Friends, you may well ask yourselves: is THIS the true face of Joe Biden? What you're looking at is a picture of German President (and retired Field Marshal) Paul von Hinbenburg on his deathbed in 1934. Sure, both Biden and Hindenburg are dead, or nearly so, but that's not my point. Hindenburg is most famous for appointing Hitler to Germany's chancellorship in January 1933, but, as you'll see in my latest article, Hindenburg's presidential election victory in April 1932 may reveal important clues about Biden's strategy for victory in 2020. Read on, and see what you think. The analysis builds on my blog post on Thursday.
It's Official: Joe Biden is Running
for President...of Germany in 1932
April 1932.
Germany is seething with tension as it navigates the darkest days of
the Great Depression. Political extremism is on the rise. Street
battles between fascist and communist thugs are common. The German
people, though, opt for sanity, decency. They re-elect as their
President a retired Field Marshal and hero of the First World War,
the elderly Paul von Hindenburg. The runner-up? The wild-eyed,
aggressive populist Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party. Germany — and
all of Europe — breathes a collective sigh of relief. There will be
no “Third Reich,” after all.
We
all know how this story ends. Von Hindenburg, despite his election
victory in 1932, is forced to accept Hitler as Chancellor in 1933. By
1934, Hindenburg is dead, and Hitler is Führer.
Germany — and Europe — are doomed.
Joe Biden is
hoping you've forgotten the last part of the story, because it's the
first part that he wishes to replay in 2020. His campaign launch
video makes that clear.
Biden argues that
2020 will be a simple, binary choice. On one side, you have Klansmen
and Nazis, represented by the “white nationalist” protesters in
Charlottesville in 2017, “bearing the fangs of racism,” who
Donald Trump allegedly defended as “very fine people.” On the
other side, you have innocent doves, true paragons of American
decency, who reject “hate” and wait patiently for Nazi brutes to
assault them and run them over with their cars. Trump, of course, is
the champion of white supremacy, Nazism, and hate. Biden is the hero
and defender of all that America stands for. He is, moreover, the
“known quantity,” the trusty old war-horse who, like Paul von
Hindenburg, can protect his country from fanatics and extremists.
Americans versus
Nazis. An easy choice, right? Assuming no one thinks critically about
Biden's message — and we can be pretty sure that no one in the
Washington press corps will — he just might get away with it.
The inconvenient
truth of the matter is that Biden is deliberately misrepresenting
what happened in Charlottesville, vastly oversimplifying the nature
of the protesters and counter-protesters, just as he is prevaricating
about President Trump's remarks about “very fine people.” Trump
never meant to include Klansmen, Nazis, or white supremacists, and he
made that perfectly clear at the time.
So Joe Biden is a
fraud. No matter — plenty of frauds have flourished in the long
history of American presidential politics. Biden may be one of them.
Biden's gamble is
that the American people despise Donald Trump so much that they will
happily embrace a trusted, experienced “moderate” candidate —
like Paul von Hindenburg or Joe Biden — over the disastrous
alternative. Biden does not even bother to construct an argument for
why he, geriatric Joe Biden, should be chosen over the other 20
Democratic candidates for the presidency. That, presumably, is
beneath his dignity. He wants to keep it simple: it's kindly Uncle
Joe versus all the racist monsters who haunt your left-of-center
American dreams.
One other thing
is clear from Biden's launch video. He intends to focus on minority
voters. His message stokes the usual fears common among non-white
Democrats: that America is full of white racists, who would happily
assault you, re-segregate you, re-enslave you, and perhaps even kill
you, if they weren't restrained by a benevolent federal government,
presided over by a Democrat in the White House.
Once again:
America versus Nazis. It's the same morality play that liberals have
been running for 60 years. Why change the plot now? Indeed, one
wonders whether Biden would be capable of it.
The tired,
disingenuous nature of Biden's candidacy does not mean that he will
lose. The theme of anti-racism has endured in the Democratic Party,
and in America, for so long because it works. Everyone hates racists.
Ergo, if you paint your opponent as a racist, you have a good chance
of winning.
It will be
Trump's task, and the duty of Republicans and conservatives, to
explain that it isn't the President or the GOP that is stoking racial
antagonisms and exploiting racial fears and resentments. That would
be the party of race preferences, of reparations, of identity
politics, of political correctness, and of knee-jerk claims of
discrimination. That would be the Democrats.
Race is indeed
America's Achilles' heel — on that score Biden is right — but the
Bidens of the world aren't part of the solution. They're at the
center of the problem.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred
and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears weekly on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480.
