Joe Biden’s State Of The Union Previewed Dems’ Fake Attempt To Walk Back Their Culture War

Until Democrats are willing to drop truly radical policies like the Equality Act, it’s all smoke and mirrors meant to distract voters.

Joe Biden’s ”State of the Union” address clearly marked an attempt by his White House to make their culture war seem like an afterthought. It’s not, of course, as evidenced by the president’s description of abortion as “health care” and his demand that Congress pass the radical Equality Act. But the bulk of Biden’s speech focused on “meat and potatoes,” as Chris Hayes repeatedly claimed during MSNBC’s coverage.

It’s true, Biden dedicated much of his address to Ukraine, infrastructure, the economy, health care, and Covid-19. He earned a robust round of applause with a line that said, “We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police. It is to fund the police.” He touched on guns, immigration, and the environment, but they were hardly his focus. Notably, Joy Reid lamented the absence of Jan. 6 from Biden’s address, arguing it was characteristically devoid of “red meat.”

Reid was right to find that balance remarkable. Rather than signaling a shift away from Democrats’ scorched-earth culture war, Biden’s speech signaled a shift away from the party’s strategy of obsessing over identity politics. This comes with an enormous caveat: Democrats cannot and will not meaningfully make any such pivot beyond rhetoric.

Until they’re willing to drop truly radical policies like the Equality Act, it’s all smoke and mirrors meant to distract voters from what they’re actually doing to the culture. Democrats cannot simply pretend the summer of 2020 and the lockdowns never happened, no matter how much the media might help them try, because the party has now spent years committing to inflated definitions of bigotry that would condemn any moderation from their positions.

Sure, voters have short memories and the media is complicit. But these definitions are now baked into our institutions. They are ingrained in the minds of a generation. They’re clung to by journalists and activists that Democrats need to please.

Samuel Goldman of George Washington University disrupted the annual flood of breathless SOTU tweets with a great reminder on Tuesday night. “Guys, this speech is not for you,” he wrote. “It’s for D-leaners who disapprove of the administration and these are the lines that worked for them in focus groups. Don’t overthink it.”

That’s exactly right and it’s also why Biden’s “meat and potatoes” tone felt different. From recalls and losses like Terry McAuliffe’s to Biden’s dismal ratings to Covid missteps and brutal new polls, establishment Democrats (and even their allies in the corporate press) are worried enough about their power to start making small sacrifices in the culture war, even if they’re superficial.

And they have to be superficial, because establishment Democrats have spent years emboldening the cultural left, so much that small departures from dogma are now treated as bigotry by a vocal minority of their base. While those voices may be a minority of the base, many of them are very powerful, and they can weaponize all of Democrats’ prior cultural leftism against them to level accusations of racism and sexism and all the other -isms over rhetoric alone. See this tweet Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., blasted out to her 900,000 followers after the speech.

Biden’s heavy focus on “meat and potatoes” signaled a cynical but long overdue attempt by the Democratic establishment to convince voters they’re not frenzied culture warriors. Unfortunately for Biden and his party, they are indeed frenzied culture warriors and they’re going to have a difficult time proving otherwise without alienating the radicals they’ve tried so hard to appease. It’s at least good news that voters are rejecting cultural leftism so clearly, even Beltway liberals are noticing.

What Joe Biden didn’t say during the SOTU is more important than what he did say, which really wasn’t much. It’s important for Republicans to anticipate the Democrats strategies going into the midterms.

FR THREAD-—Three Things Biden Did NOT Mention Reveal Democrats’ Election Strategy
https://jdrucker.substack.com ^ | March 2nd 2022 | JD Rucker
Posted on 3/2/2022, 12:05:41 PM by Red Badger

Democrats know they’re on the ropes with the midterm elections in eight months away. They hope to reverse their projected fortunes by highlighting one thing while ignoring two others.

The State of the Union speech delivered embarrassingly at times by Joe Biden on Tuesday was as milquetoast as possible. This was by design. He made a few waves with some controversial statements, such as calling to “fund the police,” but for the most part he stuck with standard issues without turning too many heads.

He lied a lot, but that’s to be expected. He’s a seasoned politician with decades of experiencing saying what he doesn’t really means. He gaffed a lot as well, but that’s also common for bumbling Biden. Overall, it was a bland, standardized speech intended to tell his base that he has some control over his faculties and his regime has a few plans.

The only hearts and minds that may have been changed by the speech belonged to Black Lives Matter.

In case you missed any of the three key omissions, here they are as well as my analysis of what they mean…

Racism

If Democrats learned anything from their disastrous Virginia elections last year, it’s that selling the culture war and promoting racism in the name of anti-racism is a losing agenda. He didn’t mention challenges with race-based issues at all, and Black Lives Matter supporters noticed.

Mandates

Biden loves mandates. Many Democrats support mandates. Most Americans in general do not. Democrats running for office will not be talking about vaccine mandates. In fact, we’re already starting to see a major shift in what they’re saying about other measures such as face masks and social distancing. They’re being careful not to anger their mask-nanny-supporters such as school teachers, but they’re promoting the concept that they’re opening up the country and bringing back normalcy.

January 6

The first two omissions during the SOTU speech were signals that Democrats won’t be talking about them. The last major omission is the opposite. They’re definitely going to be talking about it, but they don’t want the message delivered by Joe Biden.

The left’s false January 6 narrative has not taken hold as well as they would have liked, but they’re going to stick with it. In fact, they’re going to ramp it up. They’ll use election resources from the Biden regime such as the Department of Justice to gaslight as many Americans as possible with two goals in mind:

1. They want us to think all Republicans lawmakers are responsible for the “domestic terrorism” that took place during the “insurrection” on January 6, 2021.

2. They desperately want to prevent Donald Trump from running in 2024 by using January 6 to block him, and they’ll attack the people he endorses by attaching them to January 6.

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