Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats Have to Lose One More Time Before They Abandon the Party

Why are California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris suddenly praising Joe Biden’s presidency? Victor Davis Hanson breaks down the political theater behind the Democrats’ about-face—and what it reveals about their panic over President Donald Trump’s comeback. This, and more, on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.

This interview has been slightly edited for clarity. 

Sami Winc: I didn’t quite finish with what I was gonna talk about with [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom and [former Vice President Kamala] Harris. And that is that they are recently coming out, both of them, saying that [former President] Joe Biden was either one of the best presidents in recent memory, I think that was Newsom, or with Kamala Harris, where she doesn’t have any criticism of Joe, he was good, he did a good job.

What is that all about? I mean, he was obviously—but do they get a constituency from that? Is that what they’re worried about? The Democratic Party has this vast constituency, so I’m gonna say anything I need to do.

Victor Davis Hanson: They don’t believe that. They’re worried that—they’re worried about the record, which American people saw, the Trump first term and they saw the Biden term. And then they listened to what President Donald Trump said his second term was. And they said, “We do not want the Biden agenda anymore.” That was No. 1.

No. 2, they removed him. They, the Democratic donors, the Democratic politicos, the left-wing media. They got in a room and said, “Joe, get out.” And he said, “No, I don’t want to get out. I got 14—.” And Jill said, “We’re not going to get rid of him. Good ol’ Joe is as sharp as a tack.”

But it took about a month. And then they said, Joe said, “Wow, the donors aren’t going to give me any money. The media is going to attack me.” So, they had a coup. And they just took him off the ticket. And then they had no election, no primary. They put a person, they took a person who’d won 14 million primary votes in 2020, and they appointed his vice president, had never won a single delegate, without any discussion. And then they ratified by a fake delegate vote at the convention.

So, they took him out, and they took him out because it was a disaster. And now they look back and Trump is, I’ll quote Shakespeare, he doth bestride like a Colossus over these nonentities.

So, they’re really angry and they said, “Well, we didn’t remove him because he was bad. We didn’t remove him because he was failing. We just thought that he needed a break.”

So, now they’re going back and saying the record was actually pretty good because he didn’t do it, we did. We had a coup, basically. We ran the government. It was wonderful.

But what Trump needs to do—kind of said this in one of our Daily Signal short pieces. No more cartoons where he’s in a jet spraying people with defecation, all that. You don’t need to go back and fight back and forth on the libs and all that stuff. Just look at the record.

Ten thousand people coming in a day, some days, illegally. Somewhere between, if you count illegal entrance, probably 10 million to 12 million. And if you count actual people who stayed, probably 7 million or 8 million. Zero now. Zero. They’re going to get 2 million deportations, whether coerced or self-deported, in a year.

If you look at—we’re pumping a million barrels more of oil already than Biden did. He drained the petroleum reserve by 200 million barrels. Trump is already filling it right now as I speak. It’s up to 406 barrels. He’s got a plan to fill the whole thing.

He’s had seven ceasefires. He’s flying all over the world. He stopped the killing in Gaza. He ended the nuclear threat in the near future.

If we had this conversation a year ago, we’d say, “Man, we can’t stop Hezbollah. They’re too tough. Iran is just crazy. They’ve got, all together, these guys—Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iran—they’ve got over 200,000 rockets.”

They’re all inert now. They’re all inert because Trump stood by Israel, gave them the supplies, no suspension, said, “Go to it,” then took out, himself, a nuclear plant.

And then when you look at inflation, the average inflation was 5%, as we said, under Biden, over that four-year period. It’s going to be about 3% this year. He left office when it was 1.7%.

The first time, if you look at [gross domestic product], say that GDP is, it’s going to be about 3%. If you look at the stock market, it set a record this week. It’s never been higher. They said it was going to crash in March. If you look at trade revenue, you have one of these rare months in September where we had more money coming into the Treasury than going out. 

The deficit, for all the “Big, Beautiful Bill’s” spending, the deficit’s gonna go down. Not a lot, but somewhat.

So, when you look at the—and then, you know, when he talked about DEI, would say he can’t get rid of DEI. These people are formidable. He just got rid of it. He got rid of it. All of a sudden, why do you think that people who say that they’re considering transitioning has dropped dramatically on campuses? Because it’s no longer cool. And there’s no longer kind of a fad.

Because he said, “If you’re biological male, I don’t care what you call me, a transphobe, you’re not going to go and destroy female sports. And you’re not going to have laws that say that people who expose themselves to the opposite sex with their genitalia have to go to jail, and then we’re going to let men go in and shower with preteen girls. We’re not going to let that happen.”

And so, he wrecked them. He went after them. It’s really an astounding achievement if he would just talk about it. 

Winc: Yes, and you’ve convinced me why, if I were a Democrat, I wouldn’t want to be a backer of Joe Biden or say, really, anything about him—at least not in a positive sense.

So, if I’m in an interview and I’m Kamala Harris, I’m going to say, “Well, Joe Biden did what he could do as best he could. However you say that, I don’t care. But I have ideas of things that we could do better and da da da,” and start at least that.

But why are these Democrats doubling down on a presidency that was a complete disaster? Because, just as what you’ve just told me, there’s no way it’s been so drastically changed today by Trump himself. 

Hanson: But what I’m saying is that that was a presidency in which, for the first time since the New Deal, the socialist Left had an opening. They ran a moderate candidate who was losing because he was senile in 2020. He lost the first three primaries and caucuses—New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada.

Then [Rep. Jim] Clyburn said, “You know what, I don’t want to vote for these white liberal socialists.” And he went to Biden and said, “I will deliver the black vote in South Carolina, and you will win. But we have certain demands on you about appointments, black judges, black this, black vice president.”

And then the socialists came to him and said, “We will get [Sen. Elizabeth Warren out], we’ll get [Sen.] Bernie [Sanders] out, we’ll get [Pete] Buttigieg, but you’re going to open that border and you’re going to get [George] Soros DAs and you’re going to go through defund the police, and you’re going to go radical, Green New Deal.”

And they got everything they wanted. So then, they got it and they destroyed the country, and the people turned on them. So now, what are they going to say? Are they going to say, “Well, we had a George McGovern and we corrected with Bill Clinton after 20 years”? No.

So, that’s what they have to say. We have [Sen. John] Fetterman. He’s basically said, “We have a message that people do not want, so we need to correct.” But they’re not going to do that until they lose again. They have to lose at least once more in a national election. They have to lose the midterms. Otherwise, they’ll keep at it. 

Winc: Yeah. He seems to be, Fetterman, the persona non grata in the Democratic Party right now, so he doesn’t get any kudos for saying that kind of thing.

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