By Ray Cardello for January 7, 2021 Season 8 / Post 9

It was watching a bad double-feature matinee. I listened to the comments of Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden from Statuary Hall as they remembered the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. I listened in embarrassment and disgust at both the message and the tone from the two highest office holders in our nation. Disgust is a harsh word, but it is the emotion that both of their comments evoked.

There is no argument that what happened last year on January 6th was deplorable, but calling it an attempt to overthrow democracy is a cheap hyperbole. I contend that what Harris and Biden did with their comments today is more damaging to our nation and democracy than done by the people who breached the Capitol. The rioters who entered the Capitol were not armed, as the President said, and there was one death of an unarmed female rioter shot by a Capitol police officer. The four deaths of Capitol Police officers attributed to January 6 were suicides and not the result of any physical injuries from the altercation that day.

Vice President Harris used her time today to push for the passage of the Voter Rights Bill before the Senate. With a shaking voice, she gave a political speech. She prefaced her push for this bill by equating January 6, 2021, to December 7 and September 11. This statement is insulting to the thousands of families who lost loved ones at the hands of terrorists in New York, DC, and the fields of Pennsylvania. This statement belittles the thousands of men and women who served this great country and those who have died in its defense.

Her comments were political theater but only a warm-up for the even worse comments by the President. Her speech used the anniversary of a black day in our history to warn that a vote for a Republican is damaging to our future. And that the passage of a Voter Rights Bill that will transform voting in the United States is the only hope for the future of our country. We will spend much time on the bill in future posts but suffice to say the bill would favor Democrat candidates in all future elections.

The President was done a disservice by whichever speechwriter told him that this is the perfect opportunity to trash former President Trump and his supporters. Biden came out with his most robust speech to date, but it was a speech filled with venom and anger as he drew connections between Trump and the attack on the Capitol. For twenty minutes, Biden used every carefully crafted sentence to throw punches at Trump and then said in his comments after the speech that his words were unifying. He said you must tear down a problem before healing from it. Today, he created a more significant divide in this country, and he has no plan to bring it together.

With both the Vice President and President suffering from poll numbers showing how unpopular the two are with the American voter, what they did today will cause them to drop more significantly. They did not show the strength of their respective offices but instead resorted to blaming the voting laws and President Trump for the country’s ills. It was cheap. It was amateurish. It was vintage Harris and Biden. God help us this coming year, as this just set the bar for how low the Democrats will go to retain power.

This article was first published on The Liberty Loft thelibertyloft.com