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

Only on ilx is aimless a centrist lol

it's just funny that it's only bitching when it's *someone else*

Only on ilx is aimless a centrist lol

No, no, no! Being in favor of universal health care, student loan forgiveness and low-cost or no-cost higher education, a wealth tax, a green new deal, reparations for slavery and Jim Crow, low-cost or no-cost child care, these are the very essence of centrism these days.

It just puzzles the heck out me how Trump got to be president when he doesn't support these things. Maybe I don't understand the electoral college. Or maybe the electoral college should be abolished. Hard to say.

as pointed out by the biden dissenters themselves the OHCHR is a joke already so rhetoric keeping Cuba off its masthead is a cost-free meaningless gesture meant to try and win over latino voters that milo was worried 12 hours ago he wasn't doing enough to win. "oh but they're not the right latinos" ok but clearly they're making statements intended to win them over. maybe consider it in pairing with his vow to restore US aid to the PLO. lose a few Jewish retirees, gain a few Cuban exilees - maybe it all washes out.

he's running as more right-wing than Obama

I completely respect that from your point of view Biden's politics are unforgivably shitty, and my understanding is that you see Obama the same way, but the idea that Biden is running to the right of Obama seems unsupportable to me. He is running on Obama nostalgia. You can criticize him for that, but the absolute center of his appeal is people who wish Obama were still President.

>No, but not voting for Joe Biden is voting for Donald Trump

This is not true unless you don't understand math and/or the Electoral College.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Saturday, May 16, 2020 12:02 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I understand that Biden led Trump in a recent Texas poll.

Aimless, to be fair to comrade alphabet, he has done his part as a canvasser in the buildup to last year's UK general election, to cite the one example I'm aware of, so he's not just 'bitching loudly on the internet every day', although he's certainly louder than most.

as pointed out by the biden dissenters themselves the OHCHR is a joke already so rhetoric keeping Cuba off its masthead is a cost-free meaningless gesture meant to try and win over latino voters that milo was worried 12 hours ago he wasn't doing enough to win. "oh but they're not the right latinos" ok but clearly they're making statements intended to win them over.

So he's using a right-wing talking point - that's wrong and shitty - to appeal to a group of people who aren't going to be swayed regardless. Saying anything to theoretically win a random group of people is not a neutral act - would it just be la-di-da if he starts repeating his old line about abortion not being a right? There are way more pro-lifers than people who give a shit about Cuba.

I completely respect that from your point of view Biden's politics are unforgivably shitty, and my understanding is that you see Obama the same way, but the idea that Biden is running to the right of Obama seems unsupportable to me. He is running on Obama nostalgia. You can criticize him for that, but the absolute center of his appeal is people who wish Obama were still President.

You left out the first clause - 'Like the China shit from weeks ago.'

On foreign policy - thus far Iran, China and Cuba - he's running to Obama's right and criticizing Trump from the right.

he has done his part as a canvasser in the buildup to last year's UK general election

I highly commend him for that. But since comrade alphabet cannot take similar active measures in our next election here in the USA, I wish he'd be a bit less active in trying to suppress voter turnout here, or at least encourage some form of active participation he thinks might lead in a helpful direction.

Speaking of dense, I can't embed from imgur apparently.

the host doesn't matter, you just have to embed an image, not a web page.

lol Aimless, so I'm trying to suppress voter turnout? Little ol' me?!

If all ilxors were to be able to vote I'd probably be the only one who would stay home.

i think a lot of ilxors are not going to vote for biden, and i don't blame them at all. clear the decks for queen alexandria '24

i say this as someone who doesn't have to pay us medical bills

but really, will those bills be so much easier under biden

dont feel like I’m being histrionic when I say a President Biden and Democratic leadership would vastly prefer the specter of a “no” from a GOP-led Senate Judiciary regarding a SCOTUS pick over being browbeaten into a full court press for single payer.

That’s... pretty much the ballgame.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Biden would pass an M4A bill if it made it to him. We know what the other guy would do

sign, not pass

that’s true. but there’s gotta be more than just signing bills that hit your desk or simply counting votes in the House. That is, if you expect people to show up for you

well he said he'd veto it but I kind of doubt he'd stick to that right now. the current situation seems to be pulling him more left.

Biden will do whatever he perceives to deliver the greater political advantage 98% of the time. If M4A passes Congress, he'd sign it, but without a strong political tailwind already moving it forward I doubt he'd push for it, because it would require something like a wealth tax to implement it and that goes entirely against his instincts.

Everything that revolves around “he’d sign it if they send it to him” is a fantasy. The President has to set and fight for an agenda.

Nothing will get better under Joe Biden because Joe Biden doesn’t believe in better things - our society will just get worse marginally slower than under the alternative.

At least until the backlash to that ineffectiveness delivers you President Tom Cotton in 2024.

you don't think coronavirus has changed anything?

i had the same impression as you in the primary fwiw

xxp That seems right, Aimless. In fact, there's an article in today's NYT about how the pandemic might push Biden to adopt bolder policy positions. But not because he is single-handedly marching ahead with a clear vision of change, but because a) other moderate Democrats are signaling a greater appetite for reform, and b) he's looking for winning ideas and is willing to be influenced.

The President has to set and fight for an agenda.

True enough to stand up to scrutiny. His announced agenda in that area is to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60. That door only opens if the Democrats take the Senate, and if they don't Biden could fight like a wildcat for M4A and it would get nowhere. Ultimately, the general stalemate extends down to the grassroots and must be solved there.

