Karl Marx famously observed in The 18th Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
It is the perfect way to describe President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
In 2020, the tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic allowed Democrats to hide Biden in the basement of his Delaware home.
In 2024, the cover-up is a joke.
Democrats who pretended that Biden was perfectly healthy — sharper than ever — are suddenly demanding that Biden withdraw from the race. Worse, the journalists who knew the truth but colluded with the White House to hide it from the public are furious with Biden — not just for lying to them, but lying so poorly that when he faltered in last month’s debate, he exposed their culpability and destroyed what was left of their credibility.
Chuck Todd of NBC revealed this week that he had been told two years ago by a Cabinet secretary that the president did not interact with his senior appointees and that he was not expected to run for reelection.
Somehow, Todd did not report that news — which could not have been off the record, since Todd is reporting it now.
Since the truth of Biden’s condition is emerging, other truths can now be told, in the effort to push Biden out and save the Democrats’ chances.
One of those truths is that Biden is not the self-sacrificing elder statesman he pretends to be, but a self-interested and arrogant politician.
“And now, looking at his behavior now,” Todd said, “in clinging to this, I think the entire narrative on Joe Biden is gonna change, in that everything’s always been about his ambition and his ambition comes first.”
That was clear in 2020, with the evidence of Biden’s greed all over his son’s laptop — but the media suppressed that story.
What Democrats are left with is a shadowy campaign to remove Biden — led by Hollywood moguls and the editors of the New York Times — on the one hand, and a rather laughable attempt to defend him, on the other.
Biden’s allies are the party insiders, the senior bureaucrats who have been able to govern like medieval regents. They have never had this much power before. It won’t do to replace Biden with another Democrat who will bring in his or her own people.
And so we hear one rationalization after another, each more ridiculous than the next. First there were the claims that Biden simply had a “bad night” — as if that were an excuse: can the country afford a “bad night” if we are under attack?
Next were the explanations that voters aren’t really choosing an individual president, but a whole team — which apparently includes Hunter Biden, now — so Biden himself doesn’t really matter.
Finally, and predictably, we are hearing about how terrible Donald Trump was, how he “lied.”
Actually, Trump had one of his best debates ever. His performance will be remembered for one line: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.” But he was also excellent on abortion, careful on the Middle East, aggressive on the border and the economy.
Sure, he exaggerated at times, and he was too soft on the “very fine people” hoax. But he won because he did well, not just because Biden did badly.
Perhaps Marx was wrong about history, as about other things: some figures appear three times. The 2016 election was a shock; the 2020 election was a travesty; and the 2024 election offers redemption.
Whether Democrats manage to dump Biden or not, they have lost momentum, perhaps irreversibly.
Their only chance is the vote-by-mail system, which has seen Democrats installed, almost permanently, in every state that adopted it before 2020.
That one was a farce the first time around.
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 Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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