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Peggy Noonan Was Right About Biden: "Don’t do it. Wisdom here dictates an Irish goodbye."
Remember what Peggy Noonan said about Biden a year ago in the Wall Street Journal. She warned him but the Democratic Party power is not listening. So desperate to keep a liberal FDR New Dealer posing as a socialist from winning the party's nomination for the top office in 2020, the Democratic Party Machine appears to be making a huge mistake. Trump will slaughter Biden as will the right wing media. "If doddering Joe Biden is your party’s best hope, your party might be in deep trouble." wrote National Review's Kyle Smith and he's right. Both parties of US capitliasm are in crisis, but the Democratic Party is at the crossroads and, I would dare to say, on the road to fragmentation. I commented on this earlier.
Peggy Noonan is a mouthpiece for US capitalism and a cheerleader in times of distress like the present. She longs for the old days, the days when the Democratic Party was "warm". You know, when it smashed strikes, bombed Vietnam, dropped nuclear weapons on urban centers, the only political party in history to do so. It was no doubt "warm" when it refused to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates led by Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 Democratic Party Convention. How out of touch with working class people these politicians of big big business are.
Don’t run for president. It won’t work, you won’t get the nomination, your loss will cause pain and not only for you.
And your defeat will be worse than sudden, it will be poignant.
Right now operatives for the other candidates are trying to scare you
out of jumping in. We all know that what you intended as warmth is now
received as a boundary violation. You addressed this in a video that was
crisp and friendly: You never meant to cause discomfort, you intend to
change your ways.
But it’s not going away. It will linger, and more will come.
Democratic operatives do not fear you will win the nomination—they
think you’re too old, your time has passed, you’re not where the energy
of the base is, or the money. But they do not want you taking up oxygen
the next six to 10 months as you sink in the polls. And they don’t want
you swooping in to claim the middle lane. Others already have a stake
there, or mean to.
Joe Biden
In the past you were never really slimed and reviled by your party;
you were mostly teased and patronized. But if you get in the race this
time, it will be different. They will show none of the old respect for
you, your vice presidency or your past fealty to the cause. And you are
in the habit of receiving respect. Soon the topic will turn, in depth,
to Anita Hill, the Clinton crime bill, your friendliness to big
business. You have opposed partial-birth abortion. Also, the old
plagiarism video will come back and be dissected. It was more than 30
years ago, and for a lot of reporters and voters it will be a riveting
story, and brand new.
You backed the Iraq war. That question will be resurrected, as
opposed to redebated. It is always fair to redebate it—to be asked, “Why
did your generation of Democratic politicians back that war. Looking
back what did you misunderstand?” But it will only be resurrected, and
thrown in your face.
You will be judged to be old-school, and insufficiently doctrinaire.
The current Democratic Party is different from the one you entered in
the late 1960s, not only in policies but in mood, tone, style. Today’s
rising young Democrats see no honor in accommodation, little virtue in
collegiality.
In the old party of classic 20th-century Democratic liberalism, they
wanted everyone to rise. Those who suffered impediments—minorities,
women, working people trying to unionize—would be given a boost. There’s
plenty to go around, America’s a rich country, let the government get
in and help.
The direction, or at least the aspiration, was upward, for everybody.
The mood of the rising quadrants of the new party is more
pinched—more abstractedly aggrieved, more theoretical. Less human. Now
there’s a mood not of Everyone Can Rise but of Some Must Be Taken Down.
White people in general, and white males in particular, are guilty of
intractable privilege. It’s bitter, resentful, divisive.
And it is at odds with the spirit in which your political categories
were formed. Actually, your politics always struck me as being like the
World War II movies Americans of a certain age grew up on. The American
soldiers are in the foxhole in Bataan, and there’s the working-class guy
from Brooklyn, the tall Ivy League guy, the baker’s apprentice from
Ohio. They’re all together and equal, like the country they represent.
When the war’s over they’ll probably stay friends and the Brooklyn guy
will be in the union and the Ivy League fancy-pants will be in
management, but they’ll quickly forge the new contract and shake on the
deal because back when it counted we were all in it together.
That is not the 2019 Democratic Party! This party would note,
correctly, that there was little racial diversity in the foxhole, and
would elaborate that its false unity was built on intersectional
oppressions that render its utility as a unifying metaphor null.
The party’s young theorists are impatient with such gooey patriotic
sentiment. America is not good guys in a foxhole to them, it’s crabs in a
barrel with the one who gets to the top getting yanked down to the
bottom—deservedly.
Your very strength—that you enjoy talking to both sides, that deep in
your heart you see no one as deplorable—will be your weakness. You
aren’t enough of a warrior. You’re sweet, you’re weak, you’re
half-daffy. You’re meh.
At this point you’re not out of step, you’re out of place.
The press too will have certain biases, and not only because they’re
30 and 40 years younger than you and would like to see their careers
associated with the rise of someone their age. Their bias is also toward
drama, as you well know—toward pathos, and the end of something. They
love that almost as much as the beginning of something. They can’t wait
to write their Lion in Winter stories. “The Long Goodbye.” “The Last
Campaign.” “Biden faltered for just a moment when a white-haired woman
put her hand to his face and said, ‘I remember you from ’88, Joe. We all
do, and we love you.”
And that is apart from those young reporters who consider themselves
culture cops, and who enjoy beating people like you with the nightstick
of their wokeness.
Why will it be painful to witness all this? Because it will mark the
fall of a political figure who was normal. Who knew there was a left
over here and a right over there and a big middle. Who went with the
flow of cultural leftism but understood the other side’s reservations
and signaled that in some way he had some sympathy for them. Who knew
politics wasn’t always about absolutes.
This in contrast to the up-and-coming manipulators for whom it is
second nature to feign warmth and outreach, but whose every hug is
backed by the sharp and crooked finger of accusation. Their engine is
resentment, their fuel is unearned self-esteem, their secret is lust for
power.
You probably think they’re just girls who need a hug.
But their place is not your place.
It would be one thing if you wanted to enter the race to persuade the
party on the merits of more-centrist approaches and working with the
other side. But is that your intention? You’ve been apologizing for
calling Mike Pence decent, and groveling over your “white man’s
culture.” If you go with that flow, it will wash you away.
It is hard for the political personality to say no—to more fame, more
power, more love. To the history books. It is hard for a man who’s
always seen a president when he looked in the mirror to admit he’s an
almost-president. It’s hard to get out of the habit of importance.
But you’ll never be unimportant. You’ll be Joe Biden, a liberal lion
of the U.S. Senate at the turn of century. A man with a heart, unhated
in an age of hate.
That’s not nothing, that’s a lot.
So don’t do it. Wisdom here dictates an Irish goodbye—a quiet
departure, out the back door with a wave and a tip of the hat to whoever
might be watching.
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