Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

everyone has their lines that cannot be crossed. and this is mine.

Biden's a tool, but promoting Lieberman ahead of him seems so so wrong. He pushes all my buttons, maybe it's a style thing.

Is Frist's running mate Terry Schiavo, I heard he just pronounced her alive and well.

i'm tempted to answer milo by saying "not this time," but i know myself better than that -- still, if either biden or lieberman is the man on 11/2008 then i am going into the voting booth w/ a HAZMAT suit (if i bother to show up at all).

George H.W. Bush. Robert J. Dole.

and republicans have credit card bills, too.

both of them are way more beltway-insider names than they are "outsider-running-against-the-system" names

clinton won (first time) bcz of perot also

right, because he is the Senator from Delaware. when he is President, he won't be from Delaware anymore.

also, is there some way that this is equivalent to being especially bad & shameless wrt EVERY industry (tho the drug companies especially, in Frist's case)?

perot was the glitch - a third-party contender bcz he was RICHER THAN CROESUS he holed bush's vote then collapsed himself: that's a pretty rare circumstance; i don't believe clinton wd have smashed through bush's defences on his own

clinton second time was merely a successful amd popular incumbent, so not a glitch winner then, no

(i somewhat doubt he would, given what a fuck-awful show he put on)

the exit polls in 92 matched the results. and maybe Kerry did win.

"difft kind of battle in a very difft situation" is actually the general point i am makin: biden seems to me the poster-boy of "if things play out the way they did last time, it's OUR TURN"

Bush could be assassinated by then.

Did many know who the hell Clinton was outside Arkansas before the 1992 election?

Let Biden try. I'm voting for the best guy.. if McCain runs and wins the nomination for the Repubs and someone like Biden or Lieberman wins the Dem nomination, I'm considering McCain..(and i stress "considering")

IF that happens, so much for what a Dem or Repub means.

I did -- but that was because of his hilariously long and bad speech for Dukakis at the 1988 convention, when I cared about such things. ;-)

Larger point's taken, though. It's still 2005. Right now I'm waiting on the midterm elections and those are still a year and a half away anyway.

re biden and his "constituent services" (i.e., being citibank's and MBNA's bitch): it isn't as if the credit card companies have ever been hurting for cash. before the bill, they were very profitable and had the bill NOT passed they would have remained very profitable. (hint: their rationale for all of their outrageous fees and rates were to protect themselves should their cardholders go bankrupt -- well, now that THAT has been taken care of, let's see if those fees go away & the rates drop [fat chance].) this wasn't exactly like some senator fighting to stop the closure of a military base (the biggest and perhaps the only employer in his state).

my hot button issues are economic ones. if a democratic nominee votes for ANY of the following: (a) the bankruptcy bill; (b) the permanent repeal of the estate tax; (c) makes ANY sort of deal on privitizing social security; then they are O-U-T in my book. i'm sorry to get all naderite here on those issues, but they cut to the core of what the democrats are supposed to be about. if they vote wrong on ANY of those, then they are damaged goods and i honestly don't give a fuck what their stances are on other issues.

that said, it's still early and i doubt that biden's gonna get anywhere anyway. he's damaged goods.

anyhow i'll vote for biden if he gets the nod - i like him more than i ever liked gore - but i'm hardly crazy about him. i'm hardly crazy about anyone in the race as of yet (but i could be by winter 07)(and living in a redass county in a redass state part of me really can't wait to get a 'Hillary' bumpersticker), but i'm hardly snickering 'it's the same old, same old situation, same old ball and chain'. would i like whatever a 68 bobby kennedy looks like in 08? yeah. i'd like to wake up with a stack of hundreds on my pillow too. but just becuz i don't don't mean i don't get out of bed and get to work.

but biden is neither a moderate nor principled. he HAS undercut dean -- and durbin! -- for god only knows what purpose (i think that he's caught a bad case of lieberman-itis, but if his doing so is his way of "acting on principle" then it's REALLY god-help-us time). and sorry, but i think that folks are underestimating how biden's support of bankruptcy reform has made him poison in the primaries.

Ok so then what are these liberal policies that people disagree with that you're talking about? Those policies I listed are all the big Mainstays of mainstream liberalism in this country, at least in terms of domestic policy.

If you're talking about actual left policy, then yeah, I don't think we'll be seeing that anytime soon because people are fucking morons.

I don’t know why people disagree with those policies and generally I think it’s good to challenge from the left but a scary amount of people turned out to vote for republicans.

Reactionary parties develop naturally.

It's not our job to encourage them.

GOP request to squash the impeachment trading explicitly on Biden’s request for unity.

One of the House members calling for "unity and healing" is the newly elected CO rep who vowed to bring her Glock onto the floor of the House.

Fuck...I guess he has to do what they want then.

The only Kamala Harris thread is on ILM.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/kamala-harris-vogue-cover/index.html

Republicans in the House are countering with their own set of impeachment articles today.

Kamala Harris is (currently) the Vice-President of the United States

xp Impeachment of ... what?

Of being black and female...I was of course kidding. But it probably is a good preview of what's in store for Harris.

