A couple of years ago, when The Blade asked Mayor Pete about the experience of being openly gay in a state where Pence was governor, Buttigieg called Pence a "super-nice guy," immediately adding that he pursues "divisive and backward-looking policies... The thing about Mike Pence is, he’s a super-nice guy, who just genuinely believes this stuff. He operates from a different reality than the rest of us operate from. He’s written that cigarettes don’t kill, he thinks climate change is made up. He must assume that people get up in the morning one day and decide to be gay. And so, as nice as he’ll be to you in person, when it comes to policy, like a moth to a flame, he goes in for these divisive and backward-looking policies and I think is having the same influence in the White House right now that he did as governor." Pence has a long history in the public arena. He's always been a corrupt scam artist, a self-serving backstabber, self-righteous hypocrite and an embarrassing opportunist. "Nice" is the wrong word.Last Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal’s Reid Epstein noticed that Status Quo Joe Biden, at an event in Omaha, called Pence a "decent guy." That's Biden's instinct-- institutionalized, back to normalcy hypocrisy in an age where people want straight talk, not bullshit. Even Chris Cillizza seems to have noticed:
Biden is a political anachronism. He's been in politics for almost 50 years; he was first elected to the Senate in 1972! Politics back then (and all the way through the mid- to late-1990s) was far more genteel and polite than it is now. Biden is a hail-fellow-well-met sort of guy. My guess is he has called roughly 200,000 people (NOTE: This is an estimate) a "decent guy" over the course of his political life. That doesn't mean he agrees with them. Or that he even likes them. Rather, it's a reflection of the general collegiality that reigned in politics when Biden came up in the game.Things have changed drastically since then, however. And this kerfuffle is a sign of things to come for Biden. He is a benefit-of-the-doubt guy running to lead a party who views the other side as not just dumb and incompetent, but evil. This may be the first time who Biden is as a politician runs directly into the new governing reality of the Democratic Party.
Calling a dangerous monster "a decent guy" will just be another item on the long list for Biden to explain on his national apology tour-- AKA, presidential campaign, which already includes his anti-integration politics, his decades of full-blown corporate corruption, his lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key posture on criminal justice, his myriad women problems (that go way beyond his treatment of Anita Hill). Status Quo Joe was the wrong guy for the Democrats to nominate for president every time he's tried running for president-- and he's more the wrong guy now than he was decades ago, back when his Beltway buddies like Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus and Richard Shelby (still a Democrat at the time) were pushing him to.It's not just Biden still walking among us. Just when you thought Claire McCaskill had finally left the national stage, MSNBC dragged her into their increasingly conservative ring of paid guests. And, sure, she "counts" as a Democrat, even though she said that said she'll "fight anyone" who looks down on the people from her state of Missouri who voted for Señor Trumpanzee. Televised Mud-wresting, I hope. The recently defeated conservative Democrat, who alienated her base with her voting record, told David Axelrod onthe Axe Files that "[Trump] tapped that vein of frustration and anger. And if somebody is frustrated and angry that they don't think the world is giving them a fair shot based on their hard work, you need to listen to that and understand it, and not look down your nose at it and call them names and say they're all racists or they're all this or they're all that, because it's just not true... I know these people that voted for Donald Trump, and some of them I don't care much for and don't like much, but a whole bunch of them I get. And I hate it when people in Washington, especially people from bright blue states just said, 'Well, the only people voting for Trump are stupid people.' No that's not true."As a senator, McCaskill never worked to bring these people along in a progressive direction, not only because that's way too hard a task for someone as intellectually lazy and disinterested as she is, but also because she doesn't believe in the progressive agenda herself. McCaskill found it far easier to make political hay by demonizing Alexandria Ocasio Cortez than to explain why Medicare-For-All would be a godsend to her constituents, something she doesn't even believe. It's fine to be supportive and respectful of non-racist Trump voters in a red state like Missouri but... what next? Can you do what Bernie does and show these folks why real populism is what will save them and their families? Not if you're a corporate conservative like McCaskill... or Status Quo Joe. Conservatives don't think like progressives. And they're in the wrong party... if they're Democrats.Warren G. Harding was a very successful candidate and his "Back To Normalcy" platform had great appeal. He won handily and started out as a popular president. It's almost impossible to find a credible list of the three worst presidents in American history that doesn't include Harding. Let's not make the same mistake again.
