To understand the sort of men Democrats rallied around in the 1850s, look no further than former President Joe Biden.
For instance, have you ever wondered how President Franklin Pierce viewed the world after Democrats jettisoned him in 1856? You haven’t? Neither did contemporary Democrats. And now you understand Biden’s current predicament.
According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, Biden and the former first lady, “Doctor” Jill Biden, made headlines on Sunday when they attended the Broadway opening of “Othello,” starring legendary actor Denzel Washington, 70, and 44-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal, an accomplished actor in his own right.
The former first couple’s attendance alone would have attracted attention. But the timing of the appearance made it even more newsworthy.
Last week, new Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin gave a lukewarm response to the former president’s overtures. Specifically, Biden had volunteered his services to help the party raise money, but party officials had no interest in Biden’s help.
Of course, prominent Democrats, such as fundraiser Alan Kessler, have had the audacity to lie publicly about why they have kicked the former president to the curb.
“There are plenty of people who still love Joe Biden. But it’s time to move on,” Kessler told reporters.
Plenty of people, eh? According to the Daily Mail, a recent NBC News poll (which also fixed the Democratic Party’s approval rating at an abysmal 27 percent) showed that “[o]nly 1 percent of Democrats said Biden represents their core values.”
One percent?!? What kind of party rallies behind a man with no base of support from the supposedly sovereign people?
Will the Democratic Party ever revere Biden the way they revere Clinton and Obama?
Yes: 0% (0 Votes)
No: 100% (2 Votes)
Well, Democrats have done it in the past.
In the 1850s, slaveholding Southern aristocrats controlled the Democratic Party — the same kind of people who control it today. At least until the Civil War, the party’s Northern wing proved subservient. After 1850, in fact, Northern Democrats existed largely to help their Southern brethren win presidential elections and shape policy.
For that reason, Democrats nominated Pierce of New Hampshire in 1852 and then James Buchanan of Pennsylvania in 1856.
“If he must be a Northerner,” a Southern Democrat undoubtedly would have drawled, “then at least let him be a nonentity.”
Indeed, Pierce and Buchanan posed no threat to develop either an original idea or a conscience. They were party men through and through.
And that brings us back to Biden.
The 46th president, like the 14th and 15th, had no national base of support. In fact, aside from credit card companies and affluent Delaware Democrats, Biden had no base of any kind.
Moreover, no one would confuse the 46th president with any of the party’s intellectual titans, past or present. Indeed, one could hardly say that Biden lacked the oratorical talents of 19th-century Sen. Stephen A. Douglas or even former President Barack Obama without chuckling a bit at the absurdity of having to state something so obvious.
Nonetheless, Biden somehow enjoyed a lengthy and lucrative career in national politics.
In short, Democrats have never had qualms about using the many nonentities in their ranks for expedience’s sake.
When those nonentities have exhausted their usefulness, however, as Biden clearly has, they would do well to preserve what little remains of their dignity and recede quietly into the oblivion they so richly deserve.
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