The Left’s prissy purism makes them incapable of beating Trump
At 76, Joe Biden, the current front-runner in the American Democratic primaries, is old enough to remember a time in his political career when Congress was a functional legislature. Senators spoke to one another. They even ate together, while now the Senate dining room is often deserted. Opponents compromised, as Biden put it earlier this month, to “get things done”. Like Obama before himself running into the rigid realities of entrenched belligerence in contemporary DC, the former vice-president has prided himself on engaging with the opposition. Fatally, however, the example Biden cited of people with whom he fiercely disagreed in the Seventies, yet was still willing to work with, was two segregationist senators. [Insert here the blaring horn on Jeopardy! when
the contestant gives the wrong answer.]
Competing presidential candidates rushed to deplore his remarks. Cory Booker demanded Biden apologise (Biden refused: “Apologise for what?”). Kamala Harris accused Biden of not understanding “the dark history of our country”, and in last week’s television debate deemed his statement “hurtful”. Amy Klobuchar declared on the PBS NewsHour that, in the improbable instance that she ever held her nose and spoke to such unsavoury people, she would at least “call them out” – though it’s curious why she’d think that the presently popular practice of public denunciation and name-calling would successfully cajole a colleague into supporting your legislation. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted that Biden “repeatedly demonstrates that he is out of step with the values of the modern Democratic Party”.
Numerous commentators seized on the perceived faux pas as proof Biden has a tin ear for modern American politics, in which the faintest whiff of racism, no matter how many times removed, is a career-ender. According to the experts, Biden should have cited instead a willingness to work with the likes of John McCain, whose impassioned eulogy he delivered.
Yet Biden’s original example was apt. He had plenty in common with a Republican moderate like McCain. As a major proponent of the Voting Rights Act and a champion of civil rights back in the day that supporting civil rights actually cost you something, Biden ferociously opposed segregationists; as he said 10 days ago, he “detested what they stood for”. In other words, these were politicians with whom he really, truly, profoundly disagreed, and with whom he still managed to maintain a civil and sometimes even productive relationship.
Two points. The notion that one should ever communicate, directly and politely, with political enemies is now alien. You cannot even be nostalgic for the days when antagonists with strong, differing opinions could still exchange views and horse-trade over bills in Congress. In today’s politics on both sides of the