Unlike former Vice President Biden, at least with President Trump – whether you agree or not – we always really know where he stands on issues and can count on him following through with supporting actions.
Love or hate him, Trump candidly takes and returns hard ball press pitches on open-ended topics for hours on end. This stands in stark contrast to rare occasions when Biden emerges from his basement for tightly scripted appearances or responds to Wiffle Ball questions lobbed by unfailingly friendly interviewers.
The recent debate was no exception when, for example, he steadfastly refused to answer whether or not he would support Democrat threats to pack the Supreme Court with two-to-four new justices, would end the Senate filibuster rule or even if he would endorse a law and order platform.
Not asked nor volunteered, would a President Biden administration push to confer statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to gain liberal seats?
So just who is "the real Joe Biden?"
Is he, as advertised, a moderate centrist candidate who eschews radical left-wing excesses, who can appeal to sober mainstream independents, and who will unite a politically polarized America around the promise of a safer, more prosperous and equitable future?
Or rather, as suggested by many Biden backers and detractors alike, is Joe principally running as a mentally malleable temporary oval office placeholder for a Bernie Sanders-preferred President Kamala Harris?
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington, co-chair of the Sanders side of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, described Biden as "movable," publicly bragging about her ability to "significantly push Joe Biden to do things that he hadn't signed on to before."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, told a "Just the News" interviewer: "I think, overall, we can likely push Vice President Biden in a more progressive direction across policy issues." She added, "I think foreign policy is an enormous area where we can improve; immigration is another one."
There also is no longer any public doubt that Mr. Biden is broadly seen as increasingly frail and confused. A recent Rasmussen poll indicated that 59% of Americans believe that he will not finish a first term, were he to win the upcoming election.
Accordingly, many Biden supporters must recognize that they may well be voting for Harris – arguably rivaling Bernie as the Senate's most liberal member – as the actual Democratic presidential candidate. This being the case, any consideration regarding Biden's policies must prominently take hers into account as well.
And if so, exactly what core beliefs and signature policies would guide a Harris-Biden presidency?
Sen. Harris and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) cosponsored an estimated $93 trillion Green New Deal, centerpiece of the Biden "Buy Back Better" plan, along with a $2 trillion "Equitable Clean Energy Future" agenda.
The Green New Deal pledges to eliminate carbon emissions from electricity by 2035 and, in the wider economy, to shift from oil, natural gas and coal (which in 2019 provided 80% of U.S. energy) to solar and wind (which provided 3.7%) and other technologies to get to "net-zero carbon" by no later than 2050.
In short, it would end American energy independence and eliminate as many as 1.7 million fossil fuel industry jobs, while simultaneously overloading our depleted U.S. power grid with thirsty electric vehicles. (Think recent California power shortages and multiply that by a huge bunch.)
When asked during a CNN climate town hall last year about her views on fracking, Harris replied without pause, "There is no question I'm in favor of banning fracking." She then gave a simple, one-word answer, "Yes!" to television program host Erin Burnett's follow-up question, "So, would you ban offshore drilling?"
During the primary debates while working to secure the votes of his Party's left-leaning voter base, Mr. Biden emphatically promised, "No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. Ends!" Later, in the same debate, he added, "No new fracking."
Obviously recognizing that such liberal primary promises won't play well to oil and gas revenue and job-dependent swing states like Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Mexico, Biden now insists that his fracking ban will apply only to public lands.
So where does that leave him on the coal industry? Does he publicly acknowledge that his plan for net-zero carbon emissions, by necessity, requires the elimination of those state and local revenues and jobs too?
Regarding our national and personal economy, while Biden has pledged to spend some $11 trillion in new spending over a decade, his tax proposal (the largest permanent increase since World War II) would raise only one-third this amount. Added taxes will impose burdensome new costs on companies and families already reeling from coronavirus business and employment shutdowns.
So very specifically, how would a President Biden hope find all that money needed to reverse our nation's spiraling debt to revive the economy?
We should have learned from the 2009 Obama-Biden administration's failed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included more than $90 billion for clean energy programs, that extending low-cost loans and investment and production tax credits to solar and wind projects did little to stimulate their weak economy or lagging employment.
Although billed as a moderate, Joe Biden demonstrates a pattern of increasing willingness to defer significant policy positions to be determined by his progressive handlers.
Biden was once against public abortion funding, and for crime control and the North American Free Trade Agreement. He continues to waffle on hot-potato topics such as opposing late-term abortion. He promised last June to name his list of black female Supreme Court nominees after further "vetting." Yet he has since refused, saying that such a list could subject his picks to "attacks."
Considering the composition of his campaign task force – Beto O'Rourke as his point guy on gun control and AOC as his climate and energy adviser, what will his White House cabinet look like? Will he return to Obama-era familiars?
Whereas he once proclaimed himself an "O'Biden-Bama Democrat," Joe supports government-funded health care even for unauthorized immigrants, something Obama never came close to proposing.
Biden now supports a sharp increase in U.S. refugees and a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants. By contrast, Obama had cracked down so hard on illegal border crossings that he came to be known as the “Deporter-in-Chief.”
Joe Biden once said that China didn't represent any truly serious economic competition for America, has offered no condemnation of Beijing for releasing the coronavirus, yet criticized Trump's early travel ban on the country as hysterical and xenophobic.
Meanwhile, a new Senate report makes clear that his son, Hunter, was cashing in on shady Chinese business deals which then-Vice President Biden purported to know nothing about.
Also, what role did the vice president have in murky political tactics launched by the Obama-Biden administration in connection with an ongoing U.S. attorney's investigation into illegal FBI spying on the GOP presidential campaign and advisers?
For example, how briefed was Vice President Biden on this probe? Why did he personally unmask General Mike Flynn? Does he agree with the inspector general that these tactics were wrong? And should the public now have reason to that fear a Biden FBI will also investigate his political opponents?
Americans deserve to know exactly what they are signing up for in this election. It could turn out to be a great deal less – also lots more – than they really bargained for.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. Larry has written more than 700 articles for Newsmax and Forbes and is the author of several books. Included are: "How Everything Happened, Including Us" (2020), "Cyberwarfare: Targeting America, Our Infrastructure and Our Future" (2020), "The Weaponization of AI and the Internet: How Global Networks of Infotech Overlords are Expanding Their Control Over Our Lives" (2019), "Reinventing Ourselves: How Technology is Rapidly and Radically Transforming Humanity" (2019), "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful" (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015) and "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax" (2011). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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