Feisty Joe Becomes Forgiving Joe Becomes Forgotten Joe

Joe Biden has not been listening to Elton John. Had his iTunes always included “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word” Slow Joe would have had no need to be begging forgiveness since the first Democratic debates.

If your cable news subscription has lapsed, you might have missed where Biden had the temerity to suggest that he’d broken bread with segregationist senators in the 1980s and 90s. Pressed by Kamala Harris (the Pride of Westmount High) Joe said he had nothing to apologize for. That’s just how things were in them days. Tough nuggies.

Now, if the segregationists had been Republicans Joe might have gotten a pass from Kamala and the liberal media pack. You know, “It was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.”

But Biden’s big mistake was to remind everyone in AOC world that those senators were all Democrats. Robert Byrd. James Eastland. Herman Talmadge. And that the purging on race issues now happening is in fact a Democrat civil war over the party’s pandering to its racist base in the South for over 150 years. 

Jim Crow was a construct of the Barack Obama party. Lynching was a party position of the Hillary Clinton party. Segregation was the calling card of the George Clooney party. 

Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, was Republican. Desegregating schools in Little Rock was a Republican effort. GOP voters in Congress far outnumbered Democrats in the voting for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But you don’t hear about that on CNN or MSNBC or in the Democrat debates.

How desperate was Harris to post the “nothing to see” tape around Joe? She came out in favour of bussing, that decrepit remnant of 1980s liberalism. True, she abandoned her position the very next day. But a desperate moment of exposure for the Democrat myth required a desperate measure. 

And the media loved every second of Harris’ insubordination. Faster than you could say George Wallace, Biden’s polling numbers among snowflakes with a historical recall of 15 minutes receded like his hairline. Campaign advisors decided that Feisty Joe now had to be Forgiving Joe. 

So Biden began a Contrition Tour, dropping his controversial past like it was Liz Taylor dumping Eddie Fisher when Richard Burton came on the scene. He’d been callous, he admitted, in not excoriating men elected to serve in the Senate on behalf of an indeterminate party. He must work harder to stop being a capitalist roader. All Hail the teachings of Chairwoman Ocasio Cortez.

With that, the Democrats last hope at appealing to the centre of the electorate went up in smoke. A “moderate” position in the Democrat Party is now free health care for illegal aliens. A radical position is banning movies that advocate pro-life messages. (Wait, that’s the position of the Trudeau Liberals.)

Democrat savants like Rob Reiner and Bobby DeNiro are quick to say that, don’t sweat it, the party will veer back to the centre in time for the 2020 election. This is all a little game we have to play to activate the party’s excitable gender/ race/ vegan wing. That stuff about the Betsy Ross flag being pro-slavery? We kid, we kid.

But, of course, there is no turning back. The population wary of Trump is now even warier of a party that makes Canada’s Green Party look stodgy by comparison. Yes, Donald is batshit crazy. But these people? Flip city.

Trump could have told Biden that apologizing to the apparatchiks of his party was like throwing blood to Audrey, the man-eating plant in Little Shop Of Horrors.  It just encourages the beast. One of Trump’s better animal instincts has been never backing up, never giving in to the narratives polished nightly on CNN or MSNBC.  He can’t spell apologize. (No, he literally can’t spell apologize).

Which infuriates the baying liberal mob. But reassures his own base. It is the George Patton march-toward-the-sound-of-guns approach. And it has so far defended Trump against the narrative spinners.

And so America has now morphed into Green Acres. The elites with their pitchforks and designer running shoes. The rest? Mr. Haney, scheming to fool the government. For the Green Acres elites who have a burning need to tell others how to behave government is the perfect weapon. Thus the mania from people in Hollywood who staged a reading of the Mueller Report. They’re mortally afraid that a diminution of government will short circuit their ability to limit soft drink sizes, ban plastic straws and teach cultural guilt in the school system.

Conservatives, on the other hand, don’t mind if liberals have their ideological sand box so long as they use their own money to fund it.

Which is pretty much where Joe Biden finds himself today. Sorry for everything he’s ever stood for. One thing he can count on? In six months, when he’s a ruined man, he’ll be even sorrier.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of his website Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also a best-selling author whose new book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports And Why The Free Market Could Save Them is now available on brucedowbigginbooks.ca