With Joe Biden as their presumptive 2020 presidential nominee, the Democrats are headed for a major disappointment.
Donald Trump's election in 2016 was an overt rejection of our nation's corrupt political establishment, fueled by a deep-seated popular desire for a genuine leader. Unlike conventional politicians, Trump answers directly to the American people—not to international institutions, establishment power brokers or even his own party's bigwigs. Four years on, whether you agree or disagree with him politically, it's hard to deny that Donald J. Trump is exactly the kind of unscripted, "tell-it-like-it-is" president Americans all over the country were hoping for when they voted for him.
The Democratic Party's leadership clearly doesn't see this as a liability, because it arguably went to even greater lengths to swing the nomination in Biden's favor than it did to ensure Clinton's nomination in 2016. To these party leaders, it was unfathomable that Clinton's well-earned reputation as a power-hungry panderer could have contributed to her stunning defeat. America simply wasn't "ready for a woman president," they told themselves. So they picked the male version of Hillary Clinton and patted themselves on the back for keeping Bernie Sanders off the ticket.
The Democratic establishment still holds a grudge against Sanders, whom some party leaders blame for failing to convince his enthusiastic base of supporters to turn out for Clinton in 2016. In a naive attempt to prevent the same thing from happening again in 2020, Biden likes to brag he has "the most progressive record of anybody running"—a theme that former President Barack Obama echoed in his own perfunctory endorsement of his former vice president last week.
But the truth is that the Vermont senator's appeal to his supporters derived from his credibility as an anti-establishment, populist politician. The Democratic establishment is too vain and out of touch to realize that a partisan hack like Biden, with five decades of loyal service in the D.C. swamp, represents the polar opposite of what Sanders' most fervent supporters are looking for in a candidate.
By positioning Biden as their final candidate, the Democrats have settled for the worst of both worlds: a lifeless establishment puppet burdened by an extremist policy platform. Biden's establishment side turns off the "true believers" who fueled Sanders' candidacy, yet the former vice president's embrace of the senator's radical agenda simultaneously gives pause to establishment figures in the Democratic Party.
Just as important, Biden is a political dinosaur who surrounds himself with advisers who reflect his own outdated thinking. With the coronavirus pandemic forcing campaigns to adopt innovative new uses of digital technology, the contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has become clearer than ever. While Biden pursues an unimaginative strategy of cable news interviews and incoherent policy speeches from his basement in Delaware, the Trump campaign is pioneering innovative new approaches to virtual campaigning that are driving massive engagement—every single one of our online Team Trump broadcasts has attracted more than 1 million unique viewers.
Trump never held a political or government job in his life prior to being elected to the nation's highest office—and that's precisely why he won. Americans voted for him because he promised to drain the swamp, put America first and take care of those who had been neglected by the political establishment for so long.
As evidence mounts that China is directly responsible for countless deaths all over the world because of its efforts to cover up the novel coronavirus outbreak, Trump's tough approach toward Beijing looks increasingly prescient. Biden, meanwhile, continues to adhere to the decades-old establishment practice of carrying water for the Communist regime, even calling the president's timely travel restrictions at the start of the outbreak an example of "hysterical xenophobia."
The Democrats lost by nominating an establishment candidate in 2016, and their presumptive 2020 nominee is no different.
With Joe Biden as their nominee, the Democrats will lose and America will win, again.
Brad Parscale is the campaign manager for Donald J. Trump for President Inc.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
