and make all of us poorer. It would overturn what remains of America’s free-market economy, which has made us the wealthiest nation in history today.

Fox’s Ortiz neatly sums up the details:

“The ‘unity platform’ sounds more like a socialist surrender. It includes Green New Deal-type mandates, a hybrid public option/Medicare-for-All health care plan and a web of labor regulations, including a $15 entry-level wage, mandatory paid leave, and the end of the right to work without paying union dues.

“The platform also includes a bounty of left-wing goodies to motivate the base, including student-debt cancellation and an attack on school choice. Biden would try to fund these radical proposals by reversing President Trump’s tax cuts, which kept more money in the pockets of workers, small businesses, and communities.”

As you can see, we weren’t kidding when we suggested that Biden’s campaign agenda has been hijacked by the far left. Any American concerned about maintaining his or her standard of living would be wise to take note.

Has a mentally struggling Biden had this agenda forced on him by far left operatives taking advantage of his infirmity? Or has he had a progressive-socialist conversion experience? Or is it all just crass political calculation on his part?

We ask, because no candidate who calls himself a moderate, as Biden does, could agree to such a sweeping leftist agenda. Unless, that is, the candidate was never a moderate in the first place.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board.

 

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I & I Editorial Board

The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.

8 comments

  • Do bears defecate in the woods? Does the sun rise in the East?
    Is water wet?

  • The whole point is for the far left to hijack not only Joe’s campaign, but his presidency. That’s why they’re running a guy who is clearly slipping into dementia. They can’t elect a far far left POTUS any other way. Not that they can win anyway…but that’s what the mail-in-voting is for…

  • The authors understate, as others here have pointed out. Biden this week called for the end of “shareholder capitalism”. We’re the authors napping when he said that? Biden’s dementia is irrelevant. Biden and the democrat/socialist party are mounting a frontal attack on our nation. Right now. In full view. Understated commentary is not what we need. Where are the Republicans? Where are the RINO’s? They’ve been hiding from n their closets for months. Their silence will kill this country.

  • “Has Democratic Party’s Far Left Hijacked Joe Biden’s Presidential Campaign?”

    Not that he’s aware of

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