Only one out of five Americans believes that the country is headed in the right direction — and I am one of them.
Not because President Joe Biden is doing a good job — we are in a recession, and I don’t believe America has seen a more incapable president in a century — but because voters, and leaders, are quietly pulling the country back from the edge and setting boundaries, literal and figurative.
Despite heated rhetoric in the media, the risk of civil war is zero and falling.
It might not seem that way, as we head into campaign season.
But consider: Last week, the Biden administration revealed that it is going to resume construction on a “wall” at the southern U.S. border in Arizona.
The White House tried to claim that it was merely filling in the gaps left behind by the Trump administration, but those gaps only exist because Joe Biden stopped construction when he took office. Democrats are finally feeling the high cost of illegal migration, and are acting accordingly.
This week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) traveled to Taiwan, defying both the Chinese Communist Party and the Biden administration. It was a departure from Pelosi’s usual posture of trying to be more accommodating to America’s enemies, and won her rare praise from Republicans. True, Pelosi has criticized the mainland regime for decades, but rarely has she been quite so bold. It took Trump to break the pro-China consensus, but Pelosi has made that a bipartisan stance.
Back home, in the Michigan primary, a pro-Israel liberal Democrat, Rep. Haley Stevens, defeated fellow incumbent Democrat Rep. Andy Levin, who challenged her after his own district’s boundaries were redrawn to include more Republicans. Though he is Jewish, Levin has been a strident critic of Israel, backed by left-wing groups.
Stevens, though not Jewish, attracted support from pro-Israel groups, demonstrating that the anti-Israel position is now in retreat, despite the “Squad’s” best efforts.
President Biden’s trip to Israel last month was a success largely because he threw away his own campaign promises and took up his predecessor’s policies. Last year, the Biden administration would barely even say the words “Abraham Accords,” yet Biden has now embraced them.
He has also shelved plans to open a consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem, which would have divided the city. And he made it clear that he will back a military strike on Iran, if only as a last resort.
The Saudis didn’t quite play ball on expanding oil production, so Biden and his congressional allies have accepted that they will have to accept some amount of domestic fossil fuel production to lower current prices.
That’s the essence of the deal to pass the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act”: it won’t reduce inflation, but it would expand oil and gas leasing, and complete a pipeline in Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) home state. We are now the world’s #1 exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), despite Biden. Expect more realism as heating bills rise and electricity shortages loom.
More convergence: this week, Biden announced another executive order on abortion. But the real action was in Kansas, of all places, where voters defeated a referendum Tuesday to remove abortion rights from the state’s constitution. That was seen as a win for the pro-choice side, but it also suggested that the parade of horribles liberals predicted after Roe v. Wade was reversed in June won’t happen. And it was a vindication of the conservative idea that states will eventually find their own way forward.
We haven’t resolved contentious issues like abortion, but we’re confining the debates to narrower margins.
Biden’s attempt at gun control, for example, failed to ban anything, and echoed “red flag” laws already adopted in Republican Florida.
Likewise with health care: Democrats failed to pass “Medicare for All,” but Republicans could not repeal Obamacare. Instead, they ended the most constitutionally offensive part: the “individual mandate.” In between the two, a hybrid policy may yet emerge.
The January 6 Committee continues to be divisive. Democrats are using it to portray President Trump — and Republicans in general — as a threat to “democracy,” though few Democrats accepted the outcome of Trump’s victory in the 2016 election.
Yet the hearings have also reinforced the principle that rioting is an unacceptable way to pursue political goals — something Democrats forgot during the summer of 2020, when many bailed out the rioters or joined them on the streets.
Today, Democrats are running as fast as they can from “defund the police,” as voters even in left-wing strongholds like San Francisco are rebelling against “progressive” prosecutors. That same San Francisco electorate also recalled the most “woke” members of the local school board.
Despite our polarizing political leaders, a convergence is afoot, one that rejects the extremes of debate in favor of common sense. Whether because of Biden or in spite of him, that is very good for America.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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