•  wet_lettuce   ( @wet_lettuce@beehaw.org ) 
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    1 year ago

    My hot take:

    Biden has been the best President we’ve had in 30 years.

    He’s exactly who we needed when we got him. He got us out of Afghanistan. As much as a debacle as it was, he not Trump and not Obama pulled us out. His deft handling of the Ukrainian conflict where he used soft-power and influence to let the EU and NATO members come to decision to enact the super harsh sanctions themselves. Knowing that if the US pressed, they’d resist. It had to be their decision. He’s continued to say and do all of the right things. His attempt to forgive student loans his huge. Some of the measures worked even if all of them didn’t. He got the most meaningful infrastructure bill passed that I’ve ever witness. Neither Trump nor Obama could make it happen and Biden did it with a split Congress That infrastructure bill was also the most meaningful environment legislation that we’ve ever had That bill also paves the way for significant investment in our broad-band across the country Passed the Safer Communities Act …actual gun related legislation since the Brady bill. Again, with a split congress. Gave us our first public defender SCOTUS justice. This might not seem like a big deal but I think its pretty significant given the amount of case law that exists that, so far, hasn’t had a public defenders ‘say’ in it.

    I could go on but I gotta go eat dinner.

    People want to shit on Biden, but I actually like him. He’s not perfect, but he’s been insanely effective given everything he walked in to. Including him diligently and quietly rebolstering the executive branches that were gutted and had people leaving in droves in the last admin. Eg the Department of State. He’s assigned quality folks into key roles and its making a difference.

    I voted for him without hesitation because well, the alternative was terrifying, but I was not expecting much from him at all. He’s surprised me.

    edit: I literally can’t figure out how to make this a list. Sorry for the wordblob.

    • Very well argued. This is quite unrelated but just out of interest, how realistic do you see constitutional reform in the US? Because to me as an outsider, that seems to me to be what US politics sorely needs rn. Is there appetite for it among the electorate? Among the Dems? Could it be conceivably carried out?

      • We’re going to find out. Governor Newsom just initiated the 28th amendment to tackle the shortcomings of the 2nd.

        Meanwhile the ERA is also creeping closer after decades, so my hope is sufficiently dampened.

      • Right now? No I honestly don’t see a way for constitutional reform. I guess I would ask: what would the amendment be?

        Things that would move the needle on helping this country move forward require nuance and compromise. None of our elected officials, at least publicly, have shown an appetite for that. Fairly simple things get highly polarized quickly. Even things that we overwhelmingly agree on as Americans: the overwhelming majority of Americans were pissed about overturning Roe v. Wade, but congress has done nothing to codify those rights.

        There isn’t enough “working across the aisle” anymore. I saw a blog post that was showing previous election maps and famous congressional votes. It’s weird to see which states went to which party or how many Republicans voted for the Brady bill/assault weapons ban (63-37 in the Senate and 238 - 187 in the House–with quite a bit of bipartisan support). That would be a strictly party line vote. Hell, if it did a fraction of what that bill did, it would be a strictly party line vote.

        I think we, as citizens, need to start demanding compromise from our representatives. We should expect nuanced discussions and reward representatives that change position when new information arises… but that requires us, as citizens, to do all of these things as well.

  • It’s funny how we all forget that JB ran as a “place holder” candidate to begin with and said he had no desire or intention to run for a second term. The thought was that by now one of the other primary candidates (Klobachar, Harris and Buttigieg) would have gotten tapped and run on Biden’s behest. There was clearly a king maker deal cut so that they would all drop out and throw their support behind him to cut off Sanders momentum. They combined this with a media “bombshell” that Clyburn backed Biden over Sanders, after telegraphing support for Sanders previously. This combination of factors was snowballed into a media blitz that never let up and pushed Biden to the top seemingly by just repeating itself ad nauseam.

