Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
I have been trying to warn President Donald Trump, but to no avail.
I have been trying to caution him about his tweets, but to little effect. Not that they are all that alarming to normal people.
Not that they are without their own special charm.
In a world filled with Republicans and independents, most of his tweets would be informative and even amusing. Yet in a world that also includes Democrats, frankly, they are risky.
Democrats have no sense of humor, and many are alarmists.
Today, there are indications that Donald Trump's tweets have sufficiently riled up Democrats about the fate of the nation (and in some cases even the fates of the solar system), that the party's leading lights are contemplating a presidential run, and they are threatening to start their campaigns early. The good news is that Americans could be entertained for years. The next presidential election is not until 2020.
Already, Hillary Rodham Clinton is on the campaign trail, and there is a Democrat even younger considering a run, Elizabeth Warren. Thus, many of my fellow Americans will have a perfectly acceptable substitute for the sports events they plan to boycott in the coming months. But will laughing aloud at the political antics of all the campaigning Democrats not grow tiresome after a year or so? It is a problem to be contemplated.
Consider the prospective Democratic field. There is Bernie Sanders, the country's leading socialist. He is 76. There is Clinton. Later this month she turns 70, though the picture of her published on the back of her latest book, "What Happened," makes her look a ravishing 35. There is the aforementioned Senator Warren who is coy about her socialism. She is 68. And there is good old Joe Biden, who is 74. Finally, if this field of aspiring Democrats seems a bit long in the tooth, there is Senator Al Franken, who is 66 and a comedian, though truth to tell he is not as amusing as Biden or as angry as Clinton.
If I were to venture a prediction, I would predict Biden as the Democrats' candidate for 2020. He seems to have locked up the millennials' vote already. In point of fact, with his proneness for gaffes, he is someone with whom the young ignoramuses can fully identify. Over the years, he has committed so many gaffes in public that he inspired the neologism "gaffable." Joe is the gaffable candidate and the millennials will not even know why voters are laughing at him. They will think Joe is funny, goodhearted and cool. In fact, they will find him a lot like them, only he will not live in his parents' basement.
Alerted that Biden was gearing up for a presidential race in 2020 at age 77 by the Washington Times's "Inside the Beltway" columnist, the dependable Jennifer Harper, I have inspected the corpus delicti more carefully.
He has started a political action committee nimbly named "American Possibilities." It could pass for anything. Possibly when elected to the presidency he could call his administration the New Possibility or, inspired by Lyndon Johnson, he could call his agglutination of policies The Great Possibility. He has a book coming out next month titled "Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose." It exploits a line his dying son directed to him from his deathbed. If that sounds cynical, do not blame me. Biden chose it, and it fits in perfectly with the Democrats' long tradition of exploiting every misery. Remember if you will Al Gore's exploiting his sister's death from cancer and Bill Clinton's exploiting his abusive father and his childhood supposedly spent in desperate poverty. Finally, Biden is beginning in November a nationwide tour, "The American Promise Tour." It will cover 19 cities, assuming he does not get lost.
He has been trying out some lines in recent months that are of the "attack-dog" nature, so you can be sure his campaign is not going to be of the good old Joe variety. This time around, Biden will not be the jovial bartender of yesteryear. He will be snarling, somewhat like Hillary Clinton. One line that Biden particularly likes is, "We have an American president who has publicly proclaimed a moral equivalency between Neo-Nazis and those who would oppose their venom and hate. Who has emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort and support." Of course, this line is total poppycock, as are many more of the lines with which he is experimenting.
Joe Biden and all of the other Democrats planning a run in 2020 are now incapable of uttering a sensible statement. I blame it all on the president's tweets. Cut it out, Donald. You are rendering the oldest Democratic Party in the world laughable.
Comment by clicking here.
R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a political and cultural monthly, which has been published since 1967. He's also the author of several books.