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

^ permitted US power projection at low political cost

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/trump-have-bombed-yemen-more-than-bush-and-obama-combined-2020-10%3famp

If somebody posts about thinking something Biden does or says being shitty, and the naynays think it's great, why not post about how it's good actually?

I am going to be honest and say that I don't know enough about some of the points against Biden that have been made in this thread. But most of them have to do with things he's said or done in the past, and I guess I'm not really interested in litigating it?

One of the things I find hopeful about Biden is that he's changed a lot over the course of his political career. It's been said that he always tries to position himself within the center of the party, even as the party has moved in various directions. That meant that he took some awful positions in the '90s and '00s, when the Democratic Party was stuck in its Third Way mode. But he may have the opportunity to be more progressive now. Probably not as progressive as anyone here would like, but still.

Rather than writing him off as worthless because of legislation he sponsored 30 years ago, and viewing every action he takes through this historical lens, I'd prefer to be open-minded and let my criticism of him derive from the decisions he makes in the current moment and their real consequences.

I think it would have been tipping the scales or meaningful pressure if Obama endorsed Biden before Super Tuesday instead of after.

Robert Wright has been grading Biden's foreign policy candidates for "progressive realism". Biden's picks are all pretty "blobby", as in the DC foreign policy blob, as with Obama's. So if you didn't like Obama's application of the military/IC, you probably won't like Biden's, either.

Biden barely hit par with POC and did not ultimately turn many of the old whites who turned out for him in the primary.

Somehow or other Biden recently managed to get 80 million votes, despite being a not-good candidate running a not-good campaign promising nothing people were excited about. Maybe we should probe this inexplicable mystery more deeply.

We'll be studying the Dems' approach to treating Hispanics as a bloc obsessed with immigration and eliminating caudillos and Trump's appeal to latent machismo in POC for a while, yeah. It's possible Biden, even given the Dems' problems with Hispanics in south Texas and Miami-Dade County, would've done even better had not Donald J. Trump been the nominee.

At the moment I've started getting involved in reconstructing this shitty Florida party.

those are structural issues any progressive will have to overcome even if they’re not old and white.

Wait, so you're saying underdogs are underdogs for a reason? Challenging entrenched interests is hard? Do tell.

If you're going to go into that fight knowing that, then you have to have an actual strategy to win. Or you can just keep losing over and over and blaming the system. Which I promise you is not as much fun as winning.

I should note that my inclination to give Biden the benefit of the doubt probably has to do with my desire to ~believe in something~ and ~have hope for the future~. Perhaps that's misplaced, but whatever.

That would be a stronger point in Biden’s favor if Trump hadn’t gotten the second most votes in history with 240k dead and economic devastation?

Many xps about Biden’s 80 million.

There’s plenty of things other than Joe Biden to believe in! For example, I have hope for the future based on things like the ceaseless efforts of the people who pushed Seattle’s city council into cutting the police department’s 2021 budget by something close to 20%, with more likely still to come. I don’t need to think Joe Biden is good to have shreds of hope that I’d rather be alive than dead in four years.

One of the things I find hopeful about Biden is that he's changed a lot over the course of his political career. It's been said that he always tries to position himself within the center of the party, even as the party has moved in various directions.

It’s been said by who? Biden was a leader and routinely staked out positions pulling the party to the right - on law and order, the drug war, busing, deregulation, bankruptcy “reform,” natsec/spying, on down the list. He ran for President multiple times - you don’t do that by being a leaf in the wind following the party as it goes.

Frack Em in the Leg Biden isn’t exactly Mr. Hopey Changey

You say you don’t want to focus on his history, but what do you have to tell you about him as a politician except for five decades of actions?

It’s been said by who?

For one: Evan Osnos, who just wrote a biography of Biden.

It’s been said by who?

https://prospect.org/politics/biden-debate-i-am-democratic-party/

Instead, over his long career he moved as the party moved, always adjusting to position himself in its center. He began his time in the Senate opposing busing and favoring restrictions on abortion. When under Bill Clinton the party eagerly tried to portray itself as “tough on crime,” he led the charge. But over the years, as the party became more liberal and more ideologically consistent, he grew more liberal as well.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-pandemic-has-pushed-biden-to-the-left-how-far-will-he-go/

that took me literally 5 seconds

Like I hope Joe Biden abolishes ICE, cancels all government-backed student debt, and cancels all oil exploration permits by executive order on day 1, but I also hope I get a 40% raise at work next year, am cured of my chronic health conditions, and win a free toaster from a contest I don’t have to enter.

