Joe Biden, or more accurately his handlers, decided to commute the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal death row prisoners. This prompted Donald Trump to remark, “It makes no sense.” While Biden’s actions were indeed contemptible, they made great strategic sense for Democrats aiming to satisfy their core constituency.
The reasoning behind Biden’s decision had little to do with the partisan bromides served up by Democratic commentators like Jessica Tarlov, who frequently appears on Fox News. Tarlov claimed Biden was morally outraged by capital punishment and felt compelled to act before leaving office. Another Fox News contributor suggested that Biden, a devout Catholic, was influenced by the pope’s homilies on the sanctity of life.
It’s unclear why murderers who raped, tortured, and killed young girls were not also committing ‘hate crimes.’
These explanations are transparent nonsense. Biden’s half-century career in politics flatly contradicts such claims. Unlike the pope, Biden has fanatically supported abortion, including the destruction of late-term fetuses — aka empirical human beings. His crusade for the sanctity of life stops well short of his frantic efforts to please the feminist zealots who vote overwhelmingly for his party.
During his tenure in the Senate, Biden had no qualms about supporting capital punishment. In the 1990s, he championed a crime bill that included the death penalty, back when Democrats could still publicly endorse such measures. His stance shifted only after he began courting figures like Ayanna Pressley and other prominent voices from the progressive left.
Biden’s current stance on capital punishment does not reflect a long-standing, principled defense of life. Instead, it appears to be a calculated move to appease his party’s leftist base, which often links capital punishment to systemic racism and anti-black discrimination. The handmaiden media’s portrayal of Biden as a lifelong opponent of the death penalty is blatantly misleading. He only adopted this position while campaigning for president in 2020, by which time he was trying to align with his party’s increasingly radicalized base.
One pressing question is why Biden commuted the sentences of only 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates. The media has suggested that the remaining three prisoners committed crimes more heinous than the others, despite the fact that most of the 37 were also convicted of horrific, sadistic murders. If Biden truly opposes capital punishment on principle, as his defenders insist, why would he make those three exceptions? A consistent opponent of what he considers cruel punishment would presumably have commuted the sentences of everyone on death row.
This distinction lacks any moral justification but clearly serves a political purpose. Not all commutations carried the same value for the Democratic Party. Those excluded from commutation reportedly engaged in acts of terrorism or committed “hate crimes.” Among them are Robert Bowers, a white nationalist who in 2018 killed 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, who in 2015 murdered nine black parishioners during a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a Chechen responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured 264 others. All remain on death row.
Pardon me for doubting the reasons that Biden’s spokespersons gave for these exceptions. It’s unclear why murderers who raped, tortured, and killed young girls were not also committing “hate crimes.” While the Boston Marathon bombing might fit the definition of terrorism, the actions of Bowers and Roof are arguably no worse than those of some individuals whose sentences were commuted.
Allow me to suspect the worst about Biden’s exceptions in handing out commutations. Although the crimes of those who were spared may be at least as chilling and in some cases more shocking than those of Roof and Bowers, they didn’t affect to the same degree the Democrats’ attempt to hold on to certain demographics. Those crimes were committed against Hispanics or other groups that no longer count as secure Democratic constituencies. Roof’s crimes were committed against blacks, a group that still votes overwhelmingly for Biden’s party. Fifteen of the 37 criminals commuted are black.
The Jewish vote may not be as safely Democratic as it was in the past, but the tony liberal congregation in a Pittsburgh suburb targeted by Bowers is presumably heavily Democratic and includes generous contributors to Biden’s party. If the victims were politically conservative Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, one wonders whether the killer would have been left on death row.
Needless to say, all the crimes committed by the inmates on death row are loathsome, yet some of these acts have been quite arbitrarily rated as “hate crimes” while others have not. We are justified, therefore, in asking why some abominations have been treated differently from others. Like Biden’s attempted forgiveness of college student loans, I’m led to believe that this tasteless stunt was driven by narrow Democratic Party interest, nothing else.
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