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

"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

This comes back to that perennial question of measuring someone by character or by deed and which is more important. In terms of which has more importance, thats down to fundementally different ways of seeing the world

no idea why anyone should care about anything but deed tbh, the rest is astrology

boe jiden

deeds make character, read your aristotle yo

boe jiden

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), T

in which Star Wars movie was he

for anyone born in the last half of the 60s, Trump isn't even in the Top 3 worst presidents

Trump's misdeeds as a businessman and as a human being stretch back to well before he became *President of the United States of America* (god, just saying that is creepy). He fails the test miserably on every count, whether it is character, ability, intelligence, or actions.

It's important to Whiney to defend Donald Trump's record

It makes someone like the LGM dweebs look silly

Let's Go Mets?

It's important to Whiney to defend Donald Trump's record

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, May 19, 2020 1:58 PM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's more important to me that we not continue to wallpaper over the trail of murder initiated by the George W. Bush administration

Mets fans are the only people with brains more broken than liberal pundits.

Could be Trump's COVID body count will start competing with Bush's war record.

great thread

A real roller coaster ride amirite.

the slaves trump would have owned also would have had covid!!!!!!!!!

important not to forget this vital point and I can't believe ppl are disregarding it!!!!!

It's more important to me that we not continue to wallpaper over the trail of murder initiated by the George W. Bush administration

Is it really that important that we nail down the *precise* hierarchy of awfulness between Nixon, Reagan, Bush Daddy, Dubya and Trump? And can it really be regarded as "papering over" anything if someone else ranks Dubya one place ahead or behind where you think his rightful ranking is?

You must realize there is no absolute yardstick for measuring these things. This is just as fruitful an argument as sports fans arguing who was the greatest player ever in the sports they follow.

If you measure it in human death than W is playing in a league of actual genocide, but go off king

Known COVID-19 Deaths in the United States, May 19 2020: 91,499.

It is true that GOP presidents are better at killing their fellow citizens while Dems prefer vaporizing foreigners with drones.

Is it really that important that we nail down the *precise* hierarchy of awfulness between Nixon, Reagan, Bush Daddy, Dubya and Trump?

No, but it is important to maintain perspective and that demands the context of previous Presidents.

Disney really should open the Hall of Presidents show with a lecture from Anton Ego

they own the ip

I don’t think Lemiuex or anyone in this thread underestimates the general venality of the GOP so I’m not really sure who’s at risk of losing perspective

If you measure it in human death than W is playing in a league of actual genocide

Nixon, too, in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Probably in the vicinity of one million deaths and counting - because we left behind so many land mines and unexploded bombs they are still killing people there today.

So, then, we're agreed that Reagan was really a very decent president because he only invaded Grenada and shot cruise missiles at Gadhafi. And Bush Daddy was much, much worse than Reagan because of Gulf War I. Got it.

ahem

AIDS