There doesn't appear to be a transcript of Evan Osnos's podcast conversation with Ezra Klein, but here are some of the bullet points on the episode summary:

*Why the Joe Biden who entered the Senate in 1980 is such a radically different person than the Joe Biden who ran for president in 2020

*Biden’s ideological flexibility, and the theory of politics that drives it

*The differences between Biden’s three presidential campaigns — and what they reveal about how he’s grown

*Why Biden is “the perfect weathervane for where the center of the Democratic Party is”

i also hope we'll have a world to live in in 50 years, feels good to put my faith in joe, the guy who has been at the vanguard of, or drifted along with, or whatever, the democratic party line for the last 50 years. definitely seems like a hopeful trajectory.

Beats some of the alternatives.

go fuck yourself spotify choad

Me?

yes

Why?

because you don't have anything valuable to say or think and you're dead weight.

Aimless, perhaps you didn't realize that a lot of people were motivated by voting against Trump.

Rather than writing him off as worthless because of legislation he sponsored 30 years ago, and viewing every action he takes through this historical lens, I'd prefer to be open-minded and let my criticism of him derive from the decisions he makes in the current moment and their real consequences.

― jaymc, Tuesday, November 24, 2020 1:15 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Jaymc, unless he orders all people rotting in the carceral system since 1994 to be freed, this is a non-starter for anyone who calls themselves a leftist with a straight face. Unless he finds a way to fire the 17,000 cops that were added as a result of the 1994 bill, your proposition is a non-starter. And that's just two things I can think of off the top of my head.

Because history has consequences, Biden's actions in the past have dire consequences for the present-- ie, the legalized, state-sanctioned slavery that is built into the carceral system.

So please spare me the 'judge him by his current actions' crap-- there are many hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been ruined because of this racist fuck's hard-on for "tough on crime" bullshit.

xp I'm sorry you feel that way, map.

(I get that KM's meltdown today is because he's - erroneously imo* - pattern-matching to his family's refusal to engage on substance. But he's matching to a refusal that he is just imagining will happen, and declining to provide substance on those grounds. Given his current family stress, this is more than understandable - but the "will not communicate" rhetoric is still coming from him! <3 <3, hugs to you Z)
*(okay, maybe milo would move a goalpost or three if in a frustrated mood at the time of reading)

you're right. i am a complete fucking mess right now, and that's probably clear. it's probably clear when someone mentions their mom 4 times within an hour on the joe biden thread. right after this meltdown, i proceeded to create two other meltdowns irl. so that's obviously me, not you all. i'm sorry for being antagonistic, for dumping a dozen posts in a row without listening or caring about the responses (something that people have confronted me about multiple times this month, unrelated to ilx or internet), and also for conflating disagreement with being dumb. i don't think anyone here is dumb, except for my mom (#5).

however, since i'm still in the meltdown afterglow, i'd like to point out that i would fucking shit my pants if any of the people i was yelling at today would, just for once, admit they were wrong on anything at all, rather than dodging everything by asking questions that don't have answers. and i will note that this kind of behavior is very common among people with rightwing brainworms. the first step toward brainworms is not being able to tell yourself that you're wrong. the second step is to find someone else who is the same way, and to make a pact to never be wrong, together. so perhaps it's not that strange that conflate the two - i am absolutely exhausted with "debating" with people who will never, ever, ever EVER admit they're wrong about anything, and will bend time and space itself in order to avoid doing so. it's one of the the things that makes me really mad these days.

in conclusion, i have mommy issues, and also death to all white christians

signed, a centrist

that took me literally 5 seconds

The question wasn’t “has this ever been said,” it was “who said it.”

ie is this said now in order to excuse and explain Biden’s past to make him more palatable to contemporary liberals. Which... seems to be the case. That Waksman piece is devoid of specifics and 538 is talking about how COVID pushed him left.

He “led the charge” on law and order - how is one just following the crowd and leading the charge? He didn’t give up his support for the Hyde Amendment until 2019.

Most of this supposed leftward movement appears to have come in the last 18 months as he decided to run for President. As I listed above, he wasn’t staking out the center of the party in the era when Mondale is the nominee and Biden is helping craft the crack/powder distinction.

xp I'm sorry you feel that way, map.

― jaymc, Tuesday, November 24, 2020 9:47 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm sorry i have to skip around your posts! sad all around

Waldman*

I like to see map telling a poster wo hasn't insulted them to go fuck himself minutes before KM offers that confession.

classic-era map lashing-out venom. what other of ilx's greatest hits shall we play?

I'm gonna to kindly suggest to posters that they step away from threads when they sense the urge to personally insult posters who haven't insulted them first.

KM, I will readily admit when I'm wrong, by the way. And I'm sorry you're having a tough time.

it's ok. i know everyone is. i really like your posts, even when i disagree with them. i'm sorry to put you in the same bin as people who don't listen or bend, i know you do.

Most of this supposed leftward movement appears to have come in the last 18 months as he decided to run for President.

Which should be taken as a small victory by the people who helped force him and the party there. Instead it's just an excuse for more self-righteousness.

Pushing centrists to the left is a good thing! We need more of it! The way to do it is not to constantly howl at centrists that they're irredeemable nazi serpents.

