There he was on TV in front of me, Joe Biden accepting the Democratic nomination for president and outlining the nation’s incredible challenges — COVID-19, a wrecked economy, a search for racial justice and climate change. Then the TV went off and the lights went out. The house and in fact the whole neighborhood just had a blackout. The symbolism was inescapable.
“Oh no,” I said to my wife as we meditated on flashlight locations, “this is what is going to happen to the country,” and I contemplated this very strange Democratic National Convention that had not exactly convened. Because of the virus, crowds were largely avoided and speeches were given strictly to TV audiences, some taped, I think, and it was all precisely planned with talk of positive unity and hatred of President Donald Trump, few policy details and lots of smiley-faced deception.
To me, the worst moment was when the heroism, depth of character, brilliance and compassion of former President Barack Obama dissipated as he said the consequences of Trump’s inability to do his job were 170,000 people dead from COVID-19. Trump did move early on some fronts but unsuccessfully tried to intrude on states’ rights by asserting his authority, and some governors, wining the fight, did their best to mess up. One loudmouth on Trumpian tripping was New York Democrat Andrew Cuomo, who is now defeating economic recovery as much as he initially aided tragedy.
Our bumbler in chief obviously made bad mistakes, but, as has been pointed out, not nearly as bad as the Obama-era flubs during the 2009-10 swine flu visitation. And look at how the Obama-Biden team broke a record in the slowness of economic recovery after the 2008 financial crisis. Another speaker was former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who pointed to the state of the economy now and said Trump policies were guilty. There are those of us who would say it was consequence of the virus followed by governors shutting down just about every business out there, and that Bloomberg puts politics above reason. The fact is that before the virus Trump gave us historic highs in employment among such groups as Blacks and women. Wages went up most for the poor and six times more than under Obama, economically acute observers have noted. We had the highest median wage in history. What Biden wants is more corporate taxes that will kill recovery but make leftists delirious.
Biden has had little to say on the Black Lives Matter riots that are destroying property and stimulating crime and murders of Black children as police are restrained. But he has said most cops are good people while those who commit crimes should be prosecuted, and he does not believe in defunding them. He believes we can make bold moves on instilling more racial justice. Concerning his other major issue, climate change, he has been coming around to the Green New Deal but still rightly believes nuclear power can be crucial in sustaining our industrial civilization. He wants a devastating fossil fuel retreat but not unconditional surrender at the moment.
The thing is, he is increasingly less centrist as Democrats in Washington are growing ever more comfortable with authoritarian extremism. He has been giving in here and there, as in deciding taxpayers should pay for the killing of unborn children. He seems less a leader than a polite follower. Truthfulness has been missing for quite a while, and appears to be increasingly encaged by a memory that seems out of town whenever it is needed. If elected, he likely will be president in name only with advisers progressive to the point of socialism.
What he has going for him, of course, is President Trump who, instead of growing up while in office, is now more juvenile than ever, even though his policies have mostly outshine what is being proposed by certain detected agents of destruction.
(Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may email him at speaktojay@aol.com.)