    Still though, the tap for the next in line never came and the old guard stays in place again just by merely having a pulse. Dems have once again squandered full control and couldn’t cobble together any protections from a clear and present danger in radicalized right political zealots. We could all argue about the spoilers and that we couldn’t re-do the filibuster but I’m sure a couple million could have been back channeled to make that happen. They didn’t want it to.

    At the knifes edge is exactly where they want us to be and they will take full fascism over even moderate movement toward actual implemented progressive policy. Now they will tell you up and down that they want things like student loan forgiveness or clean energy policy with teeth, but they will never implement it in a way that ensures it’s survival. It’s just platitudes that are built to fail and “vote for us harder and we’ll get it done next time.”

    I’m so tired of this political system where we’ve been held hostage for the better part of 2 decades. All the while our hopes for a meaningful America just slips further by and we’re powerless to stop it. The only option we’re presented is to press a pause button for 4 years so that we can have permission to feel ok until the election starts again in 2 years. I would take a rouge sentient AI resting control of the country and threatening our nuclear destruction, unless we do as were told, over this. At least then it would probably make at least some meaningful strides to correcting the course of our nihilistic self destruction.

    • Dems have once again squandered full control and couldn’t cobble together any protections from a clear and present danger in radicalized right political zealots.

      The mistake lies in thinking that they want to. One can believe they are bumbling fools who trip over their own feet for only so many generations before it becomes apparent that the agenda they somehow fail to foil over and over again is actually one that they wholeheartedly embrace themselves, too.

      • Honestly I think it’s all the neo-liberal echos of Reagan. Something broke in the minds of Dem strategists and politicians when he so handily swept the entire country. For them it was a sign that the waters were rich if they could just wiggle a little more to the right economically and shake off the remaining vestigial support of Keynesian economics. Once both parties saw that you could feast on the corpse of America for decades without having to deliver anything outside of photo ops and being likable that was it.

        Maybe it’s all just that thing where people look back on George Bush and say they’d want to have a beer with him. It’s identity politics and we’re made to look through a prism at these people and see how our personalities would intertwine with theirs. I think we need to find a way to start trusting the boring and awkward candidates, or forcing our boring awkward friends to run for office. We need politicians who are visibly uncomfortable speaking at a podium.

        You’re right. The cereal can only be “Oops, all berries” so many times before you know that machine was built to only make berries and lie about it.

        • Maybe. The Democrats had already spent decades helping to kill the labor movement, build up the carceral state, and rampage across the world in imperial war-making prior to Reagan. So while he may have been a catalyst for further open embrace of reactionary ideology (see: Clinton), I can’t quite buy that he was the absolute beginning of it.

        • To quote Douglas Adams

          it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

    • That’s not a fair assessment. The Democrats have not had a solid majority in both houses of Congress and the presidency at the same time in a long time. Other than the promises they make, there is very little evidence of what they would do if there wasn’t any Republican obstruction to stop them. They could very well do everything they say they’ll do, for all we know.

      As for Sanders, I’m not inclined to believe conspiracy theories about him. Look around you; this country is thoroughly right-wing. The vast majority of Americans are reflexively suspicious of avowed leftists like Sanders. He was never going to win the presidential primary, with or without shenanigans.

      • I believe it to be a fair assessment, and not because of my feelings or desire for change, but simply because I (and apparently some others further up this thread) saw basically the same thing happen.

        I’ve worked closely enough to the Dem party/staffers/organizers that I’ve seen the same pandering play out locally, statewide and nationally in much the same way. It’s mainly about playing ball to keep your funding streams up and to fill your little black book for the next cycles war chest. Certainly, some politicians are more genuine than others in the party but for the majority politics comes to be little more than moves to jostle purse strings from PACs, donors and the party itself. At the end of the day there’s endless things that Dems could be doing to fight back against the takeovers of state level governments, school boards, appointee positions and the like, but they aren’t.

        We can say “but we’re the one’s who fight the good fight” but there’s no keeping the genie in the bottle on the GOP side and Biden should have pushed his powers to the limit to gain every protection or have the courts limit his and future presidents power as a guardrail.

