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

not all identity politics is the same tho

good discussion itt today / strength to you kate / hi harbl

there's no genuine counterweight to the most virulent anti-Biden stuff. There is no pro-Biden contingent on ILX. Afaik no one who regularly posts on this board even LIKES Joe Biden.

I like him, I think he is a good man if not a good candidate, and I think people will see the difference between him and Trump

― Dan S, Tuesday, August 11, 2020 9:34 AM (three days ago)

what gives me hope is the rise and rise of popular protest movements. black lives matter particularly, but also the women's marches, extinction rebellion, the water protectors of standing rock, etc etc. yes joe biden is a shell of a man and only progressive if you squint hard, and maybe not even then, but popular protest stands a chance of filling this empty vessel with a sense of purpose. maybe the way popular protest steered lbj towards policies he didn't campaign on

biden - by my lights - seems like somebody who could be bent to a particular purpose if enough pressure is applied.

This is actually one of the most immediately dispiriting things about the Biden / Harris ticket - his response to Black Lives Matter, calls for defunding & demilitarising the cops, and protests against police brutality was to promise increased police funding, and to call for us to be shot in the legs. His response to police continuing to brutalise people openly on camera every day, in a way they avoided previously, was to appoint a noted Top Cop with a m/l worrying record. His response to a global pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 residents and is decimating employment is to insist that employer-provided healthcare is the best, and indeed only, way of dealing with it. His response to economic devastation, a looming Greater Depression, and naked massive kleptocracy was to name a VP who earlier chose not to prosecute Steven Mnuchin, and then took campaign donations from him.

Those are the moves he's making in this moment, the reactions to protest that he's showing. The way the primary appeared to be manipulated by Dem powerbrokers, and was confirmed by Bill Clinton re Clyburn last week, suggests an open message that the upper levels explicitly will not listen to the people, and will insist on telling them what's good for them.


I am not advocating despair, and the most effective political influence can always be exerted at a local level. (The police chief resigned yesterday!!!) But Biden looks far more like an empty vessel that will be filled by handlers and donors than one that can be filled by protest.

i mean i guess i don't think the take tipsy linked is very good either xp

xp #notallidentitypolitics

This is actually one of the most immediately dispiriting things about the Biden / Harris ticket - his response to Black Lives Matter, calls for defunding & demilitarising the cops, and protests against police brutality was to promise increased police funding, and to call for us to be shot in the legs. His response to police continuing to brutalise people openly on camera every day, in a way they avoided previously, was to appoint a noted Top Cop with a m/l worrying record. His response to a global pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 residents and is decimating employment is to insist that employer-provided healthcare is the best, and indeed only, way of dealing with it. His response to economic devastation, a looming Greater Depression, and naked massive kleptocracy was to name a VP who earlier chose not to prosecute Steven Mnuchin, and then took campaign donations from him.

good post, sic. this is good criticism, the kind that can be responded to, rests on some sort of assertion, and has a point.

leftists who eschew or rabidly criticize “idpol” stuff can seem suspicious to me (not you per se, jim).

but by that same token, liberals (and I’m talking about the ones who are actually Good on most things) who can’t see that idpol stuff can and *has* been used by capital interests and Democratic leadership to undermine any kind of class-based politics/policy, seem naive. for me this was best encapsulated by Hillary’s ”If we broke up the big banks tomorrow….would that end racism?”. I mean the absolute fucking *gall* of her, but some ppl ate that shit up.

I know the people funding her campaign did.

xposts

Well, on the post I linked I think her points speak pretty directly to some of the predictable sniping I've seen in the last few days, and I understand her frustration with it. Obama was subject to much the same, and really almost anyone in their positions would be.

But also I think pretty much any attacks on "identity politics" are suspect. Does it get used as window dressing? Of course it does. But the window dressing itself matters. It's not sufficient, but it's also not insignificant.

two guesses whether i stopped reading the thread. i guess i don't want to work today.

there are abundant black (non-MAGA even) critiques of identity politics and the type of take reflected in that facebook post! it's not an essential white dude position. there is no black consensus to be reached, after the black community has the discussion, on whether kamala harris's career is good or can be excused or whatever. it's ok for everyone to be cognizant of the harm prosecutors do to people every day and think about whether it's ok to prosecute drug crimes, or death penalty cases, or not prosecute steven mnuchin, or to LAUGH at the idea of incarcerating parents who fail to send their kids to school, etc. etc. yeah, maybe she wouldn't be here if she didn't take those positions. but whose problem is that? does it mean she can't be accountable for it just like anyone else? isn't there something fundamentally fucked about this reward system?

tipsy, i get that take you posted (only read the block pasted here). it reminded me of this post from kiese laymon.

"...But I hope all of us who know what Kamala, Cory and Barry did or had to do to be presidential in this country question also what we had to do to be hired, to be tenured, to not go to jail, to pay for our families' needs. It ain't the same thing, ain't same scale, but in dissing and critiquing folk who need critique as anti-black public servants, I hope we also critique the varied ways we satisfy, titillate and bargain with white power in order to eat. We can do both. I teach at a school called Ole Miss and not a school called Jackson State because a school called Ole Miss pays me more, though a school called Jackson State raised me and loved my mama, father, aunties and cousin. All critiques of these feckless politicians have to start there."

