Politico recently quoted a Biden official (who insisted on anonymity) about how the present administration may have moved too far to the left. Joe Biden and his staff should admit that “well-meaning ideas have gone too far and we need a sensible approach.”

One can’t blame Biden’s people for noticing the obvious about his failed policies. Our president is certainly not getting high grades in polls for his handling of the economy, surging crime, coddling left-wing rioters, or creating dangerously open borders. Biden’s catastrophic border policy has filled American cities with more than 10 million (and still counting) illegal aliens and flooded the country with fentanyl and other noxious drugs.

Biden’s decision to tack left has extended his political career, even when he’s no longer capable of exercising his office.

Despite these problems, Biden’s rush to the woke left may be the cleverest thing he’s done as president. It’s kept him competitive in a presidential race in which he’s being outmatched in just about every way by a more vigorous and less demented opponent. Unlike Trump, Biden cannot draw 100,000 cheering spectators to a speaking event. But then one can’t blame those who have no interest in hearing Biden mumble canned speeches over his teleprompter before stumbling down the steps of the podium.

Still, things are not turning out as one might have expected, given these disparities. In a race against an adversary who was a much more successful president than his doddering successor, Biden is actually ahead by two percentage points in some reliable polls. How can that be? Has Trump’s rude behavior and his tendency to shoot from the hip kept him from opening up a lead?

Why is Biden better liked than his behavior would warrant? He’s certainly made nasty remarks about Republicans, the white race, and journalists who ask him unscheduled questions. But his tactlessness and rants have done little to reduce his likeability among voters or his reputation for defending “democracy.” That brings us to the ways in which the corporate press has depicted the two candidates. Only an impassioned Democratic partisan could not have noticed how much more sympathetically the media have treated Biden than his rival. They’ve moved mountains to make Biden seem far more likeable than the Bad Orange Man.

Although Joe has never been a principled or intelligent statesman, he has been a pliable party politician. He’s always done what his party has required, whether that meant palling around with Southern segregationists, voting for a crime bill that incarcerated lots of young black men, or scolding Republican judicial nominees for not endorsing abortion rights and affirmative action.

In 2020, Biden’s handlers arranged for his benefit a well-designed campaign. The Democratic National Committee and its lapdog media depicted their guy as a unifier and moderate, but at the same time Biden called for open borders and a socially left-wing agenda. While the appeals to unity during the campaign and in Biden’s inaugural address were aimed at independent voters, his more radical statements were intended for the Democrats’ leftist base. That base includes all influential groups on the left, like the media, Hollywood, academia, and public administration.

Biden as president has done exactly what those groups want. He pays homage to all the alphabet people and never deviates in his policy and rhetoric from the cultural left. This direction may have hurt this country socially, morally, and materially, but it has provided Biden with powerful defenders and filthy-rich donors.

While Biden and his weaponized Justice Department, corrupt Democratic judges, and utterly subservient district attorneys practice the most blatant lawfare imaginable against Trump and his supporters, the legacy media have dutifully covered for them. Media loyalists both defend the administration and blacken the reputations of Biden’s opponents. They’ve also covered for Joe’s debauched criminal son, whose malodorous deals the elder Biden may well have promoted.

If Biden has nominated some genuinely weird wokesters to high posts, those moves have not hurt him politically. They’ve just made him more appealing to his base.

Biden’s decision to tack left has extended his political career, even when he’s no longer capable of exercising his office. He never disappoints leftist elites, who look after Biden’s public relations and fill his campaign coffers with hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s possible that some of these well-heeled and influential supporters would be assisting Biden in any case because of their hatred for Trump and his MAGA base. But Biden’s predictably leftist politics have undoubtedly sweetened this relationship.

His repeated affirmation of a leftist agenda must sound like music to this base. And they’d be fools to think that Joe is about to take away their fortunes, no matter what he says about raising taxes on the rich. Biden’s administration has done all it could to reward wealthy donors with Green New Deal patronage and generous tax breaks for electronic media handmaidens. If Biden does raise corporate tax rates, his plutocratic buds won’t be inconvenienced. They’ll take that added cost out of their workers’ salaries or else pass it on to consumers. That’s how woke capitalism works.