We watch the news clips, on our televisions or computer screens, and cringe, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stumble over their words, even uttering gibberish when prepared remarks are on the printed page in front of them.  It has been clear from the start that neither one is up to the intellectual requirements of this (or any) job.

When we can manage a sense of humor, we laugh and attribute it to dementia with Biden, to sheer stupidity with Harris.

When we are not in a mood to laugh, however, we reflect on what it means to our reputation on the world stage, as our enemies — military, economic, and cultural — delight in our momentary weakness and move to take advantage while the getting is good.

We watch our nation’s suffering as a result — homeownership out of reach, career advancement opportunities disappearing, the prospect of retirement evaporating.  We watch other nations suffering as a result as well — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s energy dependence upon Russia, Iran’s attack on Israel through its pawns in Gaza. 

We know that all this is happening for one reason: the weakness of America, caused by the Biden-Harris regime.

And we count down the days until this regime ends.

Month after month, we take comfort from the fact that November 2024 is coming.  And even if a Republican doesn’t win, we tell ourselves, it’ll still get better, because whichever other Democrats replace these dolts on the ticket — probably at the last minute, long after the primaries — at the Democratic National Convention, at least they’re bound to be brighter than Biden and Harris, and we’ll be out of the woods at last, either way.

The Democrats have a deep bench of alternates to slide into the roster next summer.  California governor and former engine of San Francisco’s destruction, Gavin Newsom.  Illinois governor and infamous property tax cheat J.B. Pritzker.  Some propose Michelle Obama, who has never held office.  The Democrats have plenty of other machers who look good on television and sound intelligent on the radio.

Surely they would all be an improvement over Biden-Harris.  Because at least they’re smart.  Right?

Not so fast, partner.

The fact is, the unprecedented stupidity of the Biden-Harris team has nothing to do with the mess we’re in.

Yes, it’s relevant to the psychological issues — the hit to our reputation, the embarrassment on the world stage.  But it’s not relevant to our problems.

Our problems are caused by policies.  These are not Biden-Harris-specific policies; they have become standard-issue, party-platform, shared official policies.  To advocate anything else would get one kicked out of the party.

Both our nation and the entire Western world are suffering from a reduction in current and future output of petroleum, natural gas, and coal — concurrent with a costly explosion of notoriously inefficient wind and solar farms.  That’s a shared Democrat policy.

Both our nation and the entire Western world are suffering from an explosion of crime, caused in part by foolish criminal justice policies (denying self-defense to the law-abiding, refusing to execute convicted violent criminals, refusing to control the entry of international crime gangs such as MS-13 and Islamofascist terrorists).  These too are shared Democrat policies.

Both our nation and the entire Western world are suffering from the intentional destruction of the auto industry, formerly a prodigious employer that raised the standard of living of hundreds of millions of people, by governments forcing the industry to switch, en masse, to the utterly impractical, geologically and economically unsustainable concept of the lithium battery–powered E.V.

Both our nation and the entire Western world are suffering from mountains of deficit spending, as they have adopted welfare state policies, largely to support an invasion of countless millions of indigents from the third world — millions who, even if they were all willing to be hardworking, productive members of society, would take generations to become net economic positives to make up for their cost.

Both our nation and the Western world are suffering from a loss of cultural identity, due to a multi-pronged socialist assault on Western mores — a coordinated, unrelenting attack on the Judeo-Christian family of religions in the law, the schools, the press, and pop culture.  We are killing our children through abortion, our elderly through euthanasia, and everyone in between through an explosion of street violence.  Where a hardworking culture of the “Protestant work ethic” and the duty of responsible citizenry once ruled, America is no longer America, Canada is no longer Canada, Europe is no longer Europe.

And as if this internal assault on our once great culture weren’t enough, this regime — like the current regimes of Canada and most of Western Europe — has championed the intake of massive numbers of uncontrolled and untested immigrants and illegal aliens, in numbers far beyond our nations’ ability to assimilate properly — causing both a lethal drain on our economies and a level of shared societal malaise that is unprecedented in modern times.

And none of these positions — none of them — is in any way specific to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Every Democrat on the scene who could possibly be considered for the job in 2024 will be committed to these identical positions.

They all favor overwhelming the country with unaffordable third-worlders.  They all favor throwing open the prison gates to release convicted criminals into our neighborhoods.  They positively salivate at the destruction of our work ethic and our religious heritage.  They melt down statues and rename our schools, in an effort to wipe out all respect for the memory of our Founding Fathers and their philosophy.

Every Democrat who might be considered in place of Biden and Harris is fully committed to the tax-and-spend, big-government policies that have landed us in the worst housing climate, the most depressing career climate, and the most regressive standard of living since the 1970s at least, if not the Great Depression.

A Newsom-Pritzker administration, an Obama-Rice administration, a Schumer-Jeffries administration, would be not at all different in its result from the monstrous situation we see playing out today under Biden and Harris.

Because it’s not the people; it’s the policies.

And that means, in the final analysis, it’s the party.

The American people are going to be shown new Democrats in 2024, different Democrats, and we are going to be told that everything will be different, everything will be better — with different, smarter faces advocating the same destructive policies.

Somehow, those of us who love America are going to have to find a way to help the voters see through this lie.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation professional and consultant.  A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009.  Read his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II).

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.