Identity politics, Biden style

In other words, dishonest identity politics

Identity politics of the woke kind are a fairly recent phenomenon. But identity politics of the political kind have been an American staple since the Irish and the Germans arrived here in large numbers in the mid-1800s, if not before that.

Joe Biden practices his own kind of political identity politics. The dishonest kind.

Matt Viser, a liberal partisan who writes for the Washington Post, acknowledges Biden’s dishonesty on the subject. He tries to give it an innocuous spin, but Biden’s record — which parallels his dishonesty about other aspects of his biography — speaks for itself.

Biden might have learned to be more truthful when a lie he told during his 1988 presidential campaign backfired. In that instance, Biden claimed that his coal-mining Welsh ancestors spent hours underground and then came up to play football. This story turned out to be lifted from Neil Kinnock, a British politician. Biden claimed he meant to credit Kinnock, but no one believed him and he soon quit the race.

Unfortunately, Biden didn’t learn from this experience. As Viser puts it:

President Biden, to hear him tell it, is as Greek as Poseidon. He was brought up by both the Puerto Rican community and the Black community. And he’s more Jewish than the Jews.

Biden likes to say he grew up in a heavily Irish neighborhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania and a heavily Italian/Polish community in Delaware. This may be true.

But when speaking to Puerto Ricans, Biden claimed to have been “sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically.” There appears to be no evidence of Biden being raised in a Puerto Rican community, and his claim to this effect is at odds with his description of the ethnicity of his neighborhoods in Scranton and Delaware.

It’s not clear what Biden means by “the Puerto Rican community. . .politically.” If he means that Puerto Ricans are like the Irish, Italians, and/or Polish politically, he is engaging in ethnic stereotyping that has little relationship to the facts.

When speaking to observant Jews, Biden claims to be more observant of Shabbat than they are. During a Rosh Hashanah service last week, this ethnic Zelig claimed to have attended synagogue more frequently than the Jews in attendance.

Had Trump made such a claim, fact-checkers would be interviewing rabbis throughout the state of Delaware. But we don’t need fact-checkers to declare Biden’s claim almost certainly false.

Biden also claims that he’s an “honorary Greek.” As vice president, he declared, “we haven’t had a Greek in the White House, but now we have Joe Bidenopoulos.” It’s not clear who proclaimed Biden an honorary Greek, or what that even means.

Viser deems all of Biden’s false claims about his identity “innocuous” — a quirk. The only exception is the cultural appropriation of Neil Kinnock’s past, and Viser excludes this one only because, as noted, it had dire consequences for Biden’s 1988 campaign.

If Biden’s false claims were innocuous, this would make him a pathological liar, defined as someone who lies when the truth would do just as well.

But Biden’s identity lies aren’t so innocuous. They are calculated to serve a purpose — to ingratiate himself with ethnic constituents and voters.

Viser admits as much. He acknowledges that Biden uses claims about identity to connect with crowds. The truth, i.e., the absence of his false statements, would serve Biden 98 percent as well as his lies. But Biden wants to squeeze out the extra 2 percent.

If Trump did this, the Washington Post wouldn’t call it innocuous.

Viser was part of the Post’s squadron of reporters that attacked Trump non-stop throughout his presidency — sometimes fairly, often not. The Post claimed that during his four years in office, Trump made 30,573 “false or misleading claims.” (It’s always good to be exact.)

The Post did not excuse any of Trump’s allegedly false or misleading claims as “innocuous” or as attempts to connect with his audience. But when Biden lies about himself it’s no big deal.

Biden’s autobiographical lies extend beyond matters of ethnicity. Biden has lied about his sports accomplishments, falsely claiming to have played varsity football for the University of Delaware.

Biden’s worst autobiographical lie pertained to the automobile accident that killed his first wife. He claimed that the driver of the tractor-trailer involved in the accident was drunk (“drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch”). There is no evidence that the driver had been drinking, and Biden later apologized to the driver’s family for making this baseless, devastatingly harmful allegation.

Whether the purpose is to “connect” with a crowd, gain sympathy, or simple old-fashioned self-aggrandizement, Biden seems incapable of telling the truth about himself.

When the stakes are high, I believe most politicians will shade the truth and many of them will lie outright. But Joe Biden lies even when the stakes are low or non-existent. This isn’t quirkiness — Joe being Joe — it’s a huge and potentially dangerous flaw in Joe Biden’s makeup.

One of several, unfortunately.