"Joe Biden doesn’t believe in better things"

This is a canard. It's not that he doesn't *believe* in better things, he just may not have the courage to fight for things that he doesn't see as politically feasible. Don't get me wrong, this kind of thinking is a major problem within the Democratic party establishment, which worries too much about what's possible instead of leading the way and actively shaping public attitudes. But it's a matter of weakness, not indifference or malevolence.

other moderate Democrats are signaling a greater appetite for reform

I got a mail flyer from my blue dog congressional rep yesterday in which he claimed to have 'fought for universal health care' (nope, he didn't) because he is being primaried from the left by a competent opponent. finally.

xp And maybe it has the same effect in the end, much of the time. But I think Biden's career has shown that he's actually pretty malleable and willing to follow the prevailing political winds and not just a stubborn defender of the status quo.

you don't think coronavirus has changed anything?

No. 60 years of political beliefs don't just unravel themselves in a couple of months in a man approaching 80 years old.

This is a canard. It's not that he doesn't *believe* in better things, he just may not have the courage to fight for things that he doesn't see as politically feasible.

Nothing in his almost 60 years as a politician points to him believing in better things. The idea that he has meekly followed along with the herd is ridiculous - he's been a leading proponent on all manner of things since 1972 - just mostly terrible things. He didn't just ride along on Iraq or the bankruptcy bill or cutting entitlements or welfare reform or ad infinitum, he took the lead. That's why he got to run seriously for President three times and became VP, he was never a non-entity.

The assumption that because he's a lifelong Democrat he must secretly share your liberal beliefs but has been too afraid to act on them is backed with no evidence.

Centrist Democrats showed you who they were in 2016: "America is ALREADY great" IIRC. Things are pretty good for the economically privileged and socially liberal - they've won the culture war and they've got good healthcare.

The assumption that because he's a lifelong Democrat he must secretly share your liberal beliefs but has been too afraid to act on them is backed with no evidence.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Sunday, May 17

Not what jaymc wrote.

Excellent piece. Get polarized!!

https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/157599/were-not-polarized-enough-ezra-klein-book-review?

Lemieux hated it too:

Yes, Trump is an astoundingly horrible person in terms of pure character: If you were to rank the 44 men who have been president of the United States in terms of the half dozen most important character traits that a president should have, he would rank dead last in every single one, usually by a mile. But he also represents a horrible ideology. Indeed the only “good” thing about him is that his complete degeneracy as a human being interferes with the efficient advancement of that ideology.

The Republican party is an eschatological death cult being exploited by various laissez faire looters, who aim to steal everything that’s not nailed down before the opening of the Seventh Seal. That Donald Trump is currently astride this rough beast is not exactly bad luck.

If you were to rank the 44 men who have been president of the United States in terms of the half dozen most important character traits that a president should have, he would rank dead last in every single one, usually by a mile.

What an embarrassing sentence to write in a world where Andrew Jackson was President, and Woodrow Wilson and 17 slave owners aside from Jackson.

Jesus Christ dude you don’t think trump would have owned slaves if he’d been alive in the 1830s?

He's a poli sci professor who's written often about the evil of Jackson and so have colleagues about Polk, so, thanks, I'm sure he's aware.

And Trump would've owned slaves!

ha -- xpost

It’s important to milo to defend Trump

... would he have repeatedly raped one of his slaves over the course of decades? Would he have committed genocide?

Perhaps and probably, but those are things that actually happened unlike speculating about what he would have done in an alternative history.

It makes someone like the LGM dweebs look silly to need to frame everything as if Trump is the worst to ever exist, as if that's the only way you can justify loathing and objecting to him - and most importantly, it's bad politics because as we've seen in real time it just leads to the next one being the worst ever and the rehabilitation of the guy who no longer seems so bad.

xxp - so presumably then, even Lemieux doesn't believe that Jackson was a better person than Trump and he just writes shit like that for blog readers with broken brains who need to get their daily fix.

It makes someone like the LGM dweebs look silly to need to frame everything as if Trump is the worst to ever exist, as if that's the only way you can justify loathing and objecting to him - and most importantly, it's bad politics because as we've seen in real time it just leads to the next one being the worst ever and the rehabilitation of the guy who no longer seems so bad.

You realize this is exactly the kind of thinking being repudiated in the takedown of the Klein piece, right?

It's not impossible "Trump is the worst in a long modern line stretching back to Nixon" without defending Nixon, Ford, Ronnie, etc.

*not impossible to

He didn't say stretching back to Nixon, he said all 44 men who have been President. Pivoting past just Presidential accomplishments (because then you have to compare him to Dubya's body count and Reagan's handling of AIDS... and Central America... and taxes and ad infinitum) to the metaphysics of his Character and Honor and So On is the same exact shit that happened last week with lib pundits and Bush's coronavirus video. "Gosh, he's so humane - I was opposed to him with all my heart but what a man compared to what we have now."

If Lemieux's arguing otherwise in general, then, again, what an embarrassing sentence because it really is just fodder for the broken brains.

Again, the proof is the thousands of words in other posts that say otherwise, but you won't bother, so I won't.

All I got is the pull quote you supplied - and not even a link!

I'm also not going to hunt down 80 hours of Jordan Peterson's lectures to get a more complete picture of his views.

Fair enough -- here (and the headline makes my -- our -- point).

Scott Lemieux is the same as Jordan Peterson? wow racism