Which should be taken as a small victory by the people who helped force him and the party there. Instead it's just an excuse for more self-righteousness.

The mark of the true leftist is never reacting positively to anything. Things are always just as bad as they've ever been; the war is lost; despair and rage are the only permissible emotions.

xxposts And I often value your posts, too, partly because you bring a unique perspective to the conversation. I was raised by moderate Republicans of the old school model— neither of my parents were fans of Reagan, for instance— and both my sets of grandparents were die-hard leftists. One of my grandmothers was a card-carrying Communist Party member for many years. The radical genes skipped a generation, obviously, but there were some evangelicals in our orbit when I was growing up, and I despised them... seemed like a lot of mean-spirited bullshit to me then and now.

Pushing centrists to the left is a good thing if they actually begin to pursue left policy. Given Biden's nominees thus far, there is no reason to believe that's happened.

This is the corollary of the earlier "none of these people are confirmed" defense from criticism - when Biden actually strongly pursues good policy, I'll believe him. Until then it's just words and I'll continue to trust 50 years of action.

https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/UKYUMSDULUI6VKN5T6FVSMYA2A.jpg

Real world action is going to have to be compelling to promote anyone in this picture beyond "roast in hell forever."

this is going to be a fun 4 years

The mark of the true leftist is never reacting positively to anything. Things are always just as bad as they've ever been; the war is lost; despair and rage are the only permissible emotions.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, November 24, 2020 1:58 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Perhaps it might surprise you to know that this is the biggest load of shit I've read all day.

Aimless, perhaps you didn't realize that a lot of people were motivated by voting against Trump.

So, if I read you correctly, you are saying that 80 million people decided that whatever Biden's failings might be, they concluded they would be better off with him as president than sticking with Trump. Now that you mention it, I think I endorse their collective judgment on this question, in spite of the possibility that Rahm Emanuel might replace some Trump toady in some position of power. Maybe he can replace Betsy DeVos.

I've heard it said that the best thing about being repeatedly hit over the head with a hammer is that it feels so good when it stops. I won't say Biden will cease all the hammering, but I greatly appreciate that the hammers will be smaller, lighter, and the blows further spaced apart. I expect this will free up some valuable time and attention that can be turned to other problems than just surviving Trump's misrule.

Earlier in the year, I thought it didn't matter a whole lot who the Democrats nominated, because I overestimated the strength of the anyone-but-Trump vote.

Disagree with this - the vote does seem to have been profoundly an "anyone-but-Trump" vote, rather than widespread enthusiasm for Biden amongst anyone but team-based voters, who ipso facto would have applied the same enthusiasm to the team no matter the name of the stadium.

But speculating on whether more people would have responded better to a more active campaign, to more engaged candidates, or to policies differing from "shut up or we'll shoot you," "we promise not to constrain corporations from damaging the biosphere in the most aggressive current manner," and "we absolutely will not improve the healthcare system during a pandemic that is killing 1000 ppl a day," is unproductively counterfactual. In my boundless, sunny optimism I say I reckon they would, you say they wouldn't have, job done.

Aimless, no one I know IRL actually likes Joe Biden.

I was going to vote for him, as a vote against Trump. And then the pigs shot a young Black man in a mental health crisis six blocks from my house the night before I voted. I'm just one person, but I couldn't in good conscience vote for Biden when the sound of that mother's screams were still reverberating in my skull.

Hey you know he ran on the public option, right?

xp uh wow I know I don't like to tell anyone not to post in this thread but map, maybe take a big breeak today

I am going to be honest and say that I don't know enough about some of the points against Biden that have been made in this thread. But most of them have to do with things he's said or done in the past, and I guess I'm not really interested in litigating it?

hey jaymc - I was going to add to my long post earlier than it's a bummer that your earnest efforts to engage and delineate a position itt get overwhelmed by the "stfu about Biden" posts, but figured I'd been typing long enough.

As noted, Biden's 50-year public record seems worth considering as some indicator on how he's likely to act in the future, especially with regard to how slow he is to adapt, how much his positions have seemed to be motivated by sincere will to do good for the most people, and to what degree his legislative will has historically been bound to the interests of donors, lobbyists, and corporations with actively anti-humanist agendas.

That said, I think "most" is a strong mischaracterisation of such citations itt. The preponderance of Biden actions posted about here is overwhelmingly things he does or says within 24 hours previous. In the last week or so, I've cited previous actions by new Biden appointees that give reason to fear that they will continue to act against the ideal of their departments, especially if they are currently employed to act against those ideals, but my only mention of "legislation he sponsored 30 years ago" was specifically in commending Biden for changing his position.

(xp - milo has now done so, but sincerely and validly in context by my read)

I admit I do hark back to some things he's repeatedly said during the campaign, but that seems pretty fair given it was (checks watch) a few weeks ago.