Posted on 04/26/2019 12:17:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
I did not expect to be surprised by the Joe Biden entry to the presidential race. If anything, it was supposed be like putting on a pair of comfortable old shoes. Here’s Joe again, America would say, a guy we’ve known forever, bringing his smile and relatability to a crowded, bitter Democrat field brimming with candidates itching to impeach Trump and dance on the grave of his ruined administration.
Surely Joe would be different. Surely his entry would be refreshing in its loftier tone. Joe would re-introduce himself as the guy to return some stability and decency to a fractious, cacophonous environment.
Well, forget that.
The first point he makes—the first words out his mouth in his announcement video—are not just boilerplate Trump hatred that could have come from any of his rivals. They are the most discredited, execrable lie that the left has told about the president during his first term—the notion that he found “fine people” among the white supremacists in attendance at the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Even a cursory review of Trump’s remarks on that occasion reveals that he was referring to the broad group of citizens who showed up to protest the headlong rush to purge confederate imagery, such as the city’s Robert E. Lee statue.
I do not believe Joe Biden and his team are stupid. The only other option is intentional dishonesty. So imagine: Joe Biden, who has been on the American scene for generations, prepares the launch for what will surely be his last presidential campaign. He knows his strongest assets are familiarity, likability and an opportunity to provide a stable counterpoint to an agitated field of rivals.
But here’s what we get:
And I thought we’d get health care, climate change, maybe some income inequality. But apparently Joe and his advisors sensed that he needed to enter at the fever pitch sought by many Democrat voters. So after a clumsy pivot from Jefferson’s historic Charlottesville to the 2017 rally tragedy, he unrolls this:
“That’s when we heard the words of the President of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said there were, quote, some ‘very fine people on both sides.’ Very fine people on both sides? With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate, and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment, I knew that the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.”
This hyperventilation is based on the fiction that Trump had somehow normalized the seething throngs of racists with torches. That story collapses with the examination of the president’s actual words that follow the “very fine people” reference. “You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name,” he said, referencing debates under way in numerous cities wrestling with confederate iconography.
Seconds later, he explained further who he was not referring to: “You had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
I’m guessing the Biden campaign has access to Google. But so do legions of media types who have had this story wrong for almost two years.
As repugnant as the Biden stunt seems to me, it’s my job to recognize that I was not the intended audience. While there are indeed Democrat voters yearning for Amtrak-riding lunchpail Joe, there is a growing slice of the party that scoffs at such calm, old-school positioning. Biden knows he cannot win without at least some of those voters.
So this is a gamble that he can attract Democrats looking for anti-Trump venom without repelling those who are less bloodthirsty.
Biden doesn’t strike me as particularly bright, but he can be sly.
Biden wants to make America “Straight” again.
Lots of fun to be had with that blip!
Are you kidding? That first blooper didnt take long.
Nope, it’s in his first ad. Of course he was on a spill about being “moral” and “Straight” and taken out of context but he took Trump’s comments of Charlesville out of context as well.
Fair play and all
I don't think Joe Biden is stupid. He is pretty bright. You simply cannot attain and hold a Senate seat without some intelligence.
The question is against what standard? He is much brighter than average. So are Freepers.
But Biden is simply not at the stratospheric intelligence level we expect of Presidential material, such as Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, or on the other side, Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson.
High intelligence is not the same as good. Many highly intelligent people have been instrumental in great evil. Stalin and Hitler were highly intelligent.
But Biden just does not make the grade to anywhere near that level.
Pure Politcal Evil, a throwback to the Racism of Jim Crow.
Jokin Joe!
This author is deluding himself if he thought Joe would do anything but take any and all roads to win. There is no road too low for Joe.
When wondering just how low Joe will go or just how far he will stretch the true in his campaign, just remember his comment to a mostly Black crowd in Danville, Virginia back in 2012 (when running against Romney of all people), "They're going to put y'all back in chains."
That's just a hint at how low Biden will go.
If the Democrats had the sense to run someone in the mold of “Scoop” Jackson or Sam Nunn, they might win in 2020.
Thankfully, they are firmly entrenched in the “Latest Looney Leftist” camp! (motto - “LLL - we’ve moved on from our KKK history!”)
Did their ‘slippery slope’ begin with George McGovern?
Biden was the CATALYST for Gay “marriage”!
Calling Trump a Nazi was all he has. It was pretty obvious he was going to do that when he announced he was going to announce in CVille. But he cant run on his record and he certainly cant run on who he is. So Trump is a Nazi is how they want to play this. They might want to be a little careful with this because in a country that is currently undergoing a coup and has 100,000 illegals a month flooding across the border people may actually vote for a Nazi.
He has the Gift of Gaffe!
He is an elderly white male, and the Democrat Party has declared war on white people. He has no choice but to do something like he did.
He is appealing to the base. They are the primary voters. The mushy middle only votes in the general.
He wants to run against Trump, but he has to get past 19 angry Democrats first.
Biden didn’t take Trump’s words out of context, rather, he flat out lied and bore false witness.
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