People aren’t even giving him crediting for beating Medicare!
/s
In all seriousness though, I just can’t understand how someone can watch the 2020 debate and 2024 debate, and say the only thing wrong with Biden was his voice…
Like, he wasn’t great in 2020, but 2024 made it sound like Obama in comparison.
Funny the way you mentioned Obama because you are spot on.
Obama was by far the best US president in recent history and maybe ever. Then the Dems just went like OK we’ll never ever do something like that again.
Obama was by far the best US president in recent history and maybe ever. Then the Dems just went like OK we’ll never ever do something like that again.
Here’s what I told someone else:
The Dems lost the house of representatives in Obama’s years 3 and 4. Again in years 5 and 6. And then lost both the house of representatives and the Senate in Obama’s years 7 and 8.
You need more than just the president. They lost in 3 out of 4 of Obama’s cycles.
Left voters showed up to vote for him and then he basically abandoned the coalition he formed. He had a super majority and did like one, watered down Republican healthcare policy. He should’ve kept up the organizations and email lists he utilized to get into office to keep up the pressure on Congress in midterm elections, but that basically stopped as soon as he became President. He’s not unusual in that regard, every President except for Trump, does this. But it’s especially annoying for Obama because he had the closest to a broad coalition in recent history and it got him a super majority.
Bernie is basically the only Presidential candidate who has shown any awareness of how bottom up coalitions are used, not just to get one into office, but to continue to pressure with the power of the people. That’s why socialists were excited for him. Because he would’ve been an organizer-in-chief. Every other politician rules the same liberal way: a mixture of standard operating procedures and backroom deals, private talks, etc. Trump does a bit of the organizing thing, too, makes good use of the bully pulpit, and keeps up his movement between election cycles, but mostly to keep himself in power and enrich himself from them. Still, he’s done a similar thing of gotten a lot of non-voters to show up, and pushed the party right. Democrats could do the same thing, and actually push the party left if they wanted to try, instead of showing open contempt for leftists, but it’s admittedly harder because you’d have to fight the corporate owned media and pass legislation to help people.
Ok Obama and ACA (or more broadly his first two years). He likely reached out for two reasons. One: he wanted to mend the divisions after Bush’s disastrous wars. Get the country unified and back on track and all that jazz. Two: any intelligent candidate knows it’s unlikely they’re going to have control of Congress for all eight years, so he wanted to come off as reasonable and could be worked with, so that he could still accomplish things later in his presidency. I barely blame him for that. Who knew that the GOP was going to explode and become obstructionist to that degree because a half black man got elected. (BTW Biden learned from that and said nuts to it, he’s doing what needs to be done. Biden ran center, but is acting left. Let’s see if it costs him the election when left voters don’t turn out.)
And what was the thanks for the most progressive healthcare legislation? He lost control for the next 6 years. And then the GOP tried their hardest to overturn it. (So no, not a watered down Republican healthcare policy. They fucking hate it.)
pressure with the power of the people
It’s congress. The house or reps and the senate. It’s not the people, it’s congress. That’s why Obama couldn’t do much for his last 6 years. He lost control of the house of reps and the senate.
And to further prove this point, congress even shut down the fucking government under obama. That’s where the power is. Bernie or obama or bill clinton, doesn’t fucking matter. It’s CONGRESS.
Democrats could do the same thing,
Dems need all 3 of presidency, house of reps, and senate to pass anything. They’ve had all 3 for 4 years of the last 24 years. And when they don’t have that they need to reach across the aisle to do something as basic as pass a budget.
The GOP needs only one of those to block literally everything. That’s mostly what the GOP wants to do: Block progress. Hit the big giant pause button on society. And they can do that with only 1 of those, which they’ve had for 20 years of the least 24 years.
That’s the unfortunate reality of progress. Progress takes all 3 houses. Progress takes time, effort, and hard work.
Stagnation (or regression) requires fuck all.
So no, the Dems can’t go left like the GOP goes right. If you want things to go left, then you need to give Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.
The problem is even when they have control they can barely do anything because of dumb rules like the filibuster, or blue dog senators.
Biden also doesn’t act very left. He’s passed a couple good pieces of legislation, but he doesn’t support popular movements like labor strikes and prefers to make backroom deals (which residues their power for the future organizing), and he’s very staunchly pro genocide for some reason, and been as hard on the border as Trump. He’s just not as fascist as Trump but don’t let the skewed Overton Window deceive you. He’s a centrist moderate Democrat, like an Obama who learned to stop trying to reason with Republicans earlier and picked a few really good people for some cabinet positions (not Blinken, but like for the Secretary of the Interior BLM or FTC) and many meh people for others.
Maven (famous)
givesomefucks