By Chris Powell
Forgive Democratic leaders for what seems like their hypocrisy, their overthrowing their presumptive nominee for president, the incumbent, Joe Biden, who won the party’s primaries, and replacing him instantly with Vice President Kamala Harris, who didn’t have to earn support for the nomination from the party’s ordinary members.
It’s no big deal because polls show that Democrats throughout the country overwhelmingly wanted Biden to withdraw once his mental and physical decline no longer could be concealed by party leaders and news organizations. The vice president was the obvious substitute. Despite the mockery coming from Republicans, democracy is not so offended by this.
Democracy is offended by the Democratic leadership’s having blocked Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s challenge to Biden’s renomination, forcing Kennedy to run for president as an independent. If Kennedy’s challenge had been allowed within the party, Biden’s incapacity might have been exposed at a safer distance from the election.
The ridiculousness of Democratic leaders and so many journalists is not forgivable either — their claim that Biden withdrew his candidacy for the good of the country. Biden didn’t withdraw as much as he was dragged away kicking and screaming after insisting that he would never withdraw unless God told him to. This week the New York Post claimed that Biden withdrew only when party leaders threatened to instigate his removal as president via a formal 25th Amendment finding of incapacity.
That report seems more than plausible in light of Biden’s abrupt reversal on withdrawing after swearing that he would heed only God, and in light of his failure in his address to the nation this week to explain why he changed his mind.
The Democrats are worse than ridiculous, having been shown to be as dishonest as Biden is senile. They long denied his worsening infirmity and even claimed that video evidence of it was forged. The president’s mental collapse on national television June 27 during his debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump made it impossible for Democrats and journalists to continue lying about the president’s competence.
So party leaders resolved that Biden had to go, even as many did not publicly call for his departure. When their coup succeeded, nearly all party leaders involved with it and nearly all who did not object to it began hailing Biden as the greatest president in decades, even as his public approval rating long had been the worst of any president in decades.
Vice President Harris insisted on Biden’s competence and scolded doubters right up to the moment he withdrew. Did she really not know about his condition, or was she among the many who lied about Biden’s condition and who have returned to denouncing Trump as a liar?
While Biden is off the Democratic ticket, his party has contaminated itself by covering up for him only to retire him forcibly. So rather than let him get away, the Republicans may tie him around Harris’ neck along with the rest of the record of the Biden-Harris administration, which produced the president’s disastrous approval rating.
BUDGET RESERVE IS ILLUSION: Government employee unions and social-service groups are distressed that Connecticut state government has a budget reserve of more than $4 billion. The unions want the money for their members, the social-service groups for their clients, and they are sore at Governor Lamont and the General Assembly for not repealing or reducing the “fiscal guardrails” requiring state government to put so much money aside.
Of course state government always fails to meet some compelling human needs, but the impression that it is rolling in money is mistaken. While the “guardrails” have improved its financial position, state government still has an estimated $37 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, incurred during decades of overspending elsewhere. Even if the $4 billion reserve was used entirely to reduce those liabilities, Connecticut would remain hugely in debt.
The best way to find more money for compelling needs is to economize elsewhere. A good place to start would be state government’s extravagant payroll, which is increasing pension liabilities almost as fast as they are being paid down.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 