Matthew Continetti at the Free Beacon has a rather different take on the historic nature of Mr. Biden's presidency than does Mr. Biden.
According to the Fox News Voter Analysis, only 40 percent of voters expressed a favorable view of Biden. His unfavorable rating was a whopping 58 percent. The economy and immigration were the two most important issues. Voters preferred Trump over Vice President Harris on the economy by 24 points. They preferred Trump over Harris on immigration by a jaw-dropping 77 points.Regarding the presidential campaign I have some questions for my Democrat friends: For months people in your party, including both the president and the vice president, have been calling Mr. Trump and those who would vote for him the most vile names they could think of. They're "garbage," Mr. Biden told us, they're stupid, they're white supremacists, racists, fascists, "literally Hitler," etc. But now we read that the president and the vice-president are actually congratulating this historically odious man on being elected to lead the nation for the next four years!
The country shifted right on Election Day. Trump made inroads everywhere, in all corners and among critical voting blocs. He is on track to win all seven swing states. He is the first Republican in a generation to win the popular vote. He has won the "blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania twice, something no Republican since Ronald Reagan has accomplished. He is expected to enter office with a GOP trifecta of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. The electorate identified as Republican for the first time since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
Biden's presidency is "historic" not for its accomplishments but for its ultimate outcome: Donald Trump's reelection, the first nonconsecutive presidential terms since the 19th century, and a working-class realignment toward the GOP.
Biden believed in the propaganda that said he could be the next FDR. His self-regard cost him the presidency. His policies created the border crisis. His spending produced inflation. His order to retreat hastily from Afghanistan eroded American deterrence. His equity agenda and transgender policies alienated voters. And his hubris led him to run for reelection despite his age and infirmity.
The same man they were telling us was going to imprison his political opponents, monitor women's pregnancies, and impose a dictatorship on the country is now being offered felicitations by the same people who were insisting a short while ago that he should be himself locked up.
Aren't their well-wishes a clear indication that they don't really believe the things they were saying about him and his supporters, and if they don't really believe those things weren't they then lying to us about him? Weren't they knowingly and deliberately deceiving us by slandering both Mr. Trump and over half of the electorate?
What kind of people behave this way?
Perhaps you'll reply that their congratulations are insincere. If so, though, aren't they lying about that and doesn't their insincerity make them hypocrites? It is, of course, the gracious thing to do to congratulate the winner of an election, but in the minds of Democrats this wasn't like any other election in our history. This was an existential struggle for the survival of democracy, a conflict between good and evil, between freedom and tyranny, between light and darkness.
If Donald Trump is the horrid man so many Democrats have made him out to be, if he's "literally Hitler," if our democracy is now about to be extinguished under his administration, if the boot of oppression is now pressing on the neck of our freedoms, isn't graciousness rather out of place? Would the president and vice president really be gracious to Adolf Hitler?
Or again, do they just not really believe the vile slanders with which they've been smearing both Mr.Trump and his supporters? If so, what kind of people behave this way?