Mother — make that “Mr. President” — may we? Yes, you may … possibly.
Joe Biden’s decree in his first primetime address last night that Americans “will be able to get together and have a cookout or a BBQ in” their “backyard” this coming Fourth of July was tempered by all sorts of qualifiers. “If we do all this, if we do our part, if we do this together … there’s a good chance,” he said, further stipulating, “That doesn’t mean large events with lots of people together, but it does mean small groups will be able to get together.”
Not surprisingly, the Left ate it up. “Never did hanging out in my backyard with a few friends on a likely sweltering summer day in DC sound better!” cooed CNN’s Chris Cillizza, while NBC’s Craig Melvin observed in a tweet, “Well it seems July 4th, Independence Day, takes on new meaning. It’s a marker now.”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Neither seemed fazed by the fact that Biden’s proclamation suggests he thinks he has the power to control what Americans can and can’t do, but this was the least of the problems with his speech. Much of it was self-congratulatory for the job he did singlehandedly to bring the nation back from the abyss:
When I took office 50 days ago, only 8 percent of Americans after months — only 8 percent of those over the age of 65 had gotten their first vaccination. Today, that number is [nearly] 65 percent. …
Two months ago, the country — this country didn’t have nearly enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all or near all of the American public. But soon we will.
We’ve been working with the vaccine manufacturers — Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson — to manufacture and purchase hundreds of millions of doses of these three safe, effective vaccines. …
The development, manufacture, and distribution of the vaccines in record time is a true miracle of science. It is one of the most extraordinary achievements any country has ever accomplished.
And to think, Biden did all this all by himself. Should we be surprised that he took credit for achievements that are rightfully and obviously Donald Trump’s? Hardly. Biden has made a career of plagiarizing. This was just another day in the life for him.
But to go that last mile — to vanquish the virus once and for all — he needs your help. “I need you, the American people,” he said plaintively. “I need you. I need every American to do their part. And that’s not hyperbole. I need you.”
This was a segue into his now-battered unity theme, which he defined last night as not “just how politics and politicians vote in Washington or what the loudest voices say on cable or online. Unity is what we do together as fellow Americans.”
Like pass a $2 trillion pork-laden catastrophe without a single Republican vote.
If there was one positive to come out of the address it was that Biden appeared to lose his place on the teleprompter only sporadically, and none of the glitches were major.
