Biden’s Legacy of Delusion Defines Today’s Democratic Party

By Partha Chakraborty-

Over five decades in the limelight of national politics, of which eight years spent as the Vice President and the last four years as the President of the United States, leaving the country in the best economic shape among big industrial nations post Pandemic, a forceful pushback against Russia leveraging a coalition of the willing, culminating with a Ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas war that brings hostages back in due course, leaving the nexus of evil surrounding Iran at its weakest it has ever been in recent decades… These could be opening chapters in an epic biography of President Joseph Robinette Biden who was elected to heal the nation after a rather raucous tenure of a tempestuous tyrant.

It is not to be.

After four years Biden is about to be replaced by his predecessor Donald John Trump. Biden’s exit approval ratings is among the lowest of any single-termer, his Democratic Party lost both chambers of Congress, and his relationship with his chosen successor frayed beyond repair. The Democratic Party arguably lost its vaunted position as the mouthpiece of the working class and the immigrants, two pillars of its base in any election. Not that Donald Trump found religion and the Republican Party swung to capture grounds, it is the electorate that swung away from the Democratic Party, in almost every single county.

As chronicled on these pages, the Democratic Party moved away from the Spirit of America – an unadulterated celebration of American Exceptionalism bookended with a paean to the 5F’s (Family, Freedom, Faith, the Flag, and Fortune) that govern most American lives, no matter the race, ethnicity, national origin, sex or sexual orientation. It can be argued that most of what happened in the November elections would have happened regardless of Biden. But it is a fact that Biden’s presidency triggered an avalanche of bad omen, and the administration did fuel much of it or at least did nothing to stanch the stench.

If the Democratic Party was delusional, the rot started at the top.

It will baffle me to the end how the cocoon around Biden failed to recognize that the diminished acuity of a sitting President will eventually come out, no matter how hard they try and no matter how pliant the media is initially. The nation needs to know if the elected Commander in Chief is able to serve, failing to do so they violated a sacred obligation of transparency to the nation. On top of that, Biden decided to run for a second term when his presence in public events in the later years of his first term questioned how and if he really makes the decisions for the nation. As reports came out recently in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, Biden was available at most a few hours a day and that too in not so lucid manner and the Democratic Party functionaries knew it, abetted the denial and facilitated the lies. Mainstream media was either shut out rather successfully; more likely they were complicit in propagating the lie, chastening – nee, censoring – anybody who dared to even hint.

On top of that, Biden started auditioning for four more years as the Leader of the Free World when he himself was locked up in a world of support that was closing in on him. The dam broke at the debate when legitimate questions of elder abuse were raised and the truth was too glaring for even the Democratic Party to ignore. True to the dynastic nature of the Party, it anointed Kamala Devi Harris, the sitting Vice President, as the new nominee without a primary. Harris failed to win a single primary in her last run as a candidate and very soon it was apparent she was not ready for the highest office despite all the hoopla around her from all corners of the intelligentsia, media and the celebrity ecosystem.  The nation already knew what it needed to know about the Party – that it is delusional, dynastic and decrepit beyond recognition.

To belabor an obvious fact in any election, the Democratic Party and its nominee lost because they represented a choice worse than the alternative. Swing voters, Independents and some Democrats even, did recognize the delusion and the condescension and they voted for their feelings, despite everything.

As I write this, I see signs of the Party ignoring tea leaves about citizens’ disaffection of the people, policies, preferences, and projections. Maybe they are banking on a failing Trump 2.0, whose grand proclamations most definitely elicits a rupture in more ways than one. Maybe people will grow tired of the shenanigans of the zealots, and a loss of normalcy of being in their neighborhoods.  Maybe Trump 2.0 will bring in tempests outside of our borders; supply chain, if broken down precipitously, will spike inflation before there is any tangible reshoring of capacity building at home. Or maybe not. It is just as likely that we will see a new new world order starting with a redefined Middle East that prioritizes peace, prosperity and co-existence in and across borders. Maybe grand posturing by a bull(y) will cause rational thinking stateside – resulting in energy abundance, resurgence of manufacturing and infrastructure building, and rationalized immigration policies implemented as mandated. Maybe we will have a China policy that addresses how our short-term thinking has penalized our workers and has sacrificed our intellectual properties over the last few decades.

No matter how Trump 2.0 turns out, there shall be long memory of the delusion that Biden and the Democratic Party functionaries instigated, and enforced till they could not. Paraphrasing a maxim, it does not matter much what Biden, or the Democrats, did in the last four years, it matters how they made people feel.

Biden may not like it after five decades in public office, but his legacy of delusion defines his Democratic Party as he vacates the White House today.