Biden’s divisive rhetoric won’t hide the Democrats’ massive policy failures

Democrats are demonizing Republican voters again — a sure tell that they are panicked about getting shellacked in the November midterm elections.

That’s why our president stood in front of Independence Hall on Sept. 1 vilifying Americans who disagree with him. The image of his contorted face and raised fist bathed in a red light outside of Independence Hall was like a ghastly personification of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. An angry, vengeful demagogue is not a good look for a man who promised to restore unity and civility to public life.

Instead, President Joe Biden is taking a page from his predecessor: President Barack Obama, who, days before the 2010 midterm elections, gave a hate-filled invective on Univision radio — encouraging Latinos to “punish their enemies” (read: Republican voters who disagreed with him).

It’s an election year ritual that was used by then-candidate Obama back in 2008 by demeaning rural Pennsylvanians as bitter xenophobes who were clinging to their guns and religion. In stark contrast, his Republican opponent at the time — Sen. John McCain — defended Obama as “a decent family man [and] citizen that just I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”

And, never one to miss out on the politics of division, veteran demagogue Hillary Clinton used her bully pulpit to degrade 2016 Republican voters as a “basket of deplorables.”

Biden has betrayed the promise he made in his November 2020 victory speech to unite and heal the country. He painted himself as someone who “doesn’t see red states and blue states, only sees the United States.”

Is the irony lost on Biden? His rhetoric — demonizing about half the nation— comes straight from the playbook of the person he accuses of tearing the nation apart. Biden cast himself as the antidote to his predecessor when he’s just more of the same. He should remember that more Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2020 than for any prior sitting president in our nation’s entire history. Republican voters are not a political faction.

But it would be unfair to equate Trump and Biden. Trump is an undisciplined politician who says just about everything he thinks and can’t be controlled by his staff — the result: his rhetoric overshadowed his policy successes. Biden is a career politician operating in a highly scripted environment — his rhetoric is an intentional ploy aimed at masking his policy failures.

Since Biden has taken office, Americans have seen the cost of food rise 10.9% in the last year. Families are experiencing the highest rates of food inflation since 1979. They’ve watched helplessly as the price of gas rose from below $2 per gallon to more than $5 per gallon. Small-business owners have been forced to shut their doors because they can’t hire employees while the government continues to pay people not to work. Now they’re being told they may need to pay an additional $2,500 in taxes so that Biden can eliminate the self-incurred college debt of other people.

Parents have struggled to feed their babies as a result of a formula shortage. When confronted with the desperation and anger of parents unable to find food for their newborns, Biden’s administration took three months to temporarily deregulate the importation of European formulas. All the while, Biden claimed to have been unaware of the scope of the shortage. Perhaps if Biden had listened to the nation’s mothers — even the Republican ones — rather than casting them as enemies of the state, he might be more aware of what is happening in the country he leads.

A recent NBC News poll shows that voters still rank cost of living, when combined with jobs and the economy, as the most important issues facing our country. A whopping 74% of voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Nearly 70% of voters think we’re in the midst of a recession.

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In his Philadelphia speech, President Biden did not utter the word inflation a single time. He spoke to the American people and said — with a straight face — that the American economy is “faster, stronger” than any other advanced nation in the world.

Creating a crisis and making your political opposition its scapegoat is always the last refuge of those trying to cling to power.

Jennifer Stefano is the executive vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation and a fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.