Notes on the Way
Special Biden’s Bad Week Edition
The Supreme Court may have slapped down his attempt to cancel student loan debt, but President Biden didn’t get the message. Yesterday, looking dispirited, sometimes barely audible, Free Lunch Joe appeared at the White House podium to vow that he would press on with his attempt to lock up the deadbeat vote. Apparently he thinks that catering to the desires of one of this country’s least sympathetic special interest groups is a political winner. Well, the we-paid-our-debts vote begs to differ…
Biden, the Democrats, and progressives—overlapping categories, I grant you—also got body slammed by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. To summarize, affirmative action in higher education is no more; Colleges and universities may not sort applicants for admission into racial categories nor establish race-based admissions quotas. This ruling, of course, strikes at the heart of progressive ideology, which is rooted in the concept of group rights. Wails of anguish went up, accompanied by charges that a “rogue Supreme Court” was tearing up the Constitution—this from people who for decades defended Roe v. Wade, in which a liberal Court plucked a supposed constitutional right to abortion out of thin air…
Finally, there was 303 Creative v. Elenis, in which the Supreme Court ruled that government may not compel speech in the name of civil rights. Lorie Smith started her small business, 303 Creative, in 2012. Among other things, she creates custom websites celebrating traditional marriage, i.e. marriage between a man and a woman. But a Colorado law required her to create designs that violate her beliefs about marriage—the same law that was deployed against Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips. In 2018, the Court sided with Philips, albeit in a narrowly tailored ruling. But this time the Court held clearly that the First Amendment prohibits government from forcing individuals to express views contrary to their own beliefs.
So the progressive assault on the Supreme Court, to which President Biden has lent his ardent support, appears to have backfired. Instead of being intimidated, the Court’s conservative majority responded to all the smears and slanders with a string of strongly worded rulings that have knocked the comrades for a loop. Their response, as exemplified by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in the affirmative action case, has been incoherent verging on hysterical. Do you realize, for instance, that the Court is bent on returning America to the pre-New Deal era?
Joe Biden’s miserable week didn’t end with these judicial rebukes. There was also the continuing drip-drip-drip of bad news relating to Hunter Biden. The President may continue to insist that he’s proud of his son—who has done nothing wrong!—but even the New York Times has now raised a skeptical eyebrow at that claim. Democrats up for reelection in 2024 are increasingly concerned about Hunter Biden’s high profile. He’s often seen by his father’s side and last week he had the audacity to show his face at the White House state dinner for the prime minister of India. Attorney General Merrick Garland, also in attendance, was spotted doing all in his power to keep away from the First Son—as well he might, given the optics of that pairing…
The State Department too did a little something to spoil the President’s week by releasing an After Action Review on the Afghanistan withdrawal. Turns out that The Greatest Airlift in History was actually a hot mess, characterized first and foremost by “insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow.” Allow me to translate that bureaucracy-speak into Standard English: Bugout Joe was winging it…
And of course, it wouldn’t be a Bad Biden Week without a string of embarrassing incidents: gaffes, brain cramps, servings of word salad, meandering exits. For instance, the President assured us that V. Putin is losing the war in Iraq. Good to know! Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline has become too obvious for even the most rabid partisan to overlook. But it seems that the Democratic Party has no alternative but to run him in 2024. That seems fair; they do deserve one another…
A “pre-New Deal era.” Imagine that