Today, giving a Labor Day speech in Detroit, Joe Biden went full Democrat, unleashing a rant about the middle class. His theme was that America’s middle class is getting a raw deal, and at one point he yelled, “So folks, it’s time to take back America!”
I agree that the middle class is, in important respects, getting a bad deal. But then, I haven’t been the vice-president for the last five and a half years. It is extremely odd for a sitting vice-president (and a career politician who was a Senator for 36 years) to bemoan the condition of the country and call for the overthrow of the powers that be. From whom are we to take America back, if not from career politicians in Washington, in particular the administration that has made a mess of both domestic and foreign policy for nearly six years?
Then, too, consider that Biden delivered his stemwinder in Detroit. Middle class Detroit has suffered more than almost anyone. As has often been noted, as of 1960 Detroit had the highest median income of any American city; now, it is a ruin of abandoned homes and businesses. But from whom should Detroiters take back their city? They have been ruled exclusively by Democrats–quite a few of whom have been jailed–for decades.
So I have considerable sympathy with Biden’s call for those who are not on the government payroll; who are not cronies of the Obama administration; who aren’t getting special favors from Congress; who can’t find full-time jobs because of Obama’s slow-growth economy, compounded by Obamacare; and who don’t work for Goldman Sachs, to take back America. I just think it very odd to find the vice-president on my side of the barricades.
Beyond that, one good thing about Biden’s outburst shouldn’t go unnoticed: it is nice to see that “take back our country” is no longer racist.
UPDATE: Reader Sean Giordano put together this entertaining video. “Take our country back” may or may not be a “racist” sentiment…it just depends!
Which raises, once again, the question why anyone would mind being labeled a “racist” by the Left, since the word has lost all meaning, and is usually applied in situations that have nothing whatever to do with race.
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