As of early Friday afternoon, most news outlets have not called the presidential election for His Fumbliness Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., but Decision Desk has, and it seems tragically likely that Joe the Wonder Veep will become Joe the “transition president,” whatever that means. My colleague Megan Fox has a fun column about the silver linings of a Joe Biden presidency and, while I disagree with some of her conclusions, I believe that approach to be healthy.
Even if Biden wins, Republicans appear likely to have held onto the U.S. Senate and to have picked up seats in the House of Representatives. A Biden presidency would face severe constraints on radical proposals like packing the Supreme Court, adding new states, or abolishing the Electoral College. Biden’s public option health care package may also prove dead on arrival, and it seems any Green New Deal or Equality Act will have to wait.
These constraints provide yet more reasons to celebrate the wisdom of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. Without the Senate, Joe Biden cannot ram the far left’s policies down Americans’ throats. Should Biden win, his will be a historically weak presidency. After all, most recent presidents have held majorities in Congress at the beginning of their first terms.
Yet a President Biden can still do a great deal of damage. Presidents have an outsize impact on America’s foreign policy, and Biden seems likely to undermine most of Trump’s historic accomplishments. Biden is also likely to undermine Trump’s efforts to push back on the radical transgender and Marxist ideologies spreading through America’s schools and in the federal bureaucracy.
Biden’s biggest and most lasting impact will likely involve foreign policy. Trump laid the crucial groundwork for a new Middle East when he kept his promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, withdrew from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, and responded to Iran-backed militia attacks on Americans in Iraq by killing Iranian Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani.
These moves isolated Iran and boosted Israel, clearing the way for series of historic peace deals between Arab states in the Persian Gulf and the Jewish State of Israel. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) normalized relations with Israel. Then Sudan, whose former dictator sponsored terrorism for decades, agreed to normalize relations with Israel. Trump also brought Muslim-majority Kosovo and Christian-majority Serbia together in a historic agreement that involved opening embassies in Israel.
In a powerfully symbolic move, the UAE agreed to order hotels to serve Kosher foods in Abu Dhabi, delivering a powerful symbol of Jewish acceptance in a notoriously anti-Semitic part of the world.
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Yet the Biden campaign maintained communication with the Palestinian Authority in the lead-up to the election, and Biden threatens to undermine all of Trump’s historic accomplishments in this area by insisting that the Palestinians must be involved in any deal with Israel. Biden has also pledged to reinstate the Iran nuclear deal, chipping away at the groundwork for Trump’s successes.
During the campaign, Biden reversed his longstanding policy of celebrating China’s growth, now pledging to oppose Beijing. Yet there are reasons to think he would revert back to form. After all, Hunter Biden reaped in Chinese cash while his father was the Obama administration’s point person on the Middle Kingdom, and evidence is mounting that Joe Biden himself personally benefitted from those shady transactions.
Biden could also do a great deal of damage through the federal bureaucracy.
While he may not be able to enshrine Roe v. Wade (1973) into law should the Supreme Court strike down that key abortion decision, Biden would be able to reverse the Mexico City Policy that prevents taxpayer dollars from funding efforts to promote abortion overseas. He would also reverse Trump’s Title X policy that forced Planned Parenthood to choose between promoting abortion and losing $60 million a year in taxpayer funding.
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When it comes to religious freedom, Biden has pledged to gut the religious freedom protections Trump has put in place, claiming that these policies give “hate” a “safe harbor.” He also pledged to reinstate the Obamacare contraception mandate, which forced a group of nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor into a decade-long court battle just so they could refuse to pay for birth control methods they consider to be abortifacients.
It is not a president’s job to enforce orthodoxy on the American people, but Democrats, the legacy media, schools, and various established interests have endorsed radical ideologies that threaten America’s social order and undermine basic truths about what it means to be male and female. Trump has rightly pushed back on these dangerous notions, while Biden would likely embrace and hypercharge them.
Obama embraced the radical transgender ideology, prioritizing “gender identity” over biological sex in restrooms and changing rooms, in the military, and in Obamacare. The Trump administration rightly reversed these stances, even standing up for the rights of girls who unfairly lost athletic competitions to biological males. Yet Biden seems primed to return to the Obama policies.
Although people who really do struggle with gender dysphoria (the painful condition of identifying with the gender opposite your biological sex) deserve compassion, transgender identity is not the right solution — and enshrining transgender “protections” into law opens up a Pandora’s Box of social ills. Men and women have grown to reject the life-altering transgender surgeries they underwent, and endocrinologists have warned that experimental transgender drugs actually cause disease.
While those who actually suffer from gender dysphoria are likely not a threat, some bad actors — like Jessica Yaniv in Canada — appear to have abused the social acceptance of transgender identity in order to sexually prey on young women and female genital waxing professionals. Opening up women’s spaces — including restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, prisons, shelters, and sports teams — to biological men opens the floodgates to all kinds of abuse. In a particularly tragic case, a pregnant biological woman’s transgender identity actually confused doctors, leading to the loss of her baby.
Biden has staked out an extreme position on these issues, condemning religious freedom protections and championing transgender identity for children as young as 8 years old.
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Similarly, Biden will likely use the federal bureaucracy to champion Marxist critical race theory in employment trainings and in schools across America.
Marxist critical theory encourages people to reinterpret various aspects of American society assuming they must be rooted in racist discrimination and historic oppression. The New York Times‘s subversive “1619 Project,” for example, has partially inspired the destructive riots across America. Vandals who toppled a statue of George Washington spray-painted “1619” on the statue. The project’s founder, Nikole Hannah-Jones, briefly tweeted that “it would be an honor” for the riots to be dubbed “the 1619 riots.”
While the rioters aimed to support the black community, their acts of destruction cost black lives and ruined black livelihoods. Ironically, they toppled statues of black heroes like Frederick Douglass along with statues of Confederate generals and Founders like George Washington. The destruction disproportionately hit black communities in Kenosha, Wisc., Minneapolis, and Chicago.
Trump has directed his administration to counter Marxist critical race theory in schools and in federal government training materials. He has advanced patriotic education to counter the idea that America is fundamentally racist and oppressive.
Meanwhile, Biden has condemned the violence but embraced the logic behind the rioters, claiming that “institutional racism” in police forces is responsible for the statistically tiny but media-hyped police shootings of black people.
Joe Biden may not be able to get his most radical proposals passed through Congress, and that is a reason to celebrate. However, he can still breathe new life into the social ills President Trump has fought hard to curb and undermine the president’s important strides toward peace in the Middle East.
Many of President Trump’s oft-ignored achievements face significant threats from a Joe Biden presidency, whether or not Democrats take the Senate. Biden may be a weak president, but he would still be a dangerous one.
For these reasons, I am holding out hope that somehow Trump can pull off this reelection — hopefully without seeming like he won illegitimately. Whatever happens, the 2020 election will have revealed America’s divides rather than doing anything to calm them down.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
