Former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich crossed party lines Monday night to speak out in support of presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at this year’s virtual Democratic National Convention (DNC).
During his brief online testimony standing at a literal fork in the road in his hometown Columbus suburb of Westerville, which also held the fourth round of Democratic debates, Kasich’s appearance was meant to suggest broad bipartisan support even coming from a NeverTrumper who never had and never was going to support Trump in the first place.
John Kasich is your dad when he just bought a new drone pic.twitter.com/vwWNyDHsFv
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) August 18, 2020
While urging the country to unify behind the Democratic nominee, Kasich, whose appearance was derided by the party’s faithful ahead of the prime-time event, sought to assuage fears that a potential Biden administration would drift too far to the left for the independent voter.
“I’m sure there are Republicans and independents who couldn’t imagine crossing over to support a Democrat. They fear Joe may turn sharp left and leave them behind. I don’t believe that,” Kasich said. “He’s reasonable, faithful, respectful, and you know, no one pushes Joe around.”
Just moments later, former presidential rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose team strong-armed Biden into endorsing a litany of hard-left proposals in the “Unity Task Forces” agreement earlier this summer, reaffirmed to voters of Biden’s commitment to pursuing what Sanders celebrated as ideas once considered “radical” have gone mainstream. Sanders touted Biden’s commitment to raise the minimum wage, expand payments to families taking a break from work, and government kindergarten.
“To everyone who supported other candidates in the primary and to those who may have voted for Donald Trump in the last election: The future of our democracy is at stake,” Sanders warned in the typical apocalyptic tone voters were subjected to in 2016. “The future of our economy is at stake. The future of our planet is at stake. We must come together, defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our next president and vice president.”
As most recently evidenced by his selection of one of the most liberal senators as a running mate, however, Biden is a vehicle for the left’s revolution whether it be in the explicit form of a major-party nominee or a presidential figurehead for an administration run by California Sen. Kamala Harris. Given Biden’s age at 77 combined with increasingly frequent episodes illustrating serious cognitive decline, the answer is probably the latter, but the messaging is not so subtle.
As of this writing with more plans likely to be rolled out this week, Biden has already proposed upwards of $10 trillion in new spending for a debt-riddled federal government that hasn’t passed a proper budget in two decades, including $2 trillion to achieve “environmental justice,” a key item hashed out in the task force agreement with Sanders.
Biden’s pick in Harris, whose voting record in the upper chamber has earned her a GovTrack rating as the Senate’s most liberal member even to the left of Sanders, also reveals no aversion to drifting leftward as a result of party forces. Harris has endorsed nearly every policy on the far-left agenda, including socialized medicine, the Green New Deal, higher taxes, open borders, sanctuary cities, late-term abortions, and a religious litmus test on Catholic nominees to the judiciary.
But Biden can’t “turn sharp left?” It appears, contrary to Kasich’s political plea, that Biden already has.
