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Cont: The Biden Presidency (3)

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Tero said:
This thing will drag on. Back in the early two weeks, I thought Putin was going to get what he wants (Donbas etc.) and be done with it by now. But this is just going to slide into the North and South Korea thing, with also some fighting going on, for the remainder of Biden's term. And somehow, the Bush thing will not work here. Voters want "someone else," especially Trumpsters and independents. DeSantis?
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A bit like COVID is still having and threatening to have more world-wide effects on inflation. China's decisions are all Biden's fault, right? Republicans intentionally working to exacerbate inflation are Biden's fault, right?

Of course, Republicans are the party with propagandists that heap praise on Trump for acting to drive gas prices up and scream at Biden for acting to try to keep gasoline prices down, while heavily pushing the pretense that rising gas prices are Biden's fault because, for example, Biden stopped pushing the Keystone Pipeline. Naturally, the Keystone Pipeline would have done absolutely nothing to help with gas prices, but Republican propagandists certainly don't think that their targets care about truth or reason, just reinforcing biases that they've instilled.
 
Tero said:
This thing will drag on. Back in the early two weeks, I thought Putin was going to get what he wants (Donbas etc.) and be done with it by now. But this is just going to slide into the North and South Korea thing, with also some fighting going on, for the remainder of Biden's term. And somehow, the Bush thing will not work here. Voters want "someone else," especially Trumpsters and independents. DeSantis?
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He's established himself as Trump's Minime exactly for that purpose.
 
The differences between Trump and Biden are clearly demonstrated in today's Easter message from each:

“As we reflect today on Christ’s Resurrection, we are reminded that with faith, hope, and love — even death can be defeated,” the president tweeted. “From our family to yours, we wish you hope, health, joy, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding. Happy Easter and may God bless and keep you.”
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“Happy Easter to all including the Radical Left Maniacs who are trying everything to destroy our country,” reads a second message Trump’s PAC. “May they not succeed, but let them, nevertheless, be happy, healthy, wealthy and well!”

An Easter greeting from Trump to Leticia James:

May she remain healthy despite the fact that she will continue to drive business out of New York while at the same time keeping crime, death, and destruction in New York!” reads a message from Trump’s Save America political action committee, which also calls James a “racist.”
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I don't think I have to label which was Trump's and which was Biden's message.
 
Interview with Biden pollster & strategist John Anzalone:

A very weirdly formatted page at Politico where the first four paragraphs after the audio have nothing to do with the audio or the headline, and the actual article (or list of clip-quotes from the audio transcript, apparently) starts with the red words headlining the fifth paragraph

It's an odd mix.

He admits some facts that Democrats tend to deny, like that economic populism would be their best winning move, and that they don't just automatically electorally own the darkies, and that they're bringing their current disastrous poll situation on themselves by not doing any good or even really trying to or even talking about it or admitting that anything needs to be done at all...

But he also still clings to the bizarre notion that the President who brought us this situation (after just barely scraping through the election by about 40000 votes thanks to a virus that isn't on his side anymore) is the only person who can beat Trump, the most unpopular previous President ever. He even claims Biden's ahead of Trump in the polls now, which is the opposite of simple numerical reality. (Maybe the interview actually happened long enough ago that it was true by a couple of points at the time, but it isn't anymore, and even if it were, a couple of points isn't enough anyway; beating the Federal-scale Constitutional gerrymandering of Presidential elections calls for more like 5 points at least, and he hasn't had that in a long time.)

If he wants that bit about Biden beating (actually more like failing to lose to) Trump again to come true, he'll need to come up with a better campaign strategy next time than "We're not the Republicans", because, as he part-way admits himself, the public's response to that is increasingly "Yes you are".
 
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Not shocking, but Biden's poll numbers are quite poor, and in the gutter especially for young people

President Biden’s approval rating among younger generations of Americans has declined, according to a new Gallup poll released Thursday.

The new poll found that Biden’s approval rating among millennials and Generation Z respondents had dropped nearly 20 points since the beginning of his presidency.

Thirty-nine percent of Generation Z respondents said they approve of the job Biden has done as president, a 21-point decline from 60 percent of respondents who approved of Biden’s handling of the job when he first took office.

