…and attempted to govern in a sensible, moderate way…principled but restrained…if he had simply recognized and respected the fact that Average Joes and Janes had voted for him in ’20 as a rejection of Trump’s criminality and his temperamentally crazy cult-of-personality approach to everything…but of course he didn’t.

If Biden had simply adopted a “enough with the crazy” and let’s all celebrate fairness and moderation…holdupski on the sweeping woke nutter stuff and let’s bring back maturity and moderate liberalism…if he had simply and politely drawn the line and told the progressive “all white people are evil and racist” wackos to take a breath and turn the volume down…if he had done this and stuck to a sane agenda, the left wouldn’t be in the appalling situation that it’s currently in.

In short, I agree with roughly 90% of the 11.4 edition of Andrew Sullivan‘s Weekly Dish column, titled “Will Biden and the Dems Finally Get It?”

Excerpt: “There was no choice in 2020, given Trump. I understand that. If he runs again, we’ll have no choice one more time. And, more than most, I am aware of the profound threat to democratic legitimacy that the election-denying GOP core now represents. But that’s precisely why we need to send the Dems a message this week, before it really is too late.

“By ‘we,’ I mean anyone not committed to the hard-left agenda Biden has relentlessly pursued since taking office. In my view, he and his media mouthpieces have tragically enabled the far right over the past two years far more than they’ve hurt them.

“I hoped in 2020 that after a clear but modest win, with simultaneous gains for the GOP in the House and a fluke tie in the Senate, Biden would grasp a chance to capture the sane middle, isolating the far right. After the horror of January 6, the opportunity beckoned ever more directly.

“And yet Biden instantly threw it away. In return for centrists’ and moderates’ support, Biden effectively told us to get lost and championed the entire far-left agenda.

“[He pushed] the biggest expansion in government since LBJ; a massive stimulus that, in a period of supply constraints, fueled durable inflation; a second welfare stimulus was also planned — which would have made inflation even worse; record rates of mass migration, and no end in sight; a policy of almost no legal restrictions on abortion (with public funding as well!); the replacement of biological sex with postmodern “genders”; the imposition of critical race theory in high schools and critical queer theory in kindergarten; an attack on welfare reform; ‘equity’ hiring across the federal government; plans to regulate media ‘disinformation’; fast-track sex-changes for minors; next-to-no due process in college sex-harassment proceedings; and on and on it went.

“Even the policy most popular with the center — the infrastructure bill — was instantly conditioned on an attempt to massively expand the welfare state. What on earth in this agenda was there for anyone in the center?”