The autopen story and all of the talk about Biden’s cognitive decline raises a question.  How much did President Biden know?  Did he understand just how far to the left he was being pushed?  I am not trying to make excuses for Mr. Biden, but this leftist tilt was not what I thought would happen.  Maybe I’m alone, but I actually did think that President Biden would be more centrist and stay away from extremes.

I am thinking about all of this because of an article by Mark Penn and just how far left the Biden presidency went.  This is what he wrote:

Back in the late 90s, Democrats stood for a balanced budget, expanded health care benefits, tough immigration policies, and smaller government. Bill Clinton declared “the era of big government is over.” Boy was he wrong.

Step by step, Democrats drifted from these policies that produced near 75% approval ratings for Clinton. Tax and spend came back in the Obama years as tax rates went up and Obamacare kicked in, and he moved decisively to the left in the last two years of his presidency. 

The groundwork for DEI was laid with the attacks on the police and calling out other institutions as racist. Climate change moved up to the top of the agenda as pipelines were shut down and regulations were issued to slow energy producers and the idea took root that climate change, not ISIS, was the biggest “existential” threat we faced. 

The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the election of Donald Trump pushed Democrats further to the left on cultural and economic issues as the chief goal of the party was to lay down resistance to Trump and everything he stood for. The point was to rip it all down and prevent him from shifting away from the Obama policies.

This culminated in the surprise nomination of Joe Biden even after losing Iowa and New Hampshire. He struck a grand bargain with the left so he could go into the election with a united Democratic Party. After his election, he seemed to abandon virtually every position he ever took in his over 50 years as a moderate senator.

That’s right.  He abandoned a moderate approach and turned into the most left-wing president on record. 

Biden opened the border.  He appointed judges on a mission to impose radical ideas, from abortion on demand to men stealing girls’ trophies in sports.  Climate change went from science to religion.  Last, but not least, the man who authored tough crime bills was now pardoning criminals.

It was quite a shift, and that’s why I’m not sure if he was totally aware of what was going on.  Or maybe it was all the pact with the left that he made to get the nomination and support.

As Mr. Penn points out, President Biden left his party in “ruins.”  Mr. Penn is hoping for a Bill Clinton in the party’s future.  Let’s see what happens, but I’d love to know who was calling the shots, or managing the “autopen.”  I fear that someone was the puppet master, and I’d like to know who it was.

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