From the very beginning of this pandemic, Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden has enjoyed the luxury of shouldering zero responsibility. Like a disgruntled, fair-weather football fan lambasting his team’s quarterback from the perch of his basement recliner, Biden heckles the man at the helm and proclaims he alone would have saved the day. His job is simple: blame the President for 200,000 deaths and tout the imaginary Biden-led effort.
It is a cynical, disingenuous, yet successful performance. Polling shows Americans trust Biden more on the pandemic and believe his administration would fare better handling it. This belief is hardly surprising. America approaches seven million cases and a once inconceivable 200,000 deaths. A “do-over” or reset of sorts sounds quite appealing. Joe Biden represents that reset. And he would be thrilled to tell you about it.
During his convention speech, he confidently asserted, “I will protect America. I will defend us from every attack. Seen. And unseen. Always. Without exception. Every time.”
Big if true. This declaration—from any politician—is not just laughable and reflective of the ever-expanding purview of the federal government. It is an assault on our collective memory. He may not remember, but he held the number two job in the nation for eight years with his best friend. If this sweeping promise was kept, why was Donald Trump elected?
Do not hold your breath for an answer. Joe Biden has been in politics for 47 years. He has run for President three times. Merely running for the office at this point in his life is evidence of his egotistical cognitive dissonance. His coronavirus revisionist history is a microcosm of a larger, uniquely Joe Biden theme: gaslight the public while reality tells another tale.
Biden and his team often point to an op-ed he authored in USA Today on January 27th to prove he was ahead of the curve on the coronavirus. In a July interview, he said, “I, all the way back in January, warned (President Trump that) this pandemic was coming. I talked about what we needed to do.” His op-ed highlighted the “possibility of a pandemic.”
For multiple reasons, this concern rings hollow.
First, less than two months later, on March 9th, he held an indoor Michigan rally.
Second, on March 15th his senior advisor Symone Sanders urged supporters to vote in-person in the March 17th Ohio primary. The Governor of Ohio intervened and shut down in-person voting.
Third, he blasted Trump for “hysterical xenophobia” and “fear-mongering,” after the president took the first meaningful mitigation effort. Trump severely restricted travel from China—a move that received domestic and international pushback at the time. Top Biden adviser Ron Klain opposed the restrictions as “premature.” Over the next two months, Biden dragged his feet until his deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield decided, since “science supported this ban, therefore he did too.”
Why the flip flop? Time vindicated the travel restrictions, so Biden picked the winning team.
On the need for medical equipment, a shortage of N95 masks plagued the early response to the pandemic. Rest assured, Biden has pounced on this fact in his campaign. He conveniently ignores that the Obama-Biden administration took no steps to refill the stockpile after its H1N1 and Ebola efforts.
Joe Biden regularly showcases his Ebola response as evidence that he would have stopped the coronavirus. This dishonest comparison neglects the night and day difference in transmissibility between the diseases. Look to President Obama who calmed Ebola fears by saying, “Ebola is actually a difficult disease to catch. It’s not transmitted through the air like the flu.” The succeeding events proved him right. Outbreaks took place only in extremely poor, unsanitary nations.
H1N1 is a far more apt medical comparison. Joe Biden prefers not to discuss it. His boss’s administration lacked everything he slams the President for purportedly lacking: early action, clear and concise guidelines, and cohesive messaging.
Even his administration’s vaccine rollout faced hiccups. Despite the promise of 100 million doses by mid-October of 2009, government delays reduced that number to 11 million. Dr. Rebecca Wurtz, an infectious disease physician at the University of Minnesota, slammed the government for poor communication about where the vaccine should have been rolled out and who should have received it first.
Biden’s former chief of staff and current advisor Ron Klain, in what reads like a Trump campaign ad, addressed the H1N1 effort in damning terms in 2019: “We did every possible thing wrong. Sixty million Americans got H1N1 in that period of time, and it is just purely a fortuity that this isn’t one of the great mass-casualty events in American history. [It] had nothing to do with us doing anything right; just had to do with luck. If anyone thinks that can’t happen again, they don’t have to go back to 1918. Just go back to 2009, 2010. Imagine a virus with a different lethality, and you can just do the math.”
Today, Joe Biden wants to sound like the coronavirus warrior. He wants you to know that he would have invoked the Defense Production Act, a law that President Trump has repeatedly invoked. He wants you to know that he would have produced and supplied PPE and ventilators, equipment that President Trump has produced and supplied to the point of satisfaction. He wants you to know that he would have supported struggling businesses and workers, support that President Trump has offered to the tune of $3 trillion. Noticing a trend?
The only discernible distinction on policy between the two is Biden’s famed “national mask mandate.” The only problem is it fell apart under basic questioning. Even Biden admitted it lacked Constitutional grounding.
Biden jeers every move of the federal government with the qualifier that he would have done it better and more often. It is one of those outlandish claims that is both impossible to prove and disprove.
Biden suggests his response would have gone smoother. But has he given Americans any reason to believe that? His record as Vice President, his missteps at the outset of the pandemic, and his nearly indistinguishable policy program display what flimsy ground he stands on. It is one thing to criticize the federal government’s missteps. It is another to pompously declare he would have handled it differently despite all indications. Tune out the noise coming from the basement because Biden is nothing more than an armchair quarterback.
