Will Joe Biden’s claim to fame become a source of shame? Gaffe-jag Joe’s main political asset has been his history with the Obama administration. Now, however, fellow Democrat presidential aspirants are trying to make him history by questioning Barack Obama’s legacy. It’s another example of how in leftist circles, approval and praise may only last until the next goalpost shift.
As the Daily Beast reports, “‘Barack Obama, personally, is incredibly popular among Democratic primary voters,’ Karthik Ganapathy, a progressive consultant now running his own firm, told The Daily Beast. ‘And also at the same time, there’s a growing recognition that income and wealth inequality got worse under his eight years, the climate crisis got worse during his eight years, deportations went up during his time in office, and so on.’”
While Ganapathy may have a point on the “so on” (since no one knows what it is), the three points he mentions are left-wing deceptions that, ironically, are now being used against Obama and Biden.
First, though conservatives may also buy into the deporter-in-chief Obama bit, even left-wing Snopes acknowledges that deportations only “increased” under Obama because the definition of “deported” had been changed.
Where illegals caught at the border and turned away had not historically been considered “deportations,” this changed under the G.W. Bush administration (in part, this reflected a desire to ensure that these aliens would have formal charges on their records). This change became even more the status quo under Obama; in fact, had his standard been in place during previous administrations, their deportation numbers would have been higher than Obama’s.
Interestingly, this is a deception that allowed Obama to facilitate Invasion U.S.A. (a.k.a. migration schemes) with the cover of saying, “Look how many people I deport!”
(It’s also reminiscent of the “current services baseline” deception, where 1990s Republicans were accused of “cutting the budget.” In reality, only reductions in the rate of spending growth were proposed. But these reductions in an already purposely inflated budget projection were called “cuts” in Washington-speak — and the enemedia reported them as such.)
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As for “wealth inequality,” note that it will always appear to “worsen” as long as income-quintile analysis is the standard. This statistical method divides the population into five income groups, from the lowest to the highest.
Once a person begins earning an income greater than his quintile’s upper limit, he moves into the next quintile. The exception is the highest quintile; being the last one, it has no upper limit.
In other words, even if the nation gets wealthier in general, the first quintile’s mean income ($12,457 in 2015) will stay essentially the same. But since it’s impossible to ascend from the last quintile, a rising tide lifting all boats ensures that its mean will ever increase. Thus, the expanding “wealth gap” between the first and fifth quintiles is meaningless.
What’s meaningful is that, as even left-wing Think Progress reported in 2013, the current standard of living worldwide is history’s highest. Moreover, as I illustrated here, equality tells you nothing about quality.
Then there’s the “climate crisis.” It couldn’t have gotten worse during the Obama years because there is no climate crisis, as an Australian politician who can now afford to be more honest recently confessed.
Speaking of which, power-seeking politicians specialize in demagoguery. Thus, “Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vermont) campaign has used Obama’s own words to challenge Biden’s notion that Obamacare simply needs to be built upon,” the Beast also tells us. “Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) challenged Biden over the Obama administration’s deportation policies. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) backed off support for the Obama administration’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal as originally written. And Governor Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) has attacked Biden for a naivete about dealing with Republicans — in what has been interpreted as an implicit rebuke of Obama’s own failure to fully grasp GOP recalcitrance.”
Yet given that an early 2018 CNN poll found that Obama had a 97 percent favorable rating among Democrats, it’s questionable whether this tactic will work. In fact, some are already talking about another Obama presidency.
A Michelle Obama presidency, that is.
Canada Free Press editor in chief Judi McLeod, pointing out that Michelle just won the “Most Admired Woman in the World” title, writes that she “is Already Out There Hustling Down The Hustings.” This echoes radio giant Rush Limbaugh, who in February opined, “I think Michelle may be the candidate.”
At the end of the day, if Michelle entered the confused fray of Star Wars bar-scene Democrat candidates, she’d likely capture the nomination. As the next-Obama-presidency theory goes, though, if there’s no clear nominee at the Democratic National Convention next July, Michelle could swoop in at the eleventh hour as donkey-party “savior.”
What this really underlines is that Joe Biden’s real problem isn’t Obama, but Joe Biden. What says it all is that the main purpose he served during his boss’s presidency was to, by comparison, make Obama look good.
Photo: AP Images