        There certainly is always a narrative around these events, but Sanders was consistently polling as the most well liked politician in America for years around that time. There’s no conspiracy around the ways that coverage began slanting as standings solidified, and every other contender in the race threw their support behind Biden (including Warren, which left everyone scratching their head.) Here’s another article about MSNBC. If your actually interested that one has all of the measured instances laid out in google docs you can look at. I don’t know any people alleging that the votes were manipulated in terms of ballot stuffing or anything, so if you mean that by conspiracy then I’d have to agree with you there.

        Your assessment of political leanings in America also seems to be very skewed and there’s a graph there that shows Dem/left sentiment at its highest point since 2008 during those primaries. Although it does seem to be ticking back conservative, but when Joe Biden still chooses to punch left on dem socialists after a failed insurrection that’s not much of a surprise.

        • Your opinions lean pretty heavily on the findings of pollsters. 2016 taught us all not to listen to pollsters. Only the actual elections paint an accurate picture of US politics, and, well, there are still plenty of Republicans in office.

          As for left sentiment being at its highest point since 2008, don’t expect that to last. The economy is in the tank now, and people tend to vote hard right when they’re hurting for money. They are of course exceedingly unwise to expect Republicans to solve their financial problems, but that’s American voters for you.

          • LOL, no they don’t? Your rehashed conclusion is:

            • “after 2016 all polls are wrong because Hillary lost” K…
            • “only elections show the outcome of elections” how is that relevant at all to the main point of opinion manipulation by the media?
            • The 2008 part you reference incorrectly because you didn’t understand the context and clearly couldn’t trouble yourself with looking at any of the supporting material I provided.
            • Funnily you re-support the conclusion I came to and say that American voters can be easily swayed, despite what might be in their best interests. <—Proving my point

            Overall, you’ve wasted both our time and shown that you don’t really want to discuss anything in good faith.

            Sweet. That’s a wrap for me.

      • Yeah, in general, the US is definitely right wing. The US Democrats are, at best, center right for most of the US’s peers, with the Republicans being what they would call their Fascist parties.

  • Those same Americans will just ignore that there are other candidates and it’ll be yet another presidential election where 49% of voters claim that they don’t really support the person they vote for, and that you have to do the same as a moral imperative.

    And, as it’s been since Reagan, no matter who we elect we’ll only get conservative outcomes.

    • and that you have to do the same as a moral imperative

      Railing against this fact doesn’t magically make it untrue. Not voting for the lesser evil means you don’t care which evil wins. If you legitimately think GOP rule isn’t any worse than Dem rule, then by all means don’t vote or vote third party. But if you think Christian fascism + neoliberalism is worse than just neoliberalism, then once the primaries are over you need to vote accordingly. Voter disenfranchisement is an age-old tactic you’re comment is falling right into.

      And I say this all as a market socialist, so don’t for a second think I like the Dems

      • so don’t for a second think I like the Dems

        I’d hope you wouldn’t. On any issue that matters to their voters they’re effectively no different than Republicans. The minimum wage/living wages, housing scarcity, war (and endless funding for it), cost-prohibitive education and health care, equality for queer people, militarization of police, fascism (or ignoring it), gun control, and oddly, we can now add abortion to the list after their response to Roe repeal was to fundraise. (Even though they had control of Congress and the presidency.) They did make a cool 80 million, though, so that’s something: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-pull-in-80-million-following-supreme-court-ruling-on-roe

        I can’t convince myself that voting Democrat is a moral action anymore. That they say nicer things doesn’t matter much when they’re voting records and policies are conservative and regressive. Republicans may stab me in the back but Democrats stab me in the front.

        I need more than pretty speeches and broken promises, and really, so does this country.

