ALL SOCIALISTS DO: Biden Needs an Enemy.

If Biden needs to unite voters, whom should he unite them against? He could wage war on poverty, as Lyndon B. Johnson did. He could battle division—and the forces trying to divide Americans. Or, the Boston College professor Heather Cox Richardson told me, “Biden could easily declare ‘war’ on the authoritarians threatening our democracy, much the same as Abraham Lincoln did when he pulled northerners together to stand against the slaveholders.” That is, he could spend more time trying to direct Americans’ attention to the threat posed by the Trump-directed Republican Party, which is consolidating power at the state level and turning against democracy in large numbers.

Bill Kristol, the former editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and the current head of Defending Democracy Together, is worried about the GOP’s move toward authoritarianism, but he seems skeptical that Biden can succeed at convincing the country that the danger is clear and present. “Citizens in democracies—being free and kind of happy-go-lucky, as they should be—can get a bit complacent and take their freedoms and well-being for granted,” he told me. “Historically, they sometimes only fully wake up to dangers and rise to the occasion when the external threat seems obvious and dangerous. Can they mobilize as easily against a more insidious internal threat?”

But Biden has plenty of enemies all ready:

• Americans who want to put COVID behind them.
• Americans who want to protect the border.
• Newly energized terrorists.
• Low gasoline prices.
• Shelves full of merchandise.

Not to mention reality itself: Biden appears to read ‘end of quote’ from teleprompter during gas price inflation speech.

Anything you put on the teleprompter, Ron Trunalimunumaprzure will read!