Forty-one percent of millennial respondents said they approve of Biden’s job as president, a 19-point decline from 60 percent of respondents who approved of his job as president through the months of January and June 2021, his first months in the White House.
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https://www.woodtv.com/news/national/biden-approval-ratings-decline-most-among-younger-generations-gallup/

A bad time to be a do-nothing president.
 
I voted for Biden, mainly because the alternative was too horrible to imagine. But he was far from my first choice among the Democratic candidates. Still, initially I began to see how he was maybe a decent choice.

Now, I’m not so sure. I think we’ll look back at our Ukraine response as way too little way too late. So many initiatives are going unfulfilled - student loan forgiveness, marijuana legislation reform, action against voter suppression, and so on. A party held hostage by the likes of Manchin and Sinema. A growing mess on the southern border. The list goes on.

If he’s the candidate in 2024 I will reluctantly vote for him - the Republican Party is dead to me, and I don’t see a third party candidate being viable. But my disappointment grows daily.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I voted for Biden, mainly because the alternative was too horrible to imagine. But he was far from my first choice among the Democratic candidates. Still, initially I began to see how he was maybe a decent choice.

Now, I’m not so sure. I think we’ll look back at our Ukraine response as way too little way too late. So many initiatives are going unfulfilled - student loan forgiveness, marijuana legislation reform, action against voter suppression, and so on. A party held hostage by the likes of Manchin and Sinema. A growing mess on the southern border. The list goes on.

If he’s the candidate in 2024 I will reluctantly vote for him - the Republican Party is dead to me, and I don’t see a third party candidate being viable. But my disappointment grows daily.
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FWIW, most of the things that you listed are very much not in Biden's hands in the first place. Rather, McConnell and the Republicans very much should be bearing such. Student loan forgiveness, you have some grounds to work with, though. Action against voter suppression is mostly in the Republicans and Manchin/Sinema court, but you could easily argue that Garland was not an ideal pick, though that's picking at the edge of the bigger picture.
 
Aridas said:
FWIW, most of the things that you listed are very much not in Biden's hands in the first place. Rather, McConnell and the Republicans very much should be bearing such. Student loan forgiveness, you have some grounds to work with, though. Action against voter suppression is mostly in the Republicans and Manchin/Sinema court, but you could easily argue that Garland was not an ideal pick, though that's picking at the edge of the bigger picture.
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Yeah, but things that are in his hands he's still passing on.

Student loans and decriminalization of marijuana are two issues where Biden could take executive action if he wanted to, yet nothing has happened.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Yeah, but things that are in his hands he's still passing on.

Student loans and decriminalization of marijuana are two issues where Biden could take executive action if he wanted to, yet nothing has happened.
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There are also other things that are in his hands along similar lines, of course, too, much as it's worth pointing out that Biden has been doing something about student loans fairly regularly, even if it's not the very big single move being advocated. I said what I said not to absolve Biden so much as to put things into perspective, though. Seemingly as a general rule, most of the American public overemphasizes the role of President and then largely ignores Congress, states, and the judges. When, for example, Biden is being criticized for not fixing marijuana legislation, that's simply not something that he can do himself and it would be very unlikely to get through the Senate under current conditions, no matter how he used his bully pulpit.
 
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Aridas said:
There are also other things that are in his hands along similar lines, of course, too. I said what I said not to absolve Biden so much as to put things into perspective, though. Seemingly as a general rule, most of the American public overemphasizes the role of President and then largely ignores Congress, states, and the judges. When, for example, Biden is being criticized for not fixing marijuana legislation, that's simply not something that he can do himself and it would be very unlikely to get through the Senate under current conditions, no matter how he used his bully pulpit.
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I would argue that there would be political value in making Republicans publicly vote against a broadly popular initiative like legalizing pot, but it's incredibly likely that many Democrats (including Biden) are themselves ideologically opposed to this and are out of step with the public.

I agree it's a tough spot to be in as a party without total control the government. One thing they can do is show the American people what they would do if it weren't for the dastardly opposition standing in the way. This isn't easy for the Democrats as there are many "moderates" in the party (and not just Manchin and Sinema) with deep conservative streaks that don't make such distinctions easy.

