Judd Gregg: The coming Biden coup

Authored by Judd Gregg, op-ed via The Hill:

It is more than a possibility, and slightly less than a likelihood, that Joe Biden will be elected president in November.

Biden has made it clear that a woman will be his running mate.

What is becoming equally apparent is that he may be cornered into choosing a socialist or progressive as that person.

As he runs his campaign from his basement, allowing President Trump to stomp his feet and shout as he tries to mount a more traditional campaign, Biden has shown little inclination to take on his own foot-stomping base.

Thus the socialist/progressive wing of the Democratic Party is now center stage — and insisting one of their own be Biden’s vice presidential candidate.

That individual could be Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) or any number of lesser-known advocates for the far left.

The underlying agenda is becoming more and more apparent:

— Promoting and promulgating — not merely accepting — the massive protests that have occurred in some cities, even when they have led to lawlessness, looting, riots and declarations of autonomy.

— Searching out and destroying unbelievers in pursuit of a politically correct version of history, and doing so with a zeal that would have made Cotton Mather blush.

— Removing statues of historical figures that are deemed unacceptable based on today’s parameters of social justice.

It is of course ironic that figures such as Ulysses S. Grant, Francis Scott Key and even those who make up the faces of Mount Rushmore — Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt — are now deemed evil by the progressive ideologues of the new Democratic Party.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to see how the nation would have developed without these extraordinary men.

It is also ironic that when leftists condemn these historical figures, they are using freedoms and rights that would not exist without the leadership of those selfsame giants of our past.

But the Democratic Party is, to use a highly politically incorrect phrase, “on the war path” against the nation’s history if it is not interpreted pursuant to their dogma.

The pilgrims of the progressive cause countenance no dissent as they rope and spray-paint the statues of people who once led the nation.

They are a fanatical group.

Biden is suspect to them, of course.

He defeated their patron saints, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Warren, and thus they demand that he have as his cohort an acceptable socialist/progressive who is fervent about the cause.

This is about power.

All major elections are.

The socialist/progressives understand this as well as any political movement does.

But the difference is that the socialist/progressive movers who now control the board in the game of Democratic Party politics have no ethical tether.

They are filled with the flames of clarity as to the rightness of their goals. They see all who attempt to dampen those flames as enemies.

Theirs is first and foremost a social justice cause that is justified by their self-proclaimed correctness.

It allows them to move forward without any doubt and with untempered intensity.

They can proclaim sections of cities independent nations. They can proclaim America’s most important past political leaders evil. They can promote lawlessness in the name of the rightness of their cause.

They can essentially march outside the boundaries of the nation’s history and political structure, asserting that what they do is best for all.

They will not tolerate for long not being in total control. They will have their vice president, but not their president. And they are a very impatient people and movement.

Since their goal is power and their purpose pure, why should they wait?

The path to total control is clearly there once they have the vice presidency.

It is the 25th Amendment.

Within a few months of assuming the presidency, Biden may find himself being the next statue toppled as the socialist/progressive movement moves closer to power.

Replacing him with his vice president could be deemed necessary to the cause.

His colleagues could declare him too old to handle the presidency and remove him under the 25th Amendment.

Et tu, Brute?

The Cause will have been completed.

Power will be fully in the hands of the statue-removers, the social justice police and those who see America’s political history as basically evil. Socialist/progressive excess will govern.

It will be a coup.

Look over your shoulder, Joe. Watch your back. Donald Trump is not your most threatening problem.

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee