EXCERPT
That the president and his team chose Union Station as the centerpiece of their final pitch to voters illustrates how little they understand America’s anger.
Empty windows; darkened doorways; padlocked entrances. The ghosts of a downtown mall haunt Union Station’s corridors, while outside in the park and across the street, filthy sleeping bags and meticulously curated piles of garbage mark the vestiges of men and women long since lost to drugs and madness.
This is the setting for President Joe Biden’s final-week campaign speech: The focused epicenter of America’s urban decline, where once bustling and beautiful spaces have been lost to crime, drugs, and the mentally ill.
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The capital train station will be cleaned up in time for Wednesday’s speech. By the late morning, it was already more heavily and closely policed than it had been in nearly three years.
But just like the speech he’ll give, Wednesday’s clean-up will just paper over the wounds in our communities—and voters know it.
Christopher Bedford is the executive editor of the upcoming magazine, Common Sense. Follow him on Twitter.
Originally published in The Federalist.