Biden and Harris are the Trojan Horse of the radical Democrats – opinion
With less than three months until the election, they must work to counteract the fiction that a Biden-Harris bid is a good, sane option for America and, by extension, for Israel.
By RUTHIE BLUMFormer Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Senator Kamala Harris shake hands before the start of the second night of the second U.S. 2020 presidential Democratic candidates debate in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., July 31, 2019(photo credit: REUTERS/LUCAS JACKSON/FILE PHOTO)
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden clearly isn’t as dotty as everyone is making him out to be. Or at least he’s sharp enough to be heeding his advisers, whose latest move – persuading him to pick Kamala Harris as his running mate – could not have been more on target where the party’s chances for having its candidate win in November are concerned.This is not merely because she is a beautiful woman “of color” with immigrant parents from India and Jamaica. Nor is it due to her being married to a Jew, which provides her material for mother-in-law anecdotes that endear her to audiences of a particular persuasion: loyal Democrats with PACs and deep pockets who celebrate Passover and would rather die than vote Republican.No, the Biden team’s brilliance in selecting the 55-year-old junior senator from California as “veep hopeful” lies in their understanding of what she brings to the ballot box. Like Biden, whose victory in the primaries can be attributed less to his popularity than to voter strategy when it comes to wresting the White House from US President Donald Trump, Harris is the perfect window dressing for the increasingly progressive Democratic Party.Though much has been made by the Left of her record as a tough prosecutor and attorney-general, as well as someone “too sympathetic” to Israel, these are precisely the elements of her reputation that are removing hesitation on the part of moderate Democrats, Independents and anti-Trump Conservatives to support the ticket.For this reason, Republicans ought to be worried right now. With less than three months until the election, they must work to counteract the fiction that a Biden-Harris bid is a good, sane option for America and, by extension, for Israel.To do this, Trump upporters need to take a number of steps. The first is to stop insisting that Biden is suffering from dementia and thus is unfit to be president. Whether or not it’s true, he’s leading in the polls.The second is to cease downplaying Harris’s accomplishments by ridiculing her for “sleeping her way to the top.” Her climb up the ladder is irrelevant to the crucial issues currently at stake. Furthermore, nobody – other than her husband, perhaps – actually cares about the ostensible bedroom exploits that may or may not have contributed to her career. The third is to refrain from pointing to every statement that Biden and Harris have made to illustrate that they are pandering to the likes of radical Congress Representatives Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN). That politicians up for election try to keep all members of their base happy is not exactly a hot news flash.The fourth and most important step is to stress that the upcoming presidential race is not a contest between Trump and Biden, but rather a war between two completely antithetical worldviews: one that embraces traditional American ideas and ideals, and another that favors the “cancel culture” revolution. The former is represented by Trump, the latter by Biden.Trump made this clear during his Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore on July 3, when he described “cancel culture” as the “very definition of totalitarianism,” which is “completely alien to [American] culture and values.”More specifically, he said, “In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished.... Make no mistake. This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery and progress.”Drawing the battle lines, Trump declared that the above efforts “must be stopped.”IF ANYTHING serves to reinforce his words, it’s the Democratic Party platform, which seeks to “repair the soul of this nation... to forge a stronger, brighter and more equitable future... right the wrongs in our democracy, redress the systemic injustices that have long plagued our society... and reinvent our institutions at home and our leadership abroad.”It also states, “We do not simply aspire to return our country to where we were four years ago. We know we must be bolder and more ambitious.”In other words, returning to the days of the progressive administration of former president Barack Obama is not sufficient to the Democrats’ task at hand; their plan, as Trump claimed, is to overhaul the very nature of the country, which they see as inherently evil.They therefore intend to forge a “new social and economic contract that at last grapples honestly with America’s long and ongoing history of racism and disenfranchisement, of segregation and discrimination, and invests instead in building equity and mobility for the people of color who have been left out and left behind for 40 generations.”Apparently, having a black president in office for eight years did nothing to shift this view. On the contrary, Obama’s presidency seems to have given the Democrats even greater justification for their gripes.But then, none of the many and varied Iranian violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Obama signed with Tehran in 2015 have made a dent in their position on that either. According to its platform, “The Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA isolated us from our allies and opened the door for Iran to resume its march toward a nuclear weapons capacity that the JCPOA had stopped.”The identity of these so-called “isolated allies” is not clear; Israel and the Sunni Arab states heaved a sigh of relief at Trump’s exit from the nuclear deal with their Shi’ite nemesis. One thing is certain, however: Iran’s centrifuges never stopped spinning. And the only thing preventing the ayatollahs from achieving full nuclear-weapons capability has been a combination of stepped-up US sanctions, (alleged) Israeli strikes on power plants across the Islamic Republic and cyberattacks by both countries on Iranian computer systems.Diplomacy – the “urgent” resumption of which Democrats are demanding – served only to strengthen Iranian resolve to achieve regional, and eventually global, hegemony.That brings us to Israel, another bone of contention between Democrats and Republicans that needs addressing in relation to Biden and his pick for vice president. Both he and Harris back a diplomatic deal with Iran, believe in the “land for peace” formula for a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and consider Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria to be of questionable legality.Such are typical Democratic positions that do not indicate particular animosity toward Israel. Nor is the Jewish state a key concern of American voters, who are preoccupied first and foremost with issues that directly affect their daily lives. But the bond between conservative Americans and their counterparts in Israel matters in a broader sense, because it stems from shared values and policies that the Left in both countries is working hard to derail.If Biden defeats Trump in November, he and Harris will have been the Trojan Horse that ushered in the anti-American, anti-Israel leftists who dominate the discourse of their party. One shudders to imagine the crew that will make up his cabinet. It is this message that Republicans need to convey to anyone liable to err on the side of fantasy about a Democratic Party that no longer exists. Harping on Biden’s mental decay, Harris’s sexuality and the hypocrisy that each has exhibited of late is a waste of breath and precious time.
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