The Left wants Joe Biden to govern as if the recent election had gone very differently. The Justice Democrats and other far-left groups are circulating a memo blaming their party's center for the defeats and insisting on radical change.

They want Biden to treat his nail-biter, no-coattails victory as a mandate to implement unpopular progressive ideas. They want their party to embrace and profit from the "profoundly compelling economic message" of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and to make the linking of "racism and class conflict" into the central plank of the party's platform, supposedly to broaden their appeal to Hispanic voters.

The electorate could have endorsed these ideas and the associated policy changes — slavery reparations, the Green New Deal, Medicare for all, abolition of right-to-work, reparations for slavery, or even a national defunding of the police. Voters could have expanded Democrats' House majority and handed them Senate control like most people expected.

Instead, they elected Biden by such a razor-thin margin that the flip of about 24,000 votes from Biden to President Trump in three states could have changed the election's outcome. And they punished Democrats down-ballot. Voters not only deprived Democrats of the ability to redistrict their way to a permanent House majority and pack the Supreme Court, but they very nearly gave Republicans a House majority. Leftists are unlikely to get what they want, and unfortunately, that means violence is likely.

Businesses in major cities didn't board up their storefronts ahead of Election Day because they feared militia groups or "Proud Boys" or other right-wing rabble-rousers, let alone Trump supporters. They feared what the Left would do in the event of a loss.

Their storefront glass got a reprieve when Biden won the election. But as long as Biden keeps his promise to unify and governs based on what the party balance of the new Congress makes possible, the Left's policy agenda is dead on arrival. That's like losing an election in slow motion, and the far Left is already waking up to this.

Increasingly intolerant of opposition, radicalized, and willing to resort to street violence, the Left is on the march. Biden's victory has not prevented organizations such as antifa and Black Lives Matter, among others, from extending the violent summer — this summer's "mostly peaceful" protests included literally hundreds of violent protests — into a violent fall.

With Biden's win, one would expect pro-Trump protesters in a liberal place like Washington, D.C., to become merely the butt of jokes — the object of wry smiles and even some pity among local liberals. Unfortunately, that is not so. Their mere presence this past weekend was enough to trigger left-wing agitators into attacking them in the streets.

This is going to be the norm, not the exception. So it is somewhat dispiriting to see Biden's transition team issue a very late and tepid condemnation of "all acts of violence" that focuses mostly on far-right-wing groups. Sure, the far Right may be offensive, but it didn't incinerate Minneapolis, Portland, or Kenosha. If we're worried about violence, Biden needs to put the finger where it hurts and start calling out a political Left that seems increasingly incapable of taking offense without beating someone up or setting a building on fire.

If Biden really wants to unify the country and bring back a feeling of normalcy to its politics, he must do better than this. He has now won the election, and he may not even run for reelection. So what an excellent opportunity to call out the extremists in his own party. This is the time for Biden to have his "Sister Souljah" moment. If Biden condemns the rash of left-wing violence in this country, he can help neutralize the "rioter's veto," ease political tensions, engender goodwill and even make his Democratic Party much less unattractive to a large number of the voters who have been abandoning it.

The Washington Examiner

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