The party can't even do token anti-corruption stances, like banning Congress critters from profiteering through stock trading on non-public information, because too many within the Democratic party are publicly opposed to such no-brainer policies (including leadership)
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
I agree it's a tough spot to be in as a party without total control the government.
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Just to poke at this - a party absolutely should not need to be in total control of the government in a functional democracy. Requiring total control means that it's being or has been fundamentally broken. Similarly, only Manchin/Sinema being notable dissenters is, historically, already really good in terms of party unity on various issues. It's certainly frustrating, yes, but it's one of those things where it really wouldn't matter if the Republican Establishment weren't being an effective Stage 3-4 cancer to the US.
 
Aridas said:
Just to poke at this - a party absolutely should not need to be in total control of the government in a functional democracy. Requiring total control means that it's being or has been fundamentally broken. Similarly, only Manchin/Sinema being notable dissenters is, historically, already really good in terms of party unity on various issues. It's certainly frustrating, yes, but it's one of those things where it really wouldn't matter if the Republican Establishment weren't being an effective Stage 3-4 cancer to the US.
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It wouldn't matter, and it shouldn't matter, but it does matter, so what? We don't have a functional democracy. You understand the problem, so do we, where do we go from here?

I don't mean to single you out personally, I'm just frustrated that the answer to "democracy seems fundamentally broken" is merely "well it's those gosh darned Republicans to blame," as if that hasn't been entirely obvious to everyone for the last two decades. If the solution is to vote our way out, then the two people blocking the vote really are truly absolutely at fault even if the same level of obstinate derping could be ignored in other situations.
 
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Beelzebuddy said:
It wouldn't matter, and it shouldn't matter, but it does matter, so what? We don't have a functional democracy. You understand the problem, so do we, where do we go from here?

I don't mean to single you out personally, I'm just frustrated that the answer to "democracy seems fundamentally broken" is merely "well it's those gosh darned Republicans to blame," as if that hasn't been entirely obvious to everyone for the last two decades. If the solution is to vote our way out, then the two people blocking the vote really are truly absolutely at fault even if the same level of obstinate derping could be ignored in other situations.
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The fifty-two people blocking it, rather. Removing agency from Republicans effectively gives them a free pass, which does nothing to help and much to hurt. That has been just one of the many contributing factors to how things have been allowed to get as bad as they are. Your frustration is very understandable, of course, but "well it's those gosh darned Republicans to blame" was not entirely obvious even to far too many intelligent people for the last two decades and still isn't obvious to significant portions of the US population even today. That you've known and I've known something that seems really obvious for a long time is something that can easily bias us in our perception of reality by making us think that it's obvious to others when it's not.
 
Aridas said:
The fifty-two people blocking it, rather. Removing agency from Republicans effectively gives them a free pass, which does nothing to help and much to hurt. That has been just one of the many contributing factors to how things have been allowed to get as bad as they are. Your frustration is very understandable, of course, but "well it's those gosh darned Republicans to blame" was not entirely obvious even to far too many intelligent people for the last two decades and still isn't obvious to significant portions of the US population even today. That you've known and I've known something that seems really obvious for a long time is something that can easily bias us in our perception of reality by making us think that it's obvious to others when it's not.
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Those people who don't know aren't going to need an answer for why Republicans aren't supporting Democrat policies. They will ask why Democrats aren't supporting Democrat policies, and "go ask the Republicans" is not an answer to that. To repeat: point fingers all you want, but where do we actually go from here?

[ETA] Ooh I bet it's "get out the vote." Because that's been working so well.
 
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Beelzebuddy said:
Those people who don't know aren't going to need an answer for why Republicans aren't supporting Democrat policies. They will ask why Democrats aren't supporting Democrat policies, and "go ask the Republicans" is not an answer to that. To repeat: point fingers all you want, but where do we actually go from here?
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About the only place we can go on that front to make things better is getting more decent Democrats to where they could actually make a difference.

ETA: As for your ETA, getting out the votes for our democracy is fundamentally necessary. That supporters of democracy are generally facing headwinds against them when it comes to a bunch of factors, not least being how media coverage works and built-in inequalities to our systems certainly doesn't change that.
 
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IsThisTheLife said:
Not even wrong.

List of executive actions signed by Joe Biden

ETA >> not that he does anything more than literally sign where someone points.
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Thanks for providing that link which lists what he's done by Executive Action. They look pretty damn good to me. Many of those XO's are repealing Trump's XO's and dealing with the Covid pandemic.