But the window dressing itself matters. It's not sufficient, but it's also not insignificant.

Can't it also be actively harmful - using representation to avoid substantive change?

i.e. the Silicon Valley Way

there is no black consensus to be reached, after the black community has the discussion, on whether kamala harris's career is good or can be excused or whatever.

Yeah, and if you read that post she's not asserting any Black consensus.

Can't it also be actively harmful - using representation to avoid substantive change?

It's not that simple. Does having one POC on the board of a Fortune 500 company change anything substantive about how the company treats its workers or the policies it advocates for? Not necessarily. Is it better than having no POC members? Almost certainly.

I've seen this dynamic in real life. Even people hired or appointed as tokens don't necessarily stay tokens. I've seen issues raised and perspectives brought to bear — on governmental bodies, in behind closed doors meetings — that absolutely would not have been if it had been a room full of white guys.

Is it better than having no POC members? Almost certainly.

I'm not disagreeing with you tipsy, but the problem is defining what is "better" is rather difficult (and achieving consensus on it maybe impossible). For one thing, it might not actually be "better" for the individual person of color.

representation matters and any Lefty who says “nah” is generally, imo, not to be trusted. I just think there’s a real danger that Democrats/ liberals can fall into with the whole “we👏need👏more👏trans👏bipoc👏ICE agents”, etc

I don’t think of a POC on a corporate board as window dressing - that sounded more to me like using POC in public-facing roles (or as stars of a show or whatever) to obscure the all-white corporation and shareholders behind it.

That’s the kind of representation I see being dismissed out of hand.

good post, sic. this is good criticism, the kind that can be responded to, rests on some sort of assertion, and has a point.

cheers km, unfortunately I have to cancel myself bcz these are actually repeated points I have made before itt *evaporates*

if you separate out all the repeated points maybe the entire thread can *evaporate* hmm

lol well no one's perfect, and sometimes repetition is important for forgetful people like me :)

anyway, i didn't mean to single you out too much, i just think there has been some really good biden criticisms in this thread and some extremely bad, tedious kinds of criticism, and i was trying to gently highlight the kind that is more effective

xp

I just think there’s a real danger that Democrats/ liberals can fall into with the whole “we👏need👏more👏trans👏bipoc👏ICE agents”

Who on this board has said anything remotely like this? ffs gabbneb doesn't post here anymore

And yes, I'm going to take very personally arguments that simultaneously deny the worth of my existence and blame me for not making enough money to protect myself from racism, which is how jim in vancouver come across to me and why I say he is peak white-duding

resumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called Thursday for an immediate nationwide mask mandate that would require everyone in the country to wear masks when outside for the next three months.

Doing so will save the lives of at least 40,000 people, he said in brief remarks in Delaware that followed a lengthy briefing on the coronavirus crisis.

“Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months at a minimum,” Biden said, emphasizing each word. “Every governor should mandate it.”

think it's worth mentioning that if biden was president during this cycle, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved. seems important

that's true of basically every/any democrat tbf

Who on this board has said anything remotely like this? ffs gabbneb doesn't post here anymore

I can’t say it’s never happened,
But not every post I make is a passive aggressive shot at someone else here. I think the ppl here are generally pretty on the level, esp compared w the wider social media verse.

that's true of basically every/any democrat tbf

it's probably even true of Herman Cain tbtda

i just think there has been some really good biden criticisms in this thread and some extremely bad, tedious kinds of criticism

101% get why some ppl are annoyed by eg. much of milo's venting, but shouting at eg. him to stop posting about Biden in the Biden thread is far more tedious and takes up much more space, so

I think Laymon gets it right in his take-- of course these systems of white supremacy have essentially forced non-white people to fit into a white supremacist mode of operation to get ahead, even while facing discrimination themselves.

It's important to take that into consideration when thinking about representation and idpol, particularly at the national level...

But that doesn't mean that Harris can't be criticized for her positions and actions of the past.

One of the big problems that I have with some strains of idpol is that they actually engage in racist tropes that flatten identities into monoliths. Leftists who critique Harris or Obama or Francisco Cantu or one of the gay mayors out there aren't critiquing entire identities 99% of the time. They're critiquing people with those identities on substantive issues.

Like, the flattening of Harris by the media as representative of all Black people and all Indian people is absolutely racist! And yet a lot of people buy into it.

flagged post, for truth

xp #notallidentitypolitics

White supremacy is also idpol, so yeah.

Negative thought: Every time I think to myself "Where the fuck is Joe Biden?" I see one of his extremely feeble spots and realize it's better if he stays underground, he looks like he's fading away.
Positive thought: Whatever I think of Kamala Harris, my daughters got extremely, ecstatically excited when I told them there was a woman VP candidate and that alone is enough for me to feel very good about the pick right now.

