The Life and Times of a 21-Year-Old Biden Superfan

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Thursday, September 07, 2023

 

May I introduce you to Victor Shi, a 21-year-old UCLA student and Joe Biden Superfan who is currently serving as an avatar for one of the creepiest figures in our contemporary partisan politics: the eloquent, well-educated young man who, of his own free will and enthusiasm, has inexplicably elected to become a brain-dead mouthpiece for an octogenarian politician to whom he has no obvious connection whatsoever.

 

Victor, who “began his time in politics in eighth grade” and was “the youngest delegate for Joe Biden to the DNC Convention in 2020 at age seventeen,” is so fervently committed to President Biden that he has chosen to spend his early 20s tweeting about the man in a manner that would have made even the cowed sycophants of Stalin’s inner circle blush. All day, every day, Victor lauds the president before his 246,000 followers. “People love President Biden,” Victor wrote on Saturday. “This is the president we all need & deserve.” Why? Isn’t it obvious? Because Biden is “bringing back leadership.” Because “his empathy, compassion, and kindness are his superpowers — and that’s why people love him.” Because “every day, President Biden sets an example for all of us.” Because “President Biden is one of us & THIS is why we love him.” Because “President Biden is a man of our time & is the leader we need.” Because he’s married to “our amazing First Lady.”

 

Wow!

 

Victor is a world-class evangelist. Deploying his plain-spoken-but-enthusiastic style — like all normal Americans, he says things such as “Holy sh**. Dark Brandon just emerged again” and calls his interlocutors “folks” — Victor runs around the United States being recognized on planes and talking to total strangers about the glories of the commander in chief. The results are Madoffesque. In the last week alone, Victor has convinced a “moderate” who was “skeptical about President Biden at first” to believe that “there’s no one better than President Biden.” (Note the scale of this achievement: Victor’s new friend now believes that there is no one better, anywhere!) He has chatted with a woman “who didn’t know about President Biden’s accomplishments at the start of our convo,” but who, “by the end,” told Victor “how amazed she was” and confirmed that “she will proudly vote for President Biden in 2024.” (One conversation, and she went from indifference to being “amazed” and “proud” — all without the use of thumb screws!) And, perhaps most impressively of all, he has managed to convert his “lifelong Republican” father into a Democratic voter for the third time in four months. In June, Victor’s dad informed him that he’d “had enough of Donald Trump” and would be “voting for Joe Biden in 2024.” Remarkably, this transformation also happened in early August, when Victor’s dad decided that, because of Trump’s indictment, he’d now be “voting for Joe Biden in 2024,” and last weekend, when Victor’s dad once again informed him “by the end of our conversation” that he would be voting for Biden — this time as a result of his being “blown away by his management of the economy” and his successes in lowering “the price of pharmaceutical drugs.” Any chump can win a relative over once. But three times in a row — and of the same thing in each case? That takes real talent.

 

If Victor’s dad is ever tempted back into the Republican fold, Victor will be there to prevent the relapse — even if, to achieve this, he has to reprogram what’s available on TV. “I don’t know how many times it will take before the media gives President Biden the coverage & credit he deserves for not only being an amazing human but being a true leader, helping ALL Americans,” Victor confessed last weekend. But, worry not, for he’ll be watching obsessively until talk of Biden’s empathy, compassion, kindness, amazing humanity, and unparalleled example are all that is aired. Such is his commitment to this presidency that even MSNBC isn’t pure enough for Victor. “Anyone who tuned into the speech” that Biden gave on Labor Day, he complained, “would’ve heard a president who is doing so much to help the backbone of our country.” But, incredibly, MSNBC didn’t even show it! Worse still: The same channel had the temerity to cover people whom Victor dislikes instead. Yesterday, Victor complained that Ari Melber treated Bill Maher “as if he were a legitimate person.” “Do better!” he enjoined. And that’s not the worst of it. After Mitch McConnell froze up during a press availability, Victor complained that McConnell’s return to the Senate dominated “ALL of the cable networks” — which, naturally, represented an unforgivable missed opportunity to show Biden “speaking about what he’s doing to help ALL Americans.” Victor isn’t against the discussion of Republicans per se, of course: “I’m all for platforming the other side, he confirmed on Sunday. “A healthy democracy requires it.” It’s just that, in practice, Republicans never qualify for consideration. “To the media,” Victor wrote in the same thread as his theoretical endorsement of neutrality: “Please STOP platforming Vivek Ramaswamy. The man is unserious, wants to destroy democracy, & peddles in conspiracy theories & lies for attention.” “Vivek,” he concluded, “doesn’t deserve a single second of free airtime to spew his nonsense.”

 

Occasionally, the weight of it all gets to Victor, and he grows contemplative. “I can’t stop thinking about this image of President Biden,” he tweeted last Friday, along with an image of the president sitting alone at the White House. “A man who has done so much good for all of us, has the weight of the world on his shoulders, & doesn’t give enough credit for what he does.” Indeed, that President Biden may not in fact be as universally “loved” as Victor wishes he were represents the greatest worry in Victor’s young life. “I’ve said it many times before,” he wrote on Monday, “this is a president who is benefitting us in so many ways and is getting so many great things accomplished. But when will President Biden get 1/2 of the coverage that Trump gets?”

 

Indeed so. But don’t worry, Victor. A few thousand extra tweets, some more enthusiastic cajoling of the rotters at cable news, and a couple more years of your irrevocably lost youth, and I’m sure you’ll find the happiness you’re looking for.