Taking Out Joe Biden The left can impeach Trump and destroy an insufficiently liberal front-runner. By Kimberley A. Strassel
https://www.wsj.com/articles/taking-out-joe-biden-11569538710
The Trump years have been rough on Democrats’ sensibilities, and their thinking has become increasingly addled as a result. The party has worked tirelessly to create an issue worthy of impeaching the president—Russia collusion, obstruction of justice, Stormy Daniels, tax returns. This week Democrats jettisoned all that in favor of the only issue that implicates their own front-runner for the nomination. Genius.
The one person who has been as much in the news this week as Donald Trump is former Vice President Joe Biden. It’s a dubious accomplishment. The only way to discuss Mr. Trump’s nonsmoking-gun phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is to acknowledge the subject of the ruckus: Mr. Biden’s glaring conflicts of interest during his vice presidency vis-à-vis his son Hunter’s business interests. Since Democrats insist on making this all about Ukraine, get ready for daily new revelations about the young Mr. Biden’s questionable activities and “Quid Pro Joe’s” involvement.
This is why the former vice president’s promises that this scandal will fade are nonsense. True, the media is doing double-duty on his behalf. Its general line is that Mr. Biden’s conflicts are fine; asking about them is corrupt. We are seeing a lot of stories about how Democrats are determined not to let Republicans “Hillary” Mr. Biden—a historical rewrite that places the blame for Mrs. Clinton’s notorious ethical travails on her rivals. The “fact checkers” are out in force with soothing assurances that there’s no evidence any Biden broke the law.
The problem for Joe Biden is that outright criminality is not necessary for these stories to stink. The appearance of conflict of interest is bad enough, and there is plenty of it. Mr. Biden knew his son worked for Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, and knew the company faced scrutiny. He nonetheless in 2016 had the Ukrainian prosecutor who oversaw that investigation fired. In 2013 the vice president took Hunter on a government plane to China, where Hunter met with business associates, a moment that even a former senior Obama White House aide admitted in a July New Yorker profile “invited questions about whether [Hunter] ‘was leveraging access.’ ”
And the questions keep mounting. We now, for instance, have Joe Biden’s claim that “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” Which appears to be in direct conflict with that New Yorker piece, in which Hunter acknowledges he did discuss Burisma with his father. The Ukraine issue is now firmly attached to the Biden campaign, and it isn’t going away.
His problem is that this story line cuts to the heart of his candidacy. Mr. Biden has run relentlessly on the argument that he is the one candidate who can beat Mr. Trump. But he has now become the one who can’t prosecute the issue Democrats are moving on for impeachment. How could Mr. Biden broach Ukraine on a debate stage, knowing Mr. Trump would take that subject and pound away? Every Democratic voter who is passionate about victory in 2020 is already rethinking the Biden candidacy.
This could prove campaign-ending because progressives will work to make it so. While the president might want Mr. Biden’s Ukraine history to be an issue, the left wants it even more. They saw in the broader Ukraine issue a twofer: their much-desired impeachment proceeding and the hobbling of a not-liberal-enough front-runner.
In the week over which the whistleblower drama unfolded, activists dramatically ratcheted up the pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and freshman Democrats to embrace impeachment. It had always been there, but this was intense. The campaign included social-media and grass-roots declarations that “time was up,” as well as implicit warnings that Democrats who didn’t get on the train would face primary challenges from the left.
It worked, leading to the surreal sight of the speaker announcing an “official” impeachment inquiry before anybody in Congress had read the phone-call transcript or the whistleblower complaint. The decision is more ludicrous now that the documents have come out and proved there was no Trump quid pro quo, no “repeated” pressure on Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, and nothing else worthy of impeachment. The release prompted Charlie Cook of the well-known Cook Political Report to note that given “the build up,” he was “totally underwhelmed by the transcript.” His prediction: “This will not move malleable voters.”
Maybe not when it comes to Mr. Trump. But Mr. Biden? His leftist antagonists are taking care not to pile on publicly, yet. But with Elizabeth Warren on the rise, more debates coming, and reporters eager for Ukraine stories, Mr. Biden will be fielding a lot more questions about his family dealings and a lot more arguments that he is a fatally flawed candidate. A week that started as Democrats’ big push to destroy Mr. Trump, could instead easily come to be known as the week that ended Mr. Biden’s run.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
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