HOW JOE TURNED WOKE
HOW to explain President Biden’s ideological transformation over the years? The senator who opposed government financing of abortions for 30-some years now supports it — and up through the ninth month of pregnancy.
The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman who sponsored and bragged about the tough provisions of the 1994 crime bill now echoes almost the entire Black Lives Matter mantra.
The politician who supported the welfare-reform bill that House Speaker Newt Gingrich kept pressing until then-President Bill Clinton, facing reelection, decided to sign it in 1996 has now concocted “COVID relief ” legislation that includes multi-thousand-dollar payments to single mothers with no work requirements.
Biden came to office in the 1965-75 decade, when violent crime and welfare dependency roughly tripled and he supported measures to reverse those trends and reduce the ensuing ill effects, which were particularly devastating in America’s black neighborhoods.
As a presidential candidate in 2019 and 2020 and as president now, however, he is supporting policies that threaten to recreate that vicious cycle, as murders skyrocket and the immediate need for welfare payments seems minimal at a time when employment looks set to rise as COVID-19 restrictions fade.
Biden began his Senate career just as the unintended consequences of the 1965 immigration act were kicking in, ultimately resulting in 11 million illegal immigrants and lowered wages for low-skilled US citizens and legal residents.
Now he’s presiding over the reversal of the effective border controls former President Donald Trump finally put together. He’s inviting untold thousands who will likely swell the illegal population.
That’s some ideological transformation. It represents adaptation to significantly changing local terrain.
During the first half of Biden’s career, Delaware was a political bellwether. It voted within 2 percent of the national average in presidential elections from 1960 to 1992. And in this small state, voters are used to having close, personal contact with high elected officials.
Biden, temperamentally gregarious, was a natural in this environment. I remember interviewing him by phone in May 1972, when the 29-year-old New Castle County council member explained exactly how he’d defeat a popular Republican who’d held statewide office for 26 years. He didn’t need political consultants to tell him how to talk — and listen — to voters.
As senator, Biden famously returned by train to Delaware every night, with plenty of chances to schmooze with voters while shopping, after church, when lunching with the kids. He was alert to voters’ concerns, amplified by Philly local TV news, about crime and urban decay. His voting record reflected those concerns, and it dissuaded potential strong competitors. For 30 years, he and his Republican colleague William Roth were easily elected and reelected.
But in the 1990s, the local terrain changed. Suburbs in the Northeast and Midwest trended Democratic, and so did Delaware. Starting in 2000, it has averaged 57 percent Democratic in presidential races, 7 percent above the national average. Delaware’s now safely Democratic.
That left Biden with zero worries about reelection and more in sync with a Senate Democratic caucus that, in my observation over the last 20 years, has been more cohesive and like-minded than Senate Republicans.
Then, in 2008, Biden was elected vice president and, installed in the West Wing for the next eight years, less exposed to nonliberal opinions, even as the Democratic administration and party became more lockstep liberal.
By the 2020 campaign cycle, he was taken to voicing woke opinions, suggesting that perhaps this family man has been influenced by woke young family members.
That’s my explanation for why one of the few politicians who has personally witnessed over a halfcentury the damage inflicted by policy mistakes on crime, welfare and immigration seems determined to make the same mistakes again.
Anyone have a better explanation?