The Democratic Party’s Icons Crack and Crumble By Judson Berger
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-weekend-jolt/the-democratic-partys-icons-crack-and-crumble/
The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan was thought to be the worst-case scenario. As it turns out, the worst had yet to happen.
Horrific attacks on Thursday outside the crowded Kabul airport — already a chaotic scene amid the evacuation mission and, as such, a prime target for terrorists — killed at least 13 U.S. service members and dozens more Afghans. Countless decisions, from Trump’s Taliban deal (and a related prisoner release) to Biden’s Bagram bug-out and botched handling of the withdrawal itself, led to this moment of vulnerability. As NR’s editorial details, this entire bloody episode marks a devastating setback not just for Afghanistan but for America’s national security long-term. Yet underneath the chaos of the past several weeks, and concomitant with it, is another shift of considerable consequence — the realization that political figures long regarded as institutions, at least outwardly, have lost their grip.
At the top, there is President Joe Biden, and any deputies associated with the withdrawal who might have thought these posts were a springboard to higher office. When the BBC is skeptically fact-checking a Democratic president, when CNN is lamenting his “defensiveness, imprecision and apparent changes of position,” when the New York Times is reporting on the party rift over Biden’s leadership, when Politico exposes the unfathomable detail that the administration shared names of Afghan allies with the Taliban . . . Wilmington, we have a problem.
The Afghanistan fiasco has created that most disorienting and discomfiting experience for a progressive administration — a serious bout of critical media coverage immune to White House spin and determined to tell the unvarnished story of an ongoing debacle.
Of course, it is not just normally friendly media outlets that have turned.
Leon Panetta, Obama’s defense secretary, is dismayed. New Hampshire’s Democratic senators are pressing Biden to ignore the withdrawal deadline. Senator Bob Menendez called the Afghanistan collapse “astounding,” pinned blame on “flawed negotiations” under Trump and “flawed execution” under Biden, and vowed to seek a “full accounting.” Democratic congressman Jim Langevin called this a “catastrophe.” The president’s approval rating has slipped below 50 percent by some readings, even spending time underwater for the first time in his presidency.
To use the in-vogue term of economists, this could be transitory, though the rising casualty count challenges any such expectations. John Fund makes a fundamental observation — that what we’re seeing now is pent-up frustration from the Beltway establishment, loosed by the vivid affirmation of long-held doubts about Biden’s ability:
Make no mistake, there is a genuine collapse of confidence in Biden. They may kiss and make up because Democratic control of Congress is at stake in 2022, but the wounds felt by the establishment from Biden’s incompetence will remain. . . .
The question that Biden’s media allies and the Washington establishment are now privately wondering: Is the Afghan disaster an aberration, or will the calculated risk they took in helping Biden into the White House prove to be an unending series of headaches and embarrassments?
Biden’s not the only institution whose image is crumbling.
For entirely separate reasons, Andrew Cuomo has gone from political deity to political refuse. The former New York governor, still defiant, delivered a bitter farewell address earlier this week accusing the government of undermining the justice system with its handling of the sexual-misconduct allegations that felled him. Any path to public rehabilitation is murky. His successor already is cleaning up, and exposing, his shoddy record-keeping on COVID deaths. He’s the roast, no longer the toast, of late-night. One need only look back at the flood of statements from fellow Democrats precipitating his resignation to appreciate how the gloss on the once-lionized gov is gone. They even took away his Emmy.
Lastly, there’s Barack Obama. He is not suffering anywhere near the credibility collapse of the other two but nevertheless engineered his own Gavin-Newsom-in-Napa moment by throwing his 60th birthday party, albeit a scaled-back one, on Martha’s Vineyard, the stuff of Mark Leibovich book chapters. “Behold Barack Antoinette,” declared the scathing Maureen Dowd column devoted to it. Jim Geraghty noted earlier this month how, in the inverse of how the party treats out-of-office Republicans, Democrats tend to criticize out-of-office Democrats more as time passes, and “now this appears to be the moment when Democrats feel comfortable publicly ripping into Barack Obama.”
So . . . what does it all amount to? It is at least noteworthy that, in a seniority-prizing party whose leaders are more likely to have their driver’s licenses taken away than their gavels, Democratic institutions are fading. What do the names Biden, Cuomo, Obama . . . heck, Clinton, Kennedy, Madigan . . . mean? Not nearly what they used to, as kingmakers or candidates.
Ultimately, the development that matters most concerns the sitting president. While progressives always had an uneasy relationship with Biden, an uncontestable foreign-policy disaster has forced the establishment to see him with fresh eyes. This will color the calculations over whom to close ranks behind in the future, and, for now, it presents nothing less than a crisis of trust for the country and Biden’s party. (You can read more about implications in the newest issue of NR.)
Charles C. W. Cooke gets the last word(s):
As a direct result of his decisions about Afghanistan, Americans are stranded, our allies are outraged, our reputation is diminished, and the Afghan people have been left once again at the mercy of a cabal of cut-throat tyrants. In response, Biden has insisted that all of this was inevitable, despite his having promised precisely the opposite beforehand. . . .
Knowing what they now know, do the many swing-district Democrats who eked out victories in 2020 really want to throw in their lot with this guy?
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