“Decency is on the ballot,” Jill Biden proclaimed during the 2020 election. Biden ran under the banner of a “return to normal,” and Biden and his allies have trumpeted that they are engaged in a “battle for the soul of the nation.”

Yet this high-toned rhetoric has collided with the realities of the Biden administration. …

While the bitter conflict that has defined the Biden years may at first seem at odds with his 2020 campaign message, a “battle for the soul of the nation” can actually be a way of rationalising the most vicious political warfare. If “the soul of the nation” really is at stake, any excess can be justified and any scandal (for the “right side of history,” of course) can be excused.

[That was the idea all along. Biden has never been anything *but* a vicious demagogue; was decency on the ballot when Biden accused Mitt Romney of wanting to put black people “back in chains,” for instance? He’s Harry Reid with bigger teeth and far fewer brain cells or scruples. The “decency” pitch has been Biden’s excuse for all kinds of fabulism and vituperation. — Ed]