“At consequential moments in history, they present a choice,” President Joe Biden said, slightly fumbling the words in his infamous Atlanta speech last week. “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. [Martin Luther] King or [former segregationist Gov.] George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”
In other words, are you with me, or are you with Satan?
This was Biden’s way of spelling out the need to abolish the Senate’s legislative filibuster, which would allow the majority — currently Democrats, believe it or not — to pass sweeping legislation with a bare one-vote partisan majority.
Unsurprisingly, Biden’s strident bad-faith insults failed to persuade any Republicans or the few Democratic holdouts. Of course, Biden had literally held the “Jefferson Davis” position on the legislative filibuster for decades, and he continued to hold it until about five minutes before delivering his appalling speech. That might have hurt his cause a little bit.
Even so, this double standard only scratches the surface of the Democrats’ hypocrisy on this issue. Because within hours of attempting this Senate power grab, Democrats found themselves on the defensive over a much-needed bipartisan bill that would have imposed meaningful sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The bill in question would have blocked the opening of Putin’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. The pipeline is controversial because, by design, it will let Putin swallow Ukraine without any pushback from customers who depend on Russian gas in Western Europe. Currently, Putin is trying to pressure Europeans by constraining the supply of gas in Ukraine, and most of Europe, as a precursor to his expected aggressive war against Ukraine.
This is why NATO opposes Nord Stream 2, and even Biden, as weak as he has been against Russia and Putin, has at least offered lip service against the pipeline.
But there’s just one problem — Biden is taking Putin’s side on these sanctions. He doesn’t want the United States to impose sanctions against the Russian autocrat, even as Putin menaces Ukraine, abuses human rights, hacks U.S. companies and infrastructure, and interferes in U.S. elections.
Fortunately, 55 senators, a bipartisan majority in the U.S. Senate, do want to impose sanctions against Putin. So what did Biden and his poor hypocritical Democratic allies do? Why, they filibustered the bill to prevent its passage. It only took 44 of them, a minority, to block passage. They will soon present a toothless face-saving bill that lets Putin run riot over Eastern Europe, but no one is being fooled by their act.
So yes, the party of Jefferson Davis, George Wallace, and Bull Connor — they were all Democrats, after all — has returned to form. They are against the filibuster, except when they are using it to protect dangerous dictators like Vladimir Putin and help him damage America’s allies and its standing in the world. And that is to say nothing of the hundreds of instances when they have used the filibuster in recent years to get their way.
It’s not just that the Biden Democrats are hypocrites with a double standard and a god complex — it is that they believe in nothing. Like Biden in his Atlanta speech, they don’t believe a word they say. And despite being insincere to their very marrow, they cannot bring themselves to feel even basic human empathy for those who dare disagree with them.
Alarmingly, they now evince a growing lack of concern even for appearances as they pursue absolute power at all costs, baring for the public both their teeth and the emptiness of their souls.
Last week’s Quinnipiac opinion poll showing Biden’s approval rating at an astoundingly low 33% raises only one question: What on earth is wrong with that 33%?
