OK, maybe it’s a debatable point, but while we all talk about how Donald Trump is Teflon regarding the many attempts to derail his political career, he remains unindicted. Democrats tried to impeach him twice—and failed. There is a flurry of state-based investigations against him, which have yielded nothing against the former president. Granted, Trump is now self-destructing post-2022 midterms—Spencer had more on that this morning—which means Joe Biden is just watching the circus from on high. The self-implosion of Trump, coupled with the Republican Party's failure to clinch a resounding victory in this year’s elections, points to a horrific truth about Mr. Biden: he must be the luckiest man in politics.
Mr. Biden is a two-time presidential loser. Voters didn’t want him in 1988, a presidential run that ended prematurely after a plagiarism scandal. In 2008, it was the Hillary and Barack Obama show; Biden barely cleared the Iowa caucuses. Flash-forward to 2020, Biden looked like he was cooked by a younger, more vibrant candidate field which was quickly exposed as a mile wide and an inch deep. Biden was methodical and patient, waiting for each supposed big name to drop out, which happened.
The Delaware liberal survived the primary but looked at facing a vivacious president in Trump, who had a booming economy behind him. Then, a respiratory virus that originated in Wuhan, China, created a global pandemic that forced everyone into lockdown, and the economy spiraled into a recession. The COVID era had begun, with Biden doing most of his campaigning from a basement. When the debates began, Biden repeated his playbook from the primaries by letting his opponents make the mistakes—Trump did that. The former president was overly aggressive and bombastic, which probably ended up pushing away more independent voters. Biden won the election, though there was some funny business which I won’t relitigate—but you know what I’m referencing.
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In the White House, you can see why voters didn’t pick Biden to go far in the primaries: he’s grossly unqualified to be president. He’s more than a half-a-step back regarding his mental facilities. He’s not respected, soporific, and egregiously uncharismatic. There’s a reason his approvals are in the high-30s to low-40s—everyone sees him as an incompetent dolt. There’s not a single crisis he has resolved or managed to improve. We’re facing a crime spike and high inflation and are in the throes of a recession. And still, he could walk away with virtually a split chamber in Congress.
The Republican Party never had a better climate for generating a red wave, and they blew it. Biden was virtually ordered to stay away by vulnerable Democrats, which he obliged, and his party could still maintain control of the Senate. The best the GOP could do now is have a three-to-five-seat majority in the House. Biden faced near-impossible headwinds that a sitting president’s party could survive in a midterm year, yet he did.
COVID couldn’t kill his presidential chances. His unpopular agenda and gross ineptitude at carrying out the duties of the office of the presidency couldn’t convince voters to vote for Republicans writ large in this past midterm election. Everyone was bracing for a Democratic Party beatdown to be used to force Biden not to run for a second term. Now, that reason has been neutralized. These occurrences are due to Biden’s political skills—those are absent. It must be plain luck, a lengthy, ungodly string of good fortune to all our horror.
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