Many of my fellow conservatives have very different pictures from mine of where this country is headed politically. They believe the Biden administration is about to fall because of the revelations that have come out about its misdeeds and the president’s corruption in public office, particularly during his time as vice president. If we were living in normal times, that is, with reasonably objective news sources, shared moral beliefs, and the willingness of those in power to live with a dissenting political opposition, Joe Biden’s administration would indeed be going down. In that alternative universe, we might not even be afflicted with this derailed government, because without news suppression, election law manipulation, and judicial evasions, Biden might not even be president.

Unfortunately, we are not living in normal times, here or in any other Western country that has undergone a similar cultural transformation. Our mainstream media and misnamed educational institutions reconstruct current events to fit their doctrinal needs; and our deep and surveillance states are in leftist hands. Why would our power-brokers care if the Bidens were a crime family, whose criminality has been exposed? Why would those who are calling the shots let the public even know what Devon Archer said about Joe’s participation in Hunter’s influence-peddling? It seems that at least half the public still knows nothing about these facts. 

Precisely because of its media power, the left has replayed nonstop its account of what Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans” did on January 6, and it continues to score points off its dubious reconstructions. Special Counsel Jack Smith is bringing charges against Trump for the “insurrection” in a federal court, although as Andrew McCarthy, who is hardly a Trump devotee, shows, the attempt to blame Trump for the subsequent riot based on statements that he made at the time is thoroughly dishonest.

As much as one might question the wisdom of his action, Trump was exercising his First Amendment right when he disputed the fairness of the 2020 election. There is no evidence that Trump urged violence or was trying to deceive anyone when he expressed his view about a dishonest election. He was expressing a complaint that prominent Democrats also made about earlier presidential elections in which Democratic candidates had lost.

According to McCarthy, Smith is hoping to push an unprovable accusation through “a Democrat-friendly Washington, DC jury into convicting Trump” and then to “infuse the electorate with Capitol riot imagery” before a higher court overturns this verdict, preferably after the 2024 election. Even more questionable is the charge that Trump, by exercising his First Amendment right to challenge the reported electoral results, was trying to overthrow the government. One can easily imagine that our power-brokers will proceed from here to prosecute other undesirable exercises of the First Amendment as a treasonous subversion of their rule.     

It seems doubtful that Democratic operatives and their servile media would be covering for Biden if they planned to dump him. If they really intended to replace the present administration, they would not be pulling out all stops for Joe while deflecting critical attention to Trump. From this reaction I am forced to infer that Democratic leaders see Biden’s situation as less than desperate. And they may be right. Biden’s presidency will not be in grave danger as long as its pals go on doctoring the news and appealing to their broad culturally leftist base. If most Republicans believe that Trump has been “victimized” by Smith’s indictments, then this should be of no concern to Biden’s handlers. These are not the voters they are trying to please.

It is, finally, a mistake to attribute the understanding of an intelligent conservative who mistrusts the corporate media to Democrats and those Independents who lean in their direction. Those are not voters who care about the equal application of traditional moral or constitutional standards. They do, however, care about advancing the LGBT agenda, unrestricted abortion rights, and the struggle against “white nationalists.” If these voters do learn about corruption in the Biden family and the weaponization of the administration against political opponents, they are not likely to fret over such matters.

It is not by accident that Biden, perhaps the ultimate screw-up president when judged by any traditional standard, is still running neck-and-neck with any hypothetical Republican opponent, or that his popularity index still hovers around 40 percent. What is striking is not, as Sean Hannity insists, that Biden’s poll numbers “have hit one low after another.” More striking by far is that these numbers look as good as they do despite his disastrous administration. And Trump’s numbers generally didn’t look much better during his term in office, even though his presidency brought general prosperity. In both cases ideological division appears a decisive factor.

In all likelihood Democrats still believe, not without reason, that they can win the next presidential race, and can do so with Joe. Time will tell.