What explains Biden’s chameleon-like transformation?

Michael Barone:

“…How to explain Joe Biden’s ideological transformation over the years? Perhaps it’s the same as the explanation of why the chameleon’s complexion changes when he moves from desert to forest: adaptation to local terrain.

About the Biden transformation, there can be no question. The senator who opposed government financing of abortions for 30-some years now supports it up through the ninth month of pregnancy.

The Judiciary Committee chairman who sponsored and bragged about the tough provisions of the 1994 crime bill now decries systemic racism and echoes almost the entire Black Lives Matter mantra.

The politician who supported the welfare reform bill that Speaker Newt Gingrich kept pressing until Bill Clinton, facing reelection, decided to sign it in 1996, has now concocted “COVID relief” legislation that includes multiple thousand-dollar payments to single mothers with no work requirements.

Biden came to public office in the 1965-75 decade, when violent crime and welfare dependency roughly tripled, and as a senator, supported measures to reverse those trends and reduce the ensuing ill effects, which were particularly devastating in America’s black neighborhoods.

As a presidential candidate in 2019 and 2020, and as president now, however, Biden is supporting policies that threaten to recreate that vicious cycle. Murders are skyrocketing at a rate exceeding 1965-75 and as the immediate need for welfare payments seems minimal given falling unemployment levels as COVID-19 restrictions fade…”