No sooner did President Biden speak in Philadelphia on Thursday than he walked his jibes back on Friday. “I don’t consider any Trump supporter to be a threat to the country,” the president opined, less than 24 hours after he took to Independence Hall to try to palm off on our noble public the claim that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” 

Mr. Biden reminds us of an aphorism from Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” — “The more I love humanity in general, the less I love men in particular.” Mr. Biden’s version is something like the opposite: Make America Great Again is a menace to America, but he likes the people who rally to the cry. Why, these “MAGA Republicans” must be a miraculous type — bogeyman today, gone tomorrow.

The Wall Street Journal likens Mr. Biden’s appearance in Philadelphia to a Trump rally. “The President has become his foe’s polarizing mirror image,” it reckons. It certainly requires no defender of President Trump to see that the Democrats are secret sharers in his effort to remain relevant. Feature the findings of Open Secrets, a transparency group that is tracking Democrats backing MAGA candidates.

Open Secrets noted in July that groups “aligned with the Democratic Party” had “spent nearly $44 million” to support MAGA candidates. More recently comes a $3 million dollar ad buy in New Hampshire. The purchaser of those ads — none other than Senator Schumer’s fundraising arm — is funding the MAGA candidate, Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, in hopes he’ll win the GOP primary against the more moderate Chuck Morse.

For Messrs. Biden and Schumer, General Bolduc might be a menace to the Republic, but his presence on the ballot would be first and foremost a help to the Democrats’ drive to hold the Senate. The Granite State incumbent against whom he would be pitted, Maggie Hassan, is vulnerable. It is up to Republicans to prop up Mr. Morse while Mr. Biden’s party backs precisely the kind of candidate he warned would betray the spirit of 1776.  

It can be said of Mr. Biden’s Democrats what he laid at the feet of the Trump Republicans — that they are working “to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.” Ask Congressman Peter Meijer of Michigan, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump and lost his primary to John Gibbs, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump and funded by the Democrats to the tune of $435,000.

In Maryland, the Democratic Governors Association spent more than a million dollars to ensure that Dan Cox won the Republican primary for governor. Mr. Cox chartered buses to the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally and tweeted “Mike Pence is a traitor.” He has been denounced by the current Republican governor, Larry Hogan. With Democratic help, Mr. Cox beat Kelly Schulz, who called him a “lying, conspiracy theorist.” Enough said.    

Mr. Biden wants it all: the imprimatur of a crisis and the soft targets of beatable candidates this fall. Like Schrödinger speculating about his cat, the president would have “MAGA Republicans” be both everywhere and nowhere, omnipresent and a null set. It all feels like so much metaphysical chicanery, but if Mr. Biden knows one thing, it is that the politics of principle are not the long suit of the Democrats. Mr. Biden’s hypocrisy is an opportunity for the GOP.