Weekend at Bernie’s(anders), starring Joe Biden
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If you’re wondering where Joe Biden is all the time, he’s been prepping for his Hollywood debut. He’s going to star in the remake of Weekend at Bernie’s, a 1989 movie about a cadaver named Bernie, who is seemingly alive at a weekend party, thanks to two of his employees secretly convincing guests that he is indeed still living and breathing, albeit with a pale glow.
Well, Bernie has resurrected via Biden, despite the Democrat's insistence that a socialist-communist threat posed by the American left is simply a fantasy. To borrow from Biden, “Here’s the deal!” It is most certainly a threat if we consider Bernie Sanders & Co are the ones toting Biden around.
Much like the torpid movie character, Biden is quite asleep. His lifeless and infrequent appearances have commentators on both sides ridiculing Biden for running an enervated campaign. He’s earned the moniker “Basement Biden.” Conservative talk show host Ben Shapiro belittled Biden for “lying around technically alive in a basement.” But how sprightly? Some refer to him as a walking corpse. “Has anyone seen proof of life?” joked Sky News host Paul Murray.
Earlier this year, Van Jones, CNN commentator who worked as an advisor in the Obama administration, criticized Biden’s campaign for being a “dead man walking campaign for a long time.” After the DNC in August, Jones explicitly expressed the fears of every Democrat. “Sometimes when he gets up there, you’re afraid he’s going to make a mistake; he’s going to have a gaffe. Expectations are just so low,” said Jones. Jones also made explicitly clear the fear of all Republicans. “We were prepared for it to be a terrible speech, as long as he didn’t embarrass himself,” said Jones. “We were going to come out here and praise it. You don’t have to make nothing up tonight.” Thanks Jones for confirming what many already know: the left-leaning media go to great lengths to cover up and mop up all of Biden’s senile blunders, alleged improprieties, and his obvious move left.
As entertaining as watching such a movie might sound, people are smart. They don’t want to be insulted and they want answers. Biden has stayed mum on his list of proposed Supreme Court nominees and whether he’d expand the court. This is likely because Sanders & Co. will have a big say. And while Sanders is not for packing the court, he believes Merrick Garland, Obama’s pick in 2016, wasn’t progressive enough. Avoiding questions is just another form of Biden’s self-immolation moments and confirmation of his progressive shift.
While Democrats are trying to paint Biden a moderate, the presumptive Democratic nominee has signalled his willingness to court the progressives through the creation of a joint Biden-Sanders task force to bring supporters of the self-proclaimed democratic socialist under the Biden-Harris ticket. Just appointing Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate was the first clue of his ideological leanings as Harris was considered the most liberal senator by non-partisan organization GovTrak. If that wasn’t enough, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s explicit endorsement of Bernie Sanders at the DNC was quite a threatening statement, underscoring a hostage-like grip over Biden’s agenda. We’ll hand you the young progressives, you push our policy. Biden has also displayed a tacit permissiveness of the riots in the name of tearing down our institutions and Harris has praised the “brilliance” of the self-described Marxist organization that is Black Lives Matter.
If Biden wants to convince the public that he “beat the socialist,” he needs to explain why he adopted significant swaths of the socialist’s plans. Even the New York Times conceded that Biden’s plans are “indications that progressives succeeded in pushing some proposals leftward, influencing Mr. Biden’s policy platform as he prepares to accept his party’s nomination for president next month.”
On healthcare, the Biden-Sanders joint task force proposal falls short of Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan, but expands on Biden’s public healthcare insurance option, including certain prescription medications offered with no co-pays, plus availability with no premium costs to Americans living in states that didn’t expand Medicaid. The proposal says that low-income people not eligible for Medicaid can be automatically enrolled in the public option with no cost. Essentially, this is circumventing the whole point of having a Medicaid threshold.
While Biden had proposed lowering the Medicare age to 60 years old, expanding Medicare to cover dental care, vision and hearing loss have largely been Sanders’ proposals. Biden’s plan even before Sanders’ input already had a very progressive option, such as abortion coverage as part of the “essential health benefits” that insurers must cover. This won’t fly with conservatives, who already argue that older people shouldn’t have to pay for maternity coverage.
The joint proposal calls for increased investments in community health centers and free college tuition for those earning under $125,000 a year, initiatives Sanders has been pushing for. Biden has also embraced Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s progressive proposals to cancel student debt and make it easier for people to file for personal bankruptcy.
In August, Biden received the endorsement of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA. If we are to apply the same guilty-by-association treatment to Biden as Trump received for having radical far right supporters, we would conclude that Biden must have an “overt appreciation for communists.” A movement leftward is not a simple fallacy, it is a real threat and at least one half of the country won’t be cheerfully eating popcorn if this movie gets released.