No Matter Who Wins On Tuesday, There Will Be No ‘Return To Normalcy’ By John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist
GNN Note – United = unity / Diversity = divided – seems very clear and very easy. #END
Donald Trump inaugurated a populist era in American politics. Electing Joe Biden won’t change that.
One of the animating ideas behind former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign is that a Biden presidency will be a “return to normalcy.” It is a pitch that relies not only on the assumption that the Trump era is not normal, but that President Trump has weakened our institutions and undermined norms, and that the cure for what ails America is a return to the halcyon days of Obama and Biden.
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Most of that is pure fantasy, but the Biden campaign at least has this right: the Trump era is not normal. But the Trump era’s abnormality is not a passing thing, a clock that can be wound back. Trump’s presidency inaugurated a populist era on both the right and the left. It is the new normal, no matter who wins the White House.
In fact, a Biden administration would accelerate this change, and by comparison might even make the Trump presidency seem quiescent. Setting aside the impossibility of normalcy during a global pandemic, there is nothing normal about what Biden and the Democrats are proposing to do if they gain power.
Packing the U.S. Supreme Court is not normal. Creating new states as a way to pack the Senate is not normal. Abolishing the Electoral College is not normal. Establishing a South African-style “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” is not normal. Codifying Roe v. Wade into law and forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions is not normal. A ban on fracking—or, as Biden likes to put it, “transitioning out of fossil fuels”—is not normal. Passing any version of the Green New Deal is not normal. Raising the top income tax rate to a level not seen since the Carter administration is not normal.
These things are radical, and Democrats broadly support all of them. Biden has been disingenuously cagey about some of his plans, like whether he would try to pack the Supreme Court, but often he has been candid about going along with the leftward lurch of his party, like his abrupt about-face on taxpayer funding for abortions.
Part of Biden’s schtick has been to style himself a pragmatist and a moderate—a working-class Catholic kid from Scranton, Obama’s steady right-hand man, no malarkey! His defensiveness about the riots this summer is a case in point. In a speech back in August, after months of widespread rioting with hardly a peep from Democratic leaders, Biden said, “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?”
