Biden’s Demagogic Habit

by George Neumayr April 14, 2021

Ronald Reagan once called Joe Biden a “smooth but pure demagogue.” Biden is not so smooth anymore, but he certainly remains a demagogue. Biden’s preference for demagoguery to debate defines his career. For all his talk of civility and unity, he would much rather call his opponents names than address their arguments. Biden’s description of Georgia’s new election law as “Jim Crow on steroids” is typical of his demagoguery. It’s a comment as incendiary and heedless as his 2012 assertion that the policies of Mitt Romney were going to put blacks “back in chains.”

By equating a manifestly nonracist election law with segregation, Biden renders all of his comments on racism unserious. He is looking not to heal but to inflame, not to eliminate the problem of racism but to trivialize it. His willingness to throw around charges of racism so wildly, describing anyone who doesn’t share his left-wing politics as racist, is a sign of moral insincerity and intellectual laziness. In a 2020 speech, he likened Republicans to Bull Connor. 

Mere opposition to Democratic policies made Republicans in Biden’s eyes heirs to that racist. “The Bull Connors of today don’t stand in the street with fire hoses and dogs,” he said. “They wield their power rolling back rights, punishing the poor, denying access to health care and quality education, and turning away refugees and asylum seekers.”...........But it is the shameless practice of identity politics that makes racial harmony impossible. The Democrats say that they want “diversity,” but what they really want is division. By injecting race into philosophical disagreements where it doesn’t belong, they seek to embitter, not unite, the populace.............To Read More...