Is “the provide a functioning government party” more acceptable wording for you?
I’d go with the “protect the interest of capital by any means necessary while providing lip service to social progress” party but ymmv
So you literally haven’t been paying attention at all to anything Biden’s done economically during his presidency? That makes your position at least make a lot more sense.
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Gotta disagree here. They spent the better part of the last 50 years working day and night to overturn it, and their strategy of death by a thousand cuts teed up this moment perfectly. They even unilaterally changed the size of the court to 8 for a year to make sure they pulled it across the finish line.
Anyway, not interested in talking in circles anymore. Biden was basically the bottom of my list of potential candidates in the 20 primary, and I find myself in the strange position of having to defend his record because he’s exceeded every expectation I had of what his presidency would actually look like. I worry if a democrat president bringing forward the most progressive economic agenda since FDR is getting clowned from the far left, then we basically have no chance of ever making that portion of the party happy.
Just gonna mute this thread now, since I was much happier with this forum when I completely avoided it.
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Progressive economic agenda sounds cool and all, but this is a thread about the ongoing state sponsored genocide by a US puppet state with US weapons.
Would you vote for Biden if you were in Arizona?
Would you vote for Biden if Israel crossed the red line in Rafah with a full scale ground invasion as opposed to burning families alive in tents?
yeah more of this, it’s not the candidates job to “message,” what the hell kinda of middle-class bullshit is that? it’s the peasants job to go to the library and order up all the microfiche about crop yields
I’m running through three Wikipedia pages here - the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan Act, and Economic Policy of Joe Biden. Here’s what we’ve got as far as economic policy that helps the working class:
Inflation Reduction Act
-Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices (awesome!) on 10 new drugs per year (lol)
-15% corporate minimum tax (progress, but let’s keep in mind this is like the same rate someone making ~$70K would pay)
-1% tax on stock buybacks (lol - the amount of whining on Wall Street over this was comical, they’re still saving a ton over dividend tax rates)
-Continued ACA subsidies (awesome!) for three years (lol)
American Rescue Plan Act
-Expanded unemployment payments (awesome) by $300/wk (meh) for nine months (lol)
-$1400 in direct stimulus (good, but let’s not pretend this was an earth shattering amount)
-15% food stamp benefit increase (awesome) … for three months (lmao)
-Expanded child tax credit (awesome) … for one year (lol)
-Expanded earned income tax credit (awesome) … for one year (lol)
-Forgiven student loan debt is tax free (awesome)… if it gets forgiven (he’s at least trying to do more)
-Reduced 1099-K threshold from $20K to $600 (seems bad, will be a tax increase on the poor - including on some stuff they really shouldn’t be taxed on and don’t know better)
-Removed a few corporate tax loopholes (awesome)… totaling $59B a year (meh)
-Increased small business grants (awesome)… totaling $55B a year (may be good?)
Few other things that all expired that year I think.
That leaves the Infrastructure Bill which was good, but which I give him no credit for - Republicans would have passed most of that stuff themselves anyway. It was badly needed and had bipartisan support. The CHIPS Act was good, but likewise probably would have happened anyway.
He’s been very good for unions, I’ll give him plenty of credit for that.
Edit: So, significant and lasting accomplishments are: 15% corporate minimum tax, 1% tax on stock buybacks, $55B a year in small business grants, and good for unions (this is a big one). I don’t see how this comes anywhere close to 90% of what progressives wanted, or any other similar claim.
objectively yes, from an outcome perspective, Biden has done a good job compared to replacement president and even compared to replacement e-dem president. in addition to the domestic wins CW has listed, his foreign policy up to October 7th has been way, way better than replacement level. After Trump’s 4 years NATO was extremely weakened and easily could have dissolved.
e-dems have done shit as far as messaging the wins. they’re too busy being polite and playing defence and reacting to the wackamole of bullshit (obama is gonna impose sharia law, obama gonna take all your guns, they’re gonna defund the police, nancy is a commie, CRT, IRS gonna audit all white people, black lives matter is a white replacement genocide, etc).
I still don’t think majority of R voters thought it would work, seemed more like a dog constantly chasing car situation and being surprised when they caught it
To be clear, I was being critical of the fact that most of the “wins” had a sunset date - in most cases they’ve already expired, or they were capped at a small amount (like 10 drugs negotiated per year).
Yes, I’d say his foreign policy wrt Ukraine has been elite, A+, no notes, given the circumstances.
I mean, it’s tough, like are they supposed to get up on the soapbox and tell everyone about that time they increased food stamps by 15% for three months? I guess they’ve got that, “Hey we expanded ACA subsidies and we set them to expire to force you to vote for us again, so you better vote for us again, or else!”
This is part of the problem too. If they made those permanent, they could run on doing something else not just saving the thing they already did. But that’s obvious, and they’re not stupid - they don’t want to do anything lasting that fundamentally changes anything.
I wonder how many leftist voters didn’t bother to vote or voted NSDAP in Germany in 1932 instead of SDP because SDP was shitty at getting them everything they wanted and was also objectively shitty.
Democracies end up with the government they deserve.
Let’s pretend for a minute that Biden could find the 50 votes necessary to abolish the filibuster (which necessarily included Manchin an Sinema) to codify Roe during that brief 2 year period when the dems had all three branches. Do you think the Supreme Court upholds that law?
This is actually applicable to leftists. They don’t have voter support for their policies, and they get all big mad when democrats don’t deliver their policies that don’t have popular support.
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I have lots of notes, for example:
It took the Biden administration more than 2 years to allow Ukraine to use US weapons inside Russia and they are still restricted to whatever “near Kharkiv” means.
The delivery of F-16 was unnecessarily obstructed.
Ukraine has been on a starvation diet when it comes to artillery shells.
Lots of other weapons systems were only delivered in insufficient quantity and quality.
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I would argue their strategy was predicated on them never winning on abortion at the national level. To say they have been wrong footed by extreme anti abortion laws written with no expectation of every being enforced (and thus taken seriously) is putting it mildly.
Most of the really bad publicity on abortion the GOP is eating right now isn’t the result of them overturning RvW it’s the results that were triggered by that, namely that they had allowed complete lunatics to write abortion laws in red states the day RvW was ended.
- Maybe; there’s real-world evidence (ex. maternity ward closures in northern Idaho) that abortion bans disrupt the interstate healthcare market so the government has jurisdiction to regulate it
- The fear of what SCOTUS might do is 1000% never an excuse for inaction. Lots of people think the court might overturn Lina Khan’s banning of noncompete closures; it’s still good that she did it.
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