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Joe Biden’s lonely battle to sell his vision of American democracy
The Washington Post ^ | December 28, 2024 6:00 AM EST | Tyler Pager

Posted on 12/28/2024 6:30:55 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum

Earlier this year, Rep. James E. Clyburn met President Joe Biden at the White House to deliver a stern message: Biden had to find a way to revitalize his flagging campaign. Clyburn, who had been pivotal to Biden’s 2020 victory, also made a confession about his own long-standing belief that substance is more important than style in politics.

“I have come to the conclusion in recent days that I’m wrong about that,” the South Carolina Democrat, 84, remembers telling Biden. “The new environment that we currently live in — style seems to carry the day more than substance.”

“Your style,” he told the president, “does not lend itself well to the environment we’re currently in.”

Clyburn’s conclusion — which was shared by anxious Democrats in the months before the president ended his reelection bid — undermined Biden’s theory of presidential leadership. After Donald Trump’s ascent, Biden believed that he just needed to show Americans that traditional democracy still worked — by listening to experts, working with Republicans, passing popular policies — and voters would rally around him.

He succeeded in Phase One of his plan, enacting legislation, much of it bipartisan, to reshape the nation’s infrastructure, revive the semiconductor industry and fight climate change. But Phase Two never happened. The truth of Biden’s presidency is that he failed in what was by his own account his most important mission: making Trump’s presidency seem like an aberration.

“He governed through traditional processes and institutions,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. “It didn’t change the picture of where he started, this anger in the electorate toward institutions, this support for a pretty radical conservative vision that Trump embodied. It didn’t do anything to end the very intense polarization that exists in this country.”

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Humor
KEYWORDS: bidencrimefamily; democrathypocrisy; dirtydems; kleptocracy; letsgobrandon; lyinjoebiden
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1 posted on 12/28/2024 6:30:55 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Democracy dies with Democrats.


2 posted on 12/28/2024 6:31:18 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (The worst thing about censorship is █████ ██ ████ ████ ████ █ ███████ ████. FJB.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Exactly.


3 posted on 12/28/2024 6:32:20 PM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

What was Biden’s greatest argument in this philosophical debate? “Corn Pop for whores rights?”


4 posted on 12/28/2024 6:33:41 PM PST by wildcard_redneck
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

FJB.


5 posted on 12/28/2024 6:33:42 PM PST by gundog (It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. the )
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To: gundog

+1


6 posted on 12/28/2024 6:34:12 PM PST by sauropod ("You didn't take a country. You only won a football game!" - Dan Dakich Ne supra crepidam)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
“Your style,” he told the president, “does not lend itself well to the environment we’re currently in.”

I'm trying to think of what era a pants-pooping dementia patient was stylish.

7 posted on 12/28/2024 6:34:33 PM PST by TigersEye (23 more days of Democrat Hate America destruction. Hold fast!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
his vision of American democracy

Arrest, imprison and bankrupt your political opponents? Arrest their lawyers too, so there is no legal defense allowed? Have your secret police shut down opposition news sources? And when all else fails just count your own ballots multiple times until you have a bigger total?

8 posted on 12/28/2024 6:36:28 PM PST by KarlInOhio (Now unburdened by the Biden/Harris administration that has been.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

His “Vision”??? LOL, the only goals he has are 1) destroy the USA, 2) line his pockets and 3) keep his family and the Deep State cronies / henchmen out of prison. He is the most filthy, most corrupt, slimiest POTUS in the history of the nation.


9 posted on 12/28/2024 6:41:13 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (Marxism is a politics for the ugly, unwanted, uneducated, unhealthy, and insane.)
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To: TigersEye; E. Pluribus Unum
The president was so convinced that voters’ top priority was American democracy that he often made it his central campaign message… Harris’s decision to deliver her campaign’s “closing argument” at the Ellipse, the site of Trump’s rally before the Jan. 6 attack, …in a sweeping prime-time address at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and with increasingly hard-hitting rhetoric — he said Trump’s movement represents “semi-fascism” and “threatens the very foundation of our republic” — the president left little doubt about his core message.

They just don’t get it. And frankly, Biden and Harris calling the opposition a bunch of thugs is such a level of projection that it’s amazing Trump didn’t win more electoral votes.

10 posted on 12/28/2024 6:44:26 PM PST by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s² )
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The entire US Government has been set up over the years to loot the US treasury.

Biden was only the Political Don of the criminal enterprise.


11 posted on 12/28/2024 6:47:00 PM PST by WeaslesRippedMyFlesh
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

What utter garbage this DNC wet dream is.


12 posted on 12/28/2024 6:50:36 PM PST by silent majority rising (When it is dark enough, men see the stars. Ralph Waldo Emerson)
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To: DoodleBob

In a backhanded way I have to thank them for fracturing their own base.

Possibly permanently but it is up to us to capitalize on it.


13 posted on 12/28/2024 6:57:54 PM PST by TigersEye (23 more days of Democrat Hate America destruction. Hold fast!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Democracy: that’s where the president gives away billions of taxpayer dollars to foreign countries for a little pocket money under the table.


14 posted on 12/28/2024 6:58:00 PM PST by Telepathic Intruder
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

“Democracy?”

Like millions of nameless faceless unelected unaccountable bureaucrats making rules and regulations behind closed doors and an all powerful armed federal enforcement agency to force compliance?

And also think about why the democrats want our guns so badly. Every tyrant had to force their personal version of “democracy” through the killing of millions of their subjects. Stalin. Pol Pot. Mao. Hitler. Castro. There is ZERO doubt in my mind ObamaBiden would commit the same atrocities if all Americans were disarmed.


15 posted on 12/28/2024 6:59:09 PM PST by Organic Panic (Democrats. Memories as short as Joe Biden's eyes)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Insufficient wokeness met leftist party unity, met voters that can’t stand both.


16 posted on 12/28/2024 6:59:53 PM PST by blackdog ((Z28.310) Be careful what you say. Your refrigerator may be listening & reporting you.)
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To: TigersEye

You forhot “pervert”


17 posted on 12/28/2024 7:02:23 PM PST by goodnesswins (Don’t be REALITY PHOBIC!)
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To: goodnesswins

Forgot


18 posted on 12/28/2024 7:02:43 PM PST by goodnesswins (Don’t be REALITY PHOBIC!)
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To: goodnesswins

Forgive me but the list of applicable pejorative adjectives for Joe Biden would give me carpal-tunnel syndrome if I typed them all.

I appreciate the help! :)


19 posted on 12/28/2024 7:09:18 PM PST by TigersEye (23 more days of Democrat Hate America destruction. Hold fast!)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

BINGO!


20 posted on 12/28/2024 7:28:27 PM PST by 100%FEDUP
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