Yes. For as long as I'm in the classroom in the fall (Ontario, like everywhere, is a mess right now), I'll be talking non-stop about Harris to kids in the junior grades.

what if they had been old enough to get excited when Palin was picked? xp

God is dead
Herman Cain is alive
The Mets are shit

biden's national mask mandate idea is out, and the reviews are in! anti-scientific! defeatist! and "good politics, i guess"!

From inside the White House briefing room, Trump slammed Biden over his declaration that there should immediately be a nationwide three-month mask mandate to slow the pandemic.

“[Biden] wants the president of the United States, with the mere stroke of a pen, to order over 300 million American citizens to wear a mask. … He thinks it’s good politics, I guess,” Trump said.

Biden said in his remarks earlier in the day that governors need to mandate the use of masks.

“I trust the American people and their governors very much. I trust the American people, and the governors want to do the right thing to make the smart decisions,” Trump said during a White House coronavirus briefing. “Joe doesn’t, Joe doesn’t. Joe doesn’t know too much.”

Trump accused Biden of “playing politics from the sidelines” and called the former vice president’s plan “regressive,” “anti-scientific” and “very defeatist.”

there's no way he learned how to use a hyphen on his own, ghostwritten.

https://scontent-lax3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/117521125_3802855163064239_4491092631761849076_n.png?_nc_cat=107&_nc_sid=2d5d41&_nc_ohc=Bv7ULg5v9LgAX-f4jie&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-2.xx&oh=d4df78dc8798c80ecfd5100b27f6b153&oe=5F5BF872

A Pew Research Center poll asked voters to describe in their own words why they were backing or leaning toward Biden or Trump. For 56 percent of Biden voters, their main reason for supporting the former vice president is that he’s “not Trump.”

An additional 19 percent said they were supporting Biden because of his “leadership,” and 13 percent cited his “temperament/personality.”

There was not one overwhelming reason Trump voters named for backing the president. The top reasons were his leadership (23 percent), his policies (21 percent) and that he is not Biden (19 percent).

sorry if this was the wrong thread to bump. i know there has been an extended discussion on the purpose of this thread, and where to put the general election stuff. i don't know who won

A Pew Research Center poll asked voters to describe in their own words why they were backing or leaning toward Biden or Trump.

i think that if Pew asked me this, in the heat of the moment i would also say something like "to be honest, i will vote for absolutely any alternative to trump because trump is a white supremacist who is also the dumbest man in the northern hemisphere", which they would probably write down as "not trump"

sanders would likely have had a plurality if voters claiming “he’s not trump” as their main reason for support too. people fucking hate trump.

*of not if

but popular protest stands a chance of filling this empty vessel with a sense of purpose. maybe the way popular protest steered lbj towards policies he didn't campaign on

the sense I got about LBJ from the Doris K-G biography is that he wanted to win and he wanted to be liked, and a lot of it for him was about "playing the game well" -- so I got the sense that because the protest was popular, he supported it and advocated those policies. If he hadn't been the recipient of pressure from activists and other progressive politicians, he would have adhered more to the traditional Southern wing of the party. He was basically "whip" for quite a while, wasn't he? His job was to maintain Democratic Party solidarity and to beat the Republicans -- not jumping on that bandwagon seemed like it would work in the Republicans favor, idk, some of y'all know more about this than me, but it makes sense in terms of the contradictions in his policies (esp re Vietnam) and also the delays in implementation he granted southern states for integration. (Pretty sure this started with LBJ and not Nixon)

Idk how this reflects on Biden ... I recently (latepass I know) watched the docudrama about Anita Hill and whoa does Biden look bad in that.

yassss kween

^ drive-by dreadsnark at old video, ignore accordingly

this excerpt is worse, really

Kamala Harris continued on to describe how she'd brought charges against a single homeless mother of 3 who was working 2 jobs because her children were truant...and this was a success story. pic.twitter.com/FT5uJmI6x9

— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) January 28, 2019

Like, you could tell that story as one of the tragedy of our broken society but it's just a punchline about how using homicide prosecutors (notoriously wonderful, upright people who are definitely not the villain of half of the true crime documentaries people eat up) and the threat of incarceration was cool.

I still can't believe the headline here - a UK columnist presenting as unexpected insight what is apparently just fact.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/12/president-kamala-harris-in-2024-this-might-be-joe-bidens-thinking

Even on day one, the choice reminds us that Biden is very serious about winning the election.

"Even on day one, the choice reminds us that Biden is very serious about winning the election."

omg, that is the best encapsulation of liberal dialectics ever. it's two and a half months before the election and the best case anybody is making for joe biden is to say "no really he really _does_ want to win election as president of the united states of america. yes, admittedly, he's doing such a fucking awful, sub-fred-thompson job of it that an increasing numbers of people are openly accusing him of trying to lose on purpose, and we would like to address these rumors head on: they're not true. joe biden wants to be the next president of the united states of america."

(raised hand) "Hi, I'm a Democratic Socialist, would Joe Biden like me to vote for him? If so, why?"

"Thank you for asking that question, it's a very good one. I want to confirm that YES, Joe Biden would like you to vote for him, because democratic socialism is bad and wrong and he is not."

neither of these guys has a good case to be made president! i think that's very clear! even how they got into this position is very clear! it's a bad time.