Joe Biden, not the brightest bulb in the box, has unwittingly declared war on his own political base.

What else to make of his mandatory vaccine diktat for the federal workforce, which came out yesterday, demanding that 2.876 million federal workers be vaxxed for COVID, or else?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday announced sweeping new pandemic requirements aimed at boosting vaccination rates for millions of federal workers and contractors as he lamented the "American tragedy" of rising-yet-preventable deaths among the unvaccinated.

Federal workers will be required to sign forms attesting they've been vaccinated against the coronavirus or else comply with new rules on mandatory masking, weekly testing, distancing and more. The strict new guidelines are aimed at increasing sluggish vaccination rates among the huge number of Americans who draw federal paychecks — and to set an example for private employers around the country.

"Right now, too many people are dying or watching someone they love die and say, 'If I'd just got the vaccine,'" Biden said in a somber address from the East Room of the White House. "This is an American tragedy. People are dying who don't have to die."

For good measure, Biden threw in the military, too.  And federal contractors.

Hear that?  Get vaxxed, or Biden will make your life miserable. 

The unvaccinated will have to put up with regular testing, required masking and social distancing, and they will be barred from official travel. Similar rules will be applied to federal contractors.

That's bad news for the reportedly 40% of the federal workforce that refuses to get vaccinated.

And who might these targeted people be?  Well, the federal workforce and the military both include a higher proportion of minorities, particularly black people, over the civilian population. 

According to FedWeek, citing a 2016 study, 35.3% of the 2-million-plus federal workforce is minority, which includes 18.1% black.  In the military, it's even higher.  According to Statista, citing 2018 data, among 1.3 million active-duty military members, about 30% of men are classed as minority, which includes 17% black men, and about 46% of the women are minority, which includes 29% black women.  

Blacks and minorities have some of the highest vaccine refusal rates out there.  It's not Trumpsters who are the vaccine-refusers, as the Bidenites and press have been hectoring about, and Joe has been hurling insults at; it's actually minorities.

According to this piece that ran last week in Issues & Insights, citing a study:

The states with low vaccination rates also tend to have larger minority populations. And blacks are the least likely racial or ethnic group to have been vaccinated, with Hispanics the second least likely, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

And according to a 2021 study by the RAND Corporation:

Recent polls show that Black Americans are less willing than Americans of other races or ethnicities to be vaccinated for COVID-19. These lower vaccination rates among Black Americans would further widen COVID-19 inequities in diagnosis, hospitalization, and mortality. 

Military Times also reported a study with similar figures:

Black service members were least likely to choose to receive the COVID-19 vaccination, as well as female service members and those with lower ranks and education levels. Research surveying the civilian population also suggests high rates of vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans.

Bother Biden much that maybe they won't care for this kind of coercion?  Or that he's on a collision course with a critical part of his political base?

Vaccine refusal does have a lot of different reasons — from true vaccine hesitancy, to bona fide anti-vax sentiment, to distrust of the government (presumably, the federal workforce would know), to a desire to see the FDA fully approve the experimental vaccine first, to religious or moral objections to how the vaccine was made using fetal-derived stem cells, to already having had COVID and therefore having natural immunities, to being pregnant and not wanting to harm the baby, to not wanting to open the door to developing heart problems after getting the vaccine, to inability to sue manufacturers for any post-vaccine medical issues, to having a history of bad reactions to vaccines. 

There are all kinds of reasons, reasonable and unreasonable, all of them individual, and many resisters quite well informed, according to one MIT study. (There's also this).

Not a problem to Joe, though, who wants his vaccine "numbers" in line with the central planning goal, and too bad about the views of the federal workforce.

And sure enough, his vax-or-else diktat is already triggering opposition.

Here's the reliably pro-Democrat American Postal Workers Union:

"Maintaining the health and safety of our members is of paramount importance. While the APWU leadership continues to encourage postal workers to voluntarily get vaccinated, it is not the role of the federal government to mandate vaccinations for the employees we represent," the union's official statement reads. "Issues related to vaccinations and testing for COVID-19 in the workplace must be negotiated with the APWU. At this time the APWU opposes the mandating of COVID-19 vaccinations in relation to U.S. postal workers."

Here's a warning from an even bigger federal workers' union:

The largest union representing federal workers, the American Federation of Government Employees, already served notice it expects any changes to working conditions will be "properly negotiated with our bargaining units prior to implementation."

All this, while private sector companies (which are having trouble keeping workers with all the generous COVID unemployment benefits) don't want to get involved with this sort of Bidenite central-planner compulsion.  According to the AP:

[F]ewer than 10 percent of employers have said they intend to require all employees to be vaccinated, based on periodic surveys by the research firm Gartner.

That's a heckuva battle he's started with some of the most loyal members of his political base.  Obviously, he's doing it because he lacks persuasive capacities, which is hard to do when you're doddering and have only a phony as a vice presidential sidekick. 

This won't end well for him.  To coerce instead of persuade, just because you can, isn't going to go down well with anyone, minority or non-minority.  That he's targeted his most important political base, the one that put him into power from his primary days in South Carolina, rather speaks to some amazing political stupidity.

Republicans to black voters in 2022?  Welcome aboard.

Image: USA Today video screen shot, via shareable YouTube.

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