The Patriot Post® · The President's Personal Attacks

Whatever happened to the good old boy network of bipartisan glad-handing? That was the essence of a question from CBS’s Scott Pelley to Joe Biden in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday. And why, Mr. President, are your opponents such bad guys?

We covered a bit of that interview yesterday, particularly Biden declaring the pandemic “over.” But there was dialogue toward the end that deserves more attention:

Pelley: Concerning politics, Mr. President, you were elected to the Senate in 1972. You were 29 years old. And in those days, it seemed that the parties worked together to move the country forward. And I think many Americans feel that that no longer happens, and, in fact, may be impossible now.

Biden: Well, I don’t think it’s impossible. But it— it— it’s changed. What we do today, think about it, it’s all personal attacks. It’s about motive. It’s not about, “I disagree with you on the— on the subject matter.” And secondly, I think that— it's— I think it’s fair to say that we’ve not had a president like the last president, who has made all of it so personal. …

Pelley: It seems to me, Mr. President, that— when you were— first came to the Senate, the other guy had a bad idea, and now the other guy is a bad guy. And I don’t know how you get back from that.

Biden: … The fact of the matter is we’ve gotten a lot of things done bipartisanly [sic]. And everybody said, “We’re not gonna do anything, don’t let Biden have any successes,” et cetera. So, it’s still a way to go, but I think we’re making some progress.

And then they moved on. Pelley, ostensibly a journalist, didn’t even bring up the fact that Biden gave not one but two horribly angry, divisive, and demonizing speeches just a few days before the interview. Biden accused his “MAGA Republican” opponents of being “semi-fascists,” when the truth is that Democrats espouse that leftist ideology, not Republicans. He cast politics as a “battle for the soul of the nation” and his party as the only good guys capable of fending off evil.

In other words, Biden’s speeches were “all personal attacks … about motive.”

If Pelley were interested in anything other than carrying water for Democrats, he might have asked Biden to explain how demonizing half the country didn’t constitute saying “the other guy is a bad guy.” He could have pressed the president for a commitment to live up to all that Unity™ talk he started with in January 2021.

Nevertheless, in the interest of answering the question about ideas versus people, let’s take a look at where the two parties have shifted on ideas since Biden arrived in the Senate as a wet-behind-the-ears young whipper snapper.

In 1972, abortion was still a state issue, and there were restrictions on the practice all over the country. Over the ensuing decades, even after the Supreme Court unconstitutionally seized the issue in 1973, there were pro-life Democrats, and even the “pro-choice” ones expressed a preference for abortion being “safe, legal, and rare.” Biden himself routinely talked about his personal convictions and desire for limits on abortion.

Not anymore. Pro-life Democrats have gone the way of the wooly mammoth, and we hear nothing from Dems but hysterics about the “Handmaid’s Tale” dystopia created by laws limiting abortion in any way whatsoever. They prefer taxpayer-funded abortion right up until the moment of birth.

In 1972, everyone in America agreed that marriage was between one man and one woman and that there are only two sexes (gender being synonymous).

Not anymore. After another Supreme Court decision in 2015 conjured up a “right” to same-sex “marriage,” party members who always declare themselves “on the right side of history” suddenly changed from being marginally lukewarm to the idea of redefining marriage to becoming hateful censors of anyone who adheres to fundamental truth that everyone agreed with until five minutes ago. They followed much the same path with gender, redefining that word to mean a social construct of identity rather than biological reality, and then censoring disagreement.

(By the way, Supreme Court nominations used to be perfunctory affairs. Not anymore. Not once Senator Biden and his Democrat pals decided that personally destroying Republican nominees was in their political interest.)

In 1972, everyone agreed that illegal immigration was bad. Heck, in 2004 and 2008 and 2012, everyone at least verbally agreed with that. It wasn’t all that long ago that Democrats condemned illegal border crossing. They even favored a border wall.

Not anymore. The Democrats’ shift began during the presidency of George W. Bush and became a complete 180 when Donald Trump started talking about the border wall. Now Democrats aren’t outraged that three million migrants illegally crossed Biden’s open border in the last 12 months. They’re completely apoplectic that a Republican governor sent 50 migrants to the wealthy leftist enclave of Martha’s Vineyard.

We could go on, but you get the idea. So we’ll conclude with this. As Joe Biden says over and over and over again, “This isn’t your father’s Republican Party.” He’s been saying that for nearly 20 years. We doubt he actually thinks that’s true, but if he does it’s because Republicans who have largely stayed the same since 1972 look an awful lot different from his perspective as he sprints to the fascist/socialist left.