ETA>>still supporting a malignant narcissist-sociopath who think he's a 'stable genius' and remembering five words a few minutes later proves he
"has one of the great memories of all time"?

“You go, 'person, woman, man, camera, TV,'” he said. “They say, ‘That's amazing. How did you do that?’ I have, like, a good memory ... I’m cognitively there.”
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Stacyhs said:
Thanks for providing that link which lists what he's done by Executive Action. They look pretty damn good to me. Many of those XO's are repealing Trump's XO's and dealing with the Covid pandemic.

ETA>>still supporting a malignant narcissist-sociopath who think he's a 'stable genius' and remembering five words a few minutes later proves he
"has one of the great memories of all time"?
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Somewhere in the back of your consciousness I'm sure you're aware that Biden didn't draw up those 'executive actions' (completely incapable), that they originated with individuals who are invisible, unelected and unaccountable.

You're happy with that?
 
IsThisTheLife said:
Somewhere in the back of your consciousness I'm sure you're aware that Biden didn't draw up those 'executive actions' (completely incapable), that they originated with individuals who are invisible, unelected and unaccountable.

You're happy with that?
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Thank you for voicing your concern.
 
Biden administration gives more borrowers a chance of debt cancellation

People who have been paying down their student loans for decades will get a better chance at debt cancellation, as the Biden administration temporarily relaxes the rules of certain repayment plans.

On Tuesday, the Education Department said it will grant federal student loan borrowers additional credit toward loan forgiveness under what is known as income-driven repayment plans. The move will bring more than 3.6 million people closer to debt cancellation, including 40,000 who will be immediately eligible, according to the department.

About half of the more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loans made directly by the federal government are being repaid through one of the four income-driven plans. The plans cap monthly payments at a given percentage of earnings, with the promise that the balance will be forgiven after 20 or 25 years of payments.
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IsThisTheLife said:
Somewhere in the back of your consciousness I'm sure you're aware that Biden didn't draw up those 'executive actions' (completely incapable), that they originated with individuals who are invisible, unelected and unaccountable.

You're happy with that?
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I'm sure you had the same concerns when Trump was issuing XO's, didn't you? Especially considering his own ex-cabinet members said they couldn't get him to read a damn thing and he had the attention span of a goldfish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_actions_by_Donald_Trump
 
ZiprHead said:
Biden administration gives more borrowers a chance of debt cancellation
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But, but, but....I thought Biden wasn't doing anything to help those with student loan debt! :rolleyes:

Why should people just have the loans they took out just written off instead of paying them back? Do credit card companies and banks allow that? Hell, no. I paid about $100,000 for my daughter's university degree using my inheritance from my mother rather than keep it for my retirement (and I could use it!) instead of making her take out loans. Am I going to get that money back? Hell, no.
 
IsThisTheLife said:
Somewhere in the back of your consciousness I'm sure you're aware that Biden didn't draw up those 'executive actions' (completely incapable), that they originated with individuals who are invisible, unelected and unaccountable.

You're happy with that?
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Once the president's signature is on it, the president is accountable. That doesn't cut it?
 
gnome said:
Once the president's signature is on it, the president is accountable. That doesn't cut it?
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Honestly, the complaint mostly just sounds like it's of the same ilk as the ever popular in Republican circles "All politicians are dirty politicians" that's heavily used to engage in equivocation and shield them from the need to take the next step and compare the actual differences in play honestly.
 
Stacyhs said:
But, but, but....I thought Biden wasn't doing anything to help those with student loan debt! :rolleyes:

Why should people just have the loans they took out just written off instead of paying them back? Do credit card companies and banks allow that? Hell, no. I paid about $100,000 for my daughter's university degree using my inheritance from my mother rather than keep it for my retirement (and I could use it!) instead of making her take out loans. Am I going to get that money back? Hell, no.
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I think the implication is forgiving it creates greater economic stimulus and welfare than giving you money.
 
IsThisTheLife said:
Somewhere in the back of your consciousness I'm sure you're aware that Biden didn't draw up those 'executive actions' (completely incapable), that they originated with individuals who are invisible, unelected and unaccountable.

You're happy with that?
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Are you under the delusion that presidents actually write up their own XO's? Do you think Trump wrote up all his XO's in-between rounds of golf?

