David Jay Morris for BuzzFlash: The Fear Factor: No One Is Afraid of Biden
Like every good authoritarian, Trump instills slavish obedience through fear. (Gage Skidmore)
January 20, 2022
By David Jay Morris
Remember kind old Uncle Joe?
The stable voice of reason and competence who started out so well.
The wise elder statesman with so much experience and understanding of the arcane procedures of the U.S. government that he could get meaningful things done, even with the slimmest possible legislative majorities.
Right out of the gates he seemed to have successfully begun to stabilize the country, get the COVID crisis under control, restore America’s standing in the world and undo the damage done to our government by the massive wrecking ball that was the Trump administration.
Things looked pretty good for a while.
Then the wheels started to wobble.
The anti-mask, anti-vaccine insanity became a pillar of right-wing orthodoxy, leaving us far too vulnerable to another huge wave of the virus.
Then, as if on cue, we were blindsided by emergence of the potent delta variant and any chance for an early end to the pandemic was gone.
The Afghanistan withdrawal debacle stripped away much of team Biden’s veneer of competence.
A wave of post-pandemic supply chain issues led to empty shelves and shortages as the engine of the economy ground its gears while getting back up to speed.
As people started spending again, inflation took hold…and kept growing.
Perhaps unfairly, Biden was blamed by many for everything that went wrong, instead of the pro-covid anti-vax crazies, the deranged ex-president, Republican obstructionists in Congress and the massive difficulties involved in dealing with a resurgent pandemic.
Since then, things have only gotten worse.
Much worse.
Biden’s legendary skill at forging compromises has proven to be an illusion – at least when it comes to getting the last two recalcitrant Democratic senators to sign on to his critical Build Back Better Act. Or, make the kind of adjustments to the filibuster needed to protect our sacred right to vote…and to have our votes fairly counted.
With a recent Quinnipiac poll showing his approval rate having sunk as low as 33%, it can be said that the wheels of the Biden administration are no longer wobbling, they’ve come off the car completely.
What went wrong?
First, Biden and his team committed one of the cardinal sins of all politicians. They over-promised and under-delivered.
For all their know-how and intelligence, they seem to have completely lacked the imagination needed to foresee how the problems they faced would multiply and evolve.
They vastly underestimated the extent to which the treasonous insanity of Trump would metastasize and consume the Republican Party, and how few people on that side of the aisle would try to stop it.
They thought that rational arguments, incentives and polite persuasion would somehow sway the anti-vaccine, anti-mask coronavirus enabler crowd from their suicidal delusions.
They thought that Senators Sinema and Manchin would negotiate in good faith and that reasonable compromises could be reached.
Biden’s foe, the twice impeached disgraced ex-president, Donald Trump, is an unreformed con-man with the emotional maturity of a spoiled four-year-old who grifted his way into office with the help of America’s greatest foreign enemy, Russia. After four years, he finished it off with a coup attempt against his own government, making him and his supporters, without question, the greatest “enemies domestic” of the U.S. Constitution since the Civil War.
How can it be that this evil man is able to command the unquestioned fidelity of his party while decent and well-meaning Joe Biden can’t manage to get all 50 of his party’s senators to fall in line, even when the fate of the republic is so obviously at stake?
The answer is simple.
And profoundly sad.
It can be summed up in one easy word:
Fear.
Virtually every Republican elected holder of a national office is terrified by Trump and his cult-like base.
If the dear leader makes a disparaging remark or throws out the faintest hint of a primary challenge, they cower in the corner.
In contrast, no one is afraid of Biden. The senators on his side of the aisle might actually like him, they might even respect him and agree with him on most of his agenda, but they don’t fear him.
When push comes to shove, at least two of them are quite willing to sabotage his entire agenda if they think it serves their purposes.
With no fear of reprisal.
If Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin are staying up at night worrying about how and when Joe Biden is going to make them pay for their obstructionism, they sure aren’t showing it.
The sad truth is that what we might need here is a little less decency and decorum and a lot more hardball, if not quite kompromat of the Vladimir Putin variety, at least that of Lyndon Johnson.
Being Democrats – and democrats – we can’t think about one-way trips off high balconies or poison darts shot from umbrellas, but maybe kind old Uncle Joe needs to start thinking about what presidential actions might really make Manchin or Sinema start to salivate…or feel serious pain.
What is the senatorial equivalent of the old Columbian drug cartel question, “Do you want your payment in lead or gold?”
Can the EPA and climate directives cripple the coal industry in West Virginia if the other Joe doesn’t play ball, or can there be a very well-funded “Joe Manchin Institute of Clean Coal Technology” if he does?
Would Ms. Sinema like a top position in the senate leadership or perhaps a cushy ambassadorship someday if she gets with the program…or to find herself mysteriously cut off from every financial backer who can be pressured or unwelcome at every cool spa in the Southwest if she doesn’t?
These ideas are just idle speculation, but you get the idea.
President Biden has the awesome power of the presidency at his command. No one on the planet has better access to information than him.
Isn’t it time for him to use it to find out Manchin and Sinema’s real pressure points?
The TV show, “Fear Factor” was famous for making contestants do things that really scared them – like eating bugs.
Has the time come for Manchin and Sinema to see how they taste?
But wait, you say, wouldn’t they just jump over to the Republican side of the aisle if too much pressure was applied? Could be…but the point is to find the things that terrify – or appeal to - them so much that they wouldn’t do that.
And even if they did, at this point, what real difference would it make?
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