        • You’re not voting for Dems, you’re voting to keep Reps out. “My vote won’t help things appreciably progress so instead I’m gonna let things deteriorate” is the argument you’re making. People’s rights are getting stripped because of this kind of apathy

          • Respectfully, you just watched women lose the right to abortion a year ago when Democrats had the presidency and control of Congress. Their response was to use it to raise money, not act in any way to stop it or create positive change.

            There are so many more examples of this too.

            You voted for deterioration, and so did I. That’s not a matter of opinion, but of historical record.

            • I’m not sure if you’re just ignorant of the topics you’re bringing up or are actually being disingenuous, but I’m going to act as if you’re being genuine for the sake of other people reading this.

              Women lost abortion because R senators fucked with the system while Obama was in office and then pushed another SCOTUS appointment through while Trump was in office. Repealing RvW had literally nothing to do with who was sitting in the oval office and everything to do with Rs abusing the lack of a D supermajority to put corrupt judges on the SCOTUS. With that knowledge taken into consideration here, your argument boils down to “Rs abused the system while a minority and Ds didnt have a supermajority to stop it, therefore I don’t care if Rs gain a majority. Things couldn’t be done to stop the abusers before so idc if the abusers get more power.”

              I voted against the US moving towards A Handmaid’s Tale; you’re arguing for who cares if it moves towards A Handmaid’s Tale

            • Women lost the right to abortion, because of the previous administrations actions and ability to install judges to the federal courts, at all levels, but specifically at the SCOTUS level. Though it alsorequired that cases make it through the federal courts too.

          •  hglman   ( @hglman@lemmy.ml ) 
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            21 year ago

            Here’s the trick, if you keep voting dem, you will keep getting worse, Republicans. It’s a cycle that cannot be fixed by voting for the democratic party. The reality is action beyond voting is necessary. But if voting is all we have, then the only path is to attempt to vote for something else, even if it means losing, because losing will happen anyway. The future Republicans will be worse, and the delay by a few years will be moot.

            • Here’s the trick, if you keep voting dem, you will keep getting worse, Republicans

              Completely nonsensical. Republicans have gotten worse because their bid to court the south and unite all Christian denominations under abortion was successful. It’s completely independent from Dems.

              The reality is that voting for Dems in federal elections is currently the only option available for fighting Christian nationalists getting voted into federal office. Other options are much more available at the state and local levels

              But if voting is all we have, then the only path is to attempt to vote for something else, even if it means losing, because losing will happen anyway.

              Yea sorry to burst your bubble but I’m not interested in helping fascists takeover the country. This kind of accelerationist argument only helps the people trying to keep pushing the Overton window to the right. It’s another form of disenfranchisement

  •  sudo   ( @sudo@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) 
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    1 year ago

    ‘Historic’ number of people don’t want this thing happening for the first time to happen.

    Wow, such history!

    Hopefully Desantis and Trump spend much of their money, time, and effort shitting all over one another to lessen the chance of fascist scum finding their way back into the Whitehouse.

  • Biden has done a better job than I expected, but he should clearly retire. I think this is a huge, and almost necessary opportunity for Democrats. Incumbents are way more likely to get reelected. Since Trump has pissed off too many people, and he’ll sabotage any other front runners for his party.

    Wouldn’t it make sense to get someone younger and a little bolder in now for the Dema? They have a very strong likelihood to win this round, and then they’ll be the incumbents next term. We could finally replace some garbage supreme court members.

  •  bdiddy   ( @bdiddy@lemmy.one ) 
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    1 year ago

    As a representative democracy we are doing it wrong when none of the candidates represent the majority. They represent business and special interests that’s it.

    That being said republicans are in the pockets of the most backwards ass religious folks… So that’s is definitely worse when they continue to shit on our constitution for that group.

    So sleepy Joe it is.

    • It’s because the election system is First Past the Post. If they changed it to Ranked Choice Voting, all candidates from both primaries (plus independents) could run in the election and it would be up to the public to decide which of them is best, with their vote going to a fallback candidate if their favourite doesn’t win.