Man was that ever unclear

We are entering or to be honest have already entered a phase in which no "I'm obviously clowning here" po-faced assertion about an action taken by House Republicans is, in fact, obvious clowning

I'm lost. I'm that slacker in the Simpsons "Homerpalooza" episode who doesn't know anymore if he's being ironic or not. I must have misunderstood your post, eephus.

Republicans in the House are moving to impeach ILX unless mods move the Kamala Harris thread to I Love Hoops

Kamala Harris can't jump

I'm going to lock this thread while Biden is taking the oath of office, unless I lock it earlier.

why

oh right lol

let's make some more Black jokes, they're landing really well in the current environment

how's this one looking now

― shivers me timber (sic), Friday, January 8, 2021 5:37 AM (four days ago)

I just received a positive COVID-19 test result after being locked down in a secured room at the Capitol where several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but recklessly mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one.https://t.co/wVmgroKsdf

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) January 12, 2021

“You take an aggressive approach to #BlackLivesMatter protests but not to right-wing extremists threatening to lynch a governor if it’s for the President*’s benefit. Did I get it right, Mr. Barr?” @RepJayapal #SheGotItRight @ReallyAmerican1 pic.twitter.com/VlHxasm5Zb

— Adam Rifkin 🐼 (@ifindkarma) July 29, 2020

And it's been almost a whole hour! The corruption, the venality — truly, we didn't know how good we had it with Trump!

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, November 24, 2020 10:36 AM ([one thousand two hundred and twenty seven hours ago)

ok point taken

― huge rant (sic), Saturday, November 28, 2020 10:37 AM (one month ago)

Star-Studded Biden-Harris Inaugural Events To Stretch Over 5 Days, Celebrate 'America United'

https://deadline.com/2021/01/star-studded-biden-harris-inaugural-events-5-days-celebrate-america-united-1234674481/

The Biden inauguration, brought to you by Union Busting LLC.

“It is our job to hold President-Elect Biden accountable ...As an organizer whose union was busted by Ballard Spahr, I’m certainly disappointed – but my hope for change was never in Joe Biden, it has always been in our people-powered movement.” https://t.co/UEwrKQOhwt

— Jessica Benham (@jessicalbenham) January 18, 2021

my hope for change was never in Joe Biden, it has always been in our people-powered movement.

that's a completely reasonable sentiment, no matter how Biden's administration turns out or what good deeds or mistakes he instigates

The real cool kid leftist take: Biden, an unremarkable politician with no real ideas or political style of his own, is shaping up to be a far, far better president than Obama.

— Alex Yablon (@AlexYablon) January 19, 2021

I think we should be cautious but there are already some good signs for sure

If the Democrats in the senate can stay unanimous in the face of howls from the right, much good may result.

I won't quote Harvey Keitel's Pulp Fiction quip yet, but we've got a long political history of mediocrities transcending their own limitations. We'll see.

For the meantime, I feel relief. While COVID ain't going anywhere for a while, we have competent hands at last -- people who believe in government and have worked in government long enough to understand what mechanisms work and which need creation.

Tbh Covid is the only reason why I care about Biden's presidency at all.

That's enough.

This is what I've said before about Biden's ideological flexibility and how it can be a virtue. I think he's *temperamentally* a moderate, so I don't think he's ever going to suddenly become a raging socialist. But he has a situational mindset and is open to persuasion. Although that's sometimes led him to make bad compromises, it could also lead him to advocate for more progressive policies than one might expect from him at this particular moment, because he recognizes the crisis and is willing to do what it takes to solve it.

I'll also repost this tweet from the general politics thread, because I think it applies to Biden, too.

Hard to overstate how much better today's moderate Dem senators are than those of 2009, especially on stimulus. One reason I'd guess: Everyone's always fighting the last war, and "Obama's tepid recovery gave us Trump" has finally displaced "weakness on inflation gave us Reagan" https://t.co/eN6axte0PG

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) January 19, 2021

Everyone's always fighting the last war, and "Obama's tepid recovery gave us Trump" has finally displaced "weakness on inflation gave us Reagan"

Well uh Obama's skin color gave us Trump. Inflation and "we hate the '60s" gave us Reagan.

But, yeah, it's true: we're in a better spot than in 2009.

Also: "we hate black people" also gave us Reagan.

Any analysis of the ascendancy of Trump that doesn’t center him first and foremost as a reaction against the first Black President is wrong, IMO

exactly

He only built a "political" base by screaming bullshit for years about how the black president was fake.

Biden will recognize Guaido as Venezuela's leader, top diplomat says https://t.co/SGNaGb03ur pic.twitter.com/pf2R3AEAQj

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 19, 2021

lol

hoo boy

Make The CIA Great Again

Thinking we might want to hold off a bit before declaring Biden vastly superior to Obama tbh. Maybe let him take a couple of lumps or have a couple of Republicans whine about the deficit.

oh I'll admit American presidents have execrable foreign policy.

Thinking we might want to hold off a bit before declaring Biden vastly superior to Obama tbh

People like hope. Same reason why Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize just for succeeding Dubya and raising high hopes. I'm willing to see what he does, more especially because my influence over what he does will be indistinguishable from nil.

As promised:

Continuing here:
Joe Biden is (currently) President of the United States