 
Delvo said:
And that link describes another example of exactly how. It's only a partial measure even for those whom it does benefit, and it's about the fifth or sixth round of picking out some tiny special group to deem worthy of it while avoiding touching the big picture.
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So what do you think should be done? Everyone's student loan debts just wiped clean 100%? Twenty-thirty-forty-thousand dollars forgiven? A percentage?

It doesn't look like it's geared toward "some tiny special group to deem worthy of it" to me at all. It looks damn generous.
 
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Stacyhs said:
So what do you think should be done?
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The point at that moment was not what should be done but what had been done, but OK...

I'm in favor of 100% plus making college and trade school free (and a back-door way to do the latter without the Manchin-Sinematic Universe's permission would be to establish the debt forgiveness as repeating every semester). But really any amount is better than nothing, as long as it's universal, not another round of doing something for left-handed color-blind Capricorns and freckled dwarves whose names contain a letter "o" while lying about thinking it just can't be done at all.

Of the two commonly suggested intermediate amounts, 50000 would be better than 10000. The bigger amount would mean more of all of the benefits: to individuals, to the economy overall, to the public perception & discourse about our whole college-economy paradigm, and to Biden's and the party's reputation as keeping promises and actually listening to the people and doing good instead of just more of the same we've been getting for decades. (I'd also compare them in terms of the drawbacks as well as the benefits, but there are no drawbacks to either.) One thing both numbers have in common is that they'd serve as a sloppy proxy for means-testing (on the basis that bigger loans went to people who one might expect in theory to end up earning more). And the out-of-place middle-managers running the party do love their means-testing and sloppy proxies.

I don't expect the king of arbitrarily deliberately making American peasants' debt burdens worse to really care about the direct effects on people or the economy. But to continue to refuse to do it even if just to avoid/reduce the coming electoral shellacking is another level of bizarre.
 
Stacyhs said:
But, but, but....I thought Biden wasn't doing anything to help those with student loan debt! :rolleyes:



Why should people just have the loans they took out just written off instead of paying them back? Do credit card companies and banks allow that? Hell, no. I paid about $100,000 for my daughter's university degree using my inheritance from my mother rather than keep it for my retirement (and I could use it!) instead of making her take out loans. Am I going to get that money back? Hell, no.
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You were in an extraordinarily fortunate position and chose to be generous.

Good for you.

But this is still basically "I got mine, **** you."
 
To poke back a bit, complaints of "do nothing president" and do nothing party are a bit misplaced when it comes to Biden and the Democrats. To poke at some examples -

One Hundred Amazing Things Biden and the Democrats Did in One Year!

Certainly, the GOP has been trying hard to hurt the US, prevent Biden and the Democrats from making things better, and blame everything bad that they caused on Biden and the Democrats, but progress has been made on many fronts, even if it's not always as much as we want to see.
 
Aridas said:
One Hundred Amazing Things Biden and the Democrats Did in One Year!
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That's the most damning list of faint praise I've ever seen. We're going to get creamed in November.

Today's 4/20, so here's the straight dope. If you want a single issue to sail into a cushy reelection on, legalize pot. Biden could do it today. Everyone in the joint would notice. You wouldn't need to refer to a BS little listicle of a hundred ways these tiny little incremental changes no one notices or cares about are actually really good ones.
 
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Beelzebuddy said:
Today's 4/20, so here's the straight dope. If you want a single issue to sail into a cushy reelection on, legalize pot. Biden could do it today.
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No he couldn't do it today. Making pot legal would require legislation, which means it involves Congress. (He could take other measures... Suspend enforcement, issue pardons for those with simple possession charge, etc.) but it would still not be "legal".

As for whether that would guarantee an election victory? It would be a popular measure among the majority but that does not guarantee they would come out to vote for Biden because of it. (Many in support of legalization may vote Democrat anyways, others may not care enough, or think "it's now legal... No need to vote Democrats because of it").

Sent from my moto e using Tapatalk
 
Segnosaur said:
"it's now legal... No need to vote Democrats because of it"
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I was going to reply to the rest of your post but the absurdity of saying "people won't vote for the party that does things they want" struck me dumb. You're setting a beer down because the sign says "free beer tomorrow?" Really? How self-defeating can you get?
 
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