Politics
The Democrats Have Big Problems
Salvaging the Biden presidency (and American democracy)
As I watched Joe Biden give his initial speech telling America about the final withdrawal from Afghanistan, offering his empty assurances that Kabul would not fall and that our puppet government and proxy army would somehow hold, I shook my head, muttering in disgust.
No, it wouldn’t. Anyone with even a shred of knowledge about Afghanistan knew this as sure as day follows night. It was only a matter of time before the Taliban took control.
Apparently, Biden had a plethora of classified intelligence saying the same thing. As it happened, Kabul fell like a sand castle on the beach, brought down by a strong breeze. Nary a shot was even fired by our supposedly superior proxy forces.
Tragically, Biden botched the roll-out of what might have been a political slam dunk: getting America out of an unpopular and costly war. Republicans have been gloating ever since, despite the fact that they engineered this catastrophic disaster in the first place.
Per usual, a Democratic president is cleaning up the mess of a Republican president, and being punished because the solution looks terrible. This is why Obama never left Afghanistan. He feared incurring the political damage of an ugly exit. He knew it would sabotage his domestic agenda and possibly cripple his presidency.
Nevertheless, Joe Biden had a responsibility to be honest with the American people, and he failed to do that. He should have clearly communicated that our endeavor in Afghanistan had utterly failed, and better prepared America for the bitter psychological impact of a long lost war.
Instead, he claimed that we achieved what we wanted to achieve there, hardly an accurate answer after two decades and almost 3,000 American lives lost, not to mention the trillions spent and wasted. He appeared dishonest and incompetent, as jihadists retake power in Kabul holding American machine guns on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are rehabilitating themselves on an Apple TV documentary about 9/11, valorizing themselves for the biggest national security failure in American history. They don’t even mention the word Iraq once. It’s an astonishing little piece of propaganda.
Arrogant and dumb as ever, Bush prattles on throughout about how he was actually in charge of his own presidency, inadvertently reinforcing the fact of Dick Cheney’s poisonous control over his administration. Cheney, for his part, proudly characterizes himself as toughly protecting America, taking ownership of the War on Terror’s ugly excesses.
Torture of detainees, secret detention and rendition, Guantanamo, ruinous wars built and maintained on lies, a destabilized Middle East, perhaps 900,000 dead, and America’s shattered reputation around the world weren’t exactly up for discussion.
As I watched the documentary I thought to myself, this is how Republicans defeat Democrats every time. They communicate inferior policies through simple, effective agitprop and mindless patriotism, and the American people lap it up.
With Delta raging across the country, and a changing climate creating natural disasters that strike seemingly everywhere at once (floods in New York, hurricanes in Louisiana, fires in California and Oregon), the Biden presidency is hanging on by a sliver. He’s banking on a $3.5 trillion cradle-to-grave reprise of the Great Society’s social security improvements, though without the political muscle to ensure it passes in an evenly divided 50–50 senate.
It’s a tenuous strategy, as conservative Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema project open defiance, and powerful lobbyists spend dark money to tank the legislation. In a sign of things to come, today Manchin said he might accept a $1.5 trillion package, knocking two trillion dollars off the plan.
Meanwhile, Biden’s poll numbers have fallen off a steep cliff after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, shaving ten points from his approval rating. A president’s approval rating generally predicts his parties performance in the midterm elections, and Democrats are rightfully terrified.
Children’s COVID hospitalizations just hit an all-time high as schools reopen, amid crazed Republicans causing havoc at school board meetings in their war against basic mask mandates and life-saving vaccines.
The problems just seem to keep on coming for the Biden administration, with no end in sight.
Donald Trump is enjoying the show, sniping from the sidelines and building on expectation that he’ll run for president again in 2024, freezing the Republican presidential field in place and threatening to unleash another nightmarish crisis of democracy.
In a sign of what America has to look forward to if Biden can’t right the ship, Republicans just passed a draconian bill basically criminalizing abortion in Texas and legalizing vigilantes to pursue women attempting to have them, offering up a $10,000 reward, with the blessing of the new Trump-McConnell Supreme Court.
Across the nation, Republicans are auditing elections and infiltrating local election boards with Stop the Steal conspiracists, as elected Republicans make it harder to vote based on Trump’s lies.
To say that the Republican Party remains a mortal threat to American democracy significantly understates the case.
Joe Biden was elected on a platform of returning stability and competence to the White House after the endless chaos, criminality, and dysfunction of the Trump years.
It remains to be seen how thoroughly American voters will punish Democrats for the bungling of the withdrawal out of Afghanistan, though if Biden’s slipping approval rating is any hint, there may be a significant cost at the ballot box.
If Republicans regain one or both houses of Congress, Biden’s domestic agenda will be paralyzed, and from there it is a short distance to another Republican in the White House, presumably Donald Trump.
The clock is ticking for Joe Biden to find a way to salvage the infrastructure bill and show the American people he has a plan to regain control over the pandemic before the midterms begin in earnest.
Democrats must find a way.
With American democracy hanging in the balance, the Biden administration desperately needs a win soon. Let’s hope Democrats find a way to pass both infrastructure bills without cannibalizing each other in the process, and folding to big money’s craven lobbyists.
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