The More Things Change

 This morning, I read a column by Victor David Hanson who is one of the more intelligent and insightful political commentators.  He spoke of all the "scandals" that the media is "unearthing" about President Trump.  Hanson's focus was on the bogus story about Trump's supposed refusal to go to a French cemetery in 2018 for a ceremony honoring war dead of WW I on the 100th anniversary of the end of that conflict.  That's been discussed and debunked enough, but Hanson spoke of it mainly for a different reason.  He pointed out that we should expect more and more of these supposed sensational disclosures as the election draws near.  It's the Democrats and media's main weapon in the election debate.  Hanson pointed out that these attacks and the Biden strategy of hiding in the basement in Delaware do not seem to be working.  Trump's electoral trajectory is rising while Biden's is falling.  We don't know -- because the polls are so obviously flawed and/or biased -- who is actually ahead, but we do know the direction in which the public is moving.  And then Hanson makes the point that I think is the true insight of his piece.  He points out that as these stale and phony scandal pieces fail to move the public, we should expect more and more of them to be unleashed.

It's really true.  If you think about it, the Democrats and Biden, in particular, don't have much to offer.  Biden claims he will end the pandemic, but all of his prescriptions are to claim he will do things that Trump did long ago and continues to do.  Biden claims he will end the riots, but that rings hollow for the millions of voters who watched Biden sit in silence for three months as the riots went on and on.  Laterly, as his standing has fallen, Biden has finally addressed the riots.  First, he blamed the police.  Second, he blamed systemic racism.  Third, he called the protesters "the best of us".  Fourth, he actually called the riots mostly peaceful.  And, finally, Biden said that violence is not the answer.  The media said that Biden "condemned" the violence, but that's nor really true.  Biden didn't call upon the Democrat mayors and governors who let these riots continue to take action to stop them.  He didn't call upon sending in the National Guard to help.  He didn't call for the arrest and prosecution of thugs who loot, start fires, destroy whole neighborhoods and terrorize people they encounter.  "Violence is not the answer" sounds more like something one would find in a fortune cookie than a plan of action from a potential president of the USA. Biden has done nothing to encourage voters that he would ever be able to stop the violence.

Biden also, rather hysterically, claims that he could restore the economy. Then he lists a whole series of actions that would literally cost millions more people their jobs.  His plan to destroy the oil and gas industry alone has been estimated to destroy over five million American jobs.  Biden's plans for huge tax increases that will hit everyone hard will also result in millions more jobs lost.  The biggest threat from Biden of all is his announcement that to end the virus he would shut down the economy again.  All those businesses that are just limping along on the edge of the abyss would surely go under if there is another shutdown.  The fifteen million or so Americans who were out of work during the first shut down but who have now gotten back to work would once again lose their jobs.  Basically, Biden's plan for a second shutdown would flat line the economy.

There's more, but basically Biden can't talk about his plans without pushing votes away rather than attracting them, and his advisors know this.  If you doubt this conclusion, think for a moment about how often Biden has spoken about these plans.  He doesn't even do it.  Just the other day, he held a briefing which was billed to be about Biden's plans for the economy.  Biden, however, used the time to bash Trump rather than to talk about his own plans.  Then he took no questions.

Boiling it all down, Hanson's insight is correct.  We should all expect more and more bogus "scandals" to be "unearthed" by the media.  Trump has already been hit with everything that could actually be used against him.  Moving forward, the media will go farther and farther into discredited fiction.  But that's all they got.