Cont: The Biden Presidency (3)

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Aridas said:
Posted that about 10 posts before yours, after all.

Still, are you actually asking why this looks like it hasn't been picked up at all by the MSM? There are probably a few reasons for that, the most prominent of which is likely that the MSM just doesn't need to scramble to find, something, anything positive to create some illusion of balance between the evil being done by the Democrats and the good, like they seem to think they need to do for the Republicans. There's also no "left-wing propaganda machine" to speak of to do so and the right-wing propaganda machine is obviously not going to touch something like that with a 10-foot pole is they can avoid it.
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Opps! My mistake! And what is really stupid is that my browser shows me that I already clicked your link. This means it's likely that your post is where I saw it in the first place. :o

Yeah, it's actually really hard to find this and it does seem to show as you say, there isn't an MSN propaganda drive to support the left wing.
 
Aridas said:
Posted that about 10 posts before yours, after all.

Still, are you actually asking why this looks like it hasn't been picked up at all by the MSM? There are probably a few reasons for that, the most prominent of which is likely that the MSM just doesn't need to scramble to find, something, anything positive to create some illusion of balance between the evil being done by the Democrats and the good, like they seem to think they need to do for the Republicans. There's also no "left-wing propaganda machine" to speak of to do so and the right-wing propaganda machine is obviously not going to touch something like that with a 10-foot pole is they can avoid it.
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It's great that the railroad workers gained a bit, but in the big picture the administration taking such an anti-strike position in public hurts labor. That they in this specific situation later very quietly worked to help those workers does not change the bigger picture.

The Democrats over the last few years have had tons of opportunities to amplify and support the power of organized labor. They didn't and aren't because they think that's good politics. Which maybe it is at this point given how important money is to elections. Unions have been crippled as to using money to buy influence and billionaires and corporations are running amok.

Mainly it comes back to the conservative legal project hijacking the Supreme Court and the liberals, especially in legal circles, being way, way too slow to see it for what it is.
 
Suddenly said:
It's great that the railroad workers gained a bit, but in the big picture the administration taking such an anti-strike position in public hurts labor. That they in this specific situation later very quietly worked to help those workers does not change the bigger picture.

The Democrats over the last few years have had tons of opportunities to amplify and support the power of organized labor. They didn't and aren't because they think that's good politics. Which maybe it is at this point given how important money is to elections. Unions have been crippled as to using money to buy influence and billionaires and corporations are running amok.

Mainly it comes back to the conservative legal project hijacking the Supreme Court and the liberals, especially in legal circles, being way, way too slow to see it for what it is.
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The Biden admin. didn't take an 'anti-strike position'. They succeeded in preventing a strike that would have crippled the country's economy right before Christmas because he put the country first.

The quick fall of dominos stands as a reminder that, when it has to, Washington can set aside pettiness and summon unity and might to avoid a crisis. The rail workers had eyed Dec. 9 as a potential start to a strike, a protest that could have sent the whole economy into a crippling recession and cost as many as 750,000 jobs, according to one estimate. Another scary figure: a rail strike could cost the broader economy $2 billion per day.
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The White House-brokered deal still has plenty for workers to embrace, including a roughly 24% pay increase by 2024 and a ratification bonus of $11,000. Still, the contract guarantees just one paid personal day off and no dedicated sick days, although there is some flexibility to step out for doctor appointments.
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BUT:

“We’re going to avoid the rail strike, keep the rails running, keep things moving, and I’m going to go back and we’re going to get paid leave, not just for rail workers, but for all workers,” Biden said at a news conference on Thursday.
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Which is exactly what they did:



(Railroad Department Director Al Russo) We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.

“We know that many of our members weren’t happy with our original agreement,” Russo said, “but through it all, we had faith that our friends in the White House and Congress would keep up the pressure on our railroad employers to get us the sick day benefits we deserve. Until we negotiated these new individual agreements with these carriers, an IBEW member who called out sick was not compensated.”
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Stacyhs said:
The Biden admin. didn't take an 'anti-strike position'. They succeeded in preventing a strike that would have crippled the country's economy right before Christmas because he put the country first.
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That... is an anti strike position. The idea that the leverage of a strike is economic damage is the whole point of a strike. It's the only leverage a union has. Putting the country first in this regard meant forcing the workers to go to work with an agreement the union didn't ratify.

His statement was odious and distorted the situation in a way to make the union look unreasonable and imply a strike would be their fault. I wouldn't have nearly as much problem with it had that statement never been written.

BUT:



Which is exactly what they did:
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None of this contradicts what I posted. Good for the railworkers. It doesn't change that Biden amplified anti union rhetoric.
 
I get what he's trying to do: he's trying to appear "not so left" so that people wary of unions might vote for him.

But I've really got to ask--how big is that slice he's trying to pick up? How many anti-union people do you know that would vote for Biden ever in a million years, regardless of his union stance?

I don't think he's learned that Republican-lite is not what he needs to be. If he wins it's because for some reason the Republicans seem determined to nominate incredibly odious and unpopular individuals. Any Republican with a speck of charisma and sanity would mop up Biden in the general election, I'm convinced.
 
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Suddenly said:
That... is an anti strike position. The idea that the leverage of a strike is economic damage is the whole point of a strike. It's the only leverage a union has. Putting the country first in this regard meant forcing the workers to go to work with an agreement the union didn't ratify.

His statement was odious and distorted the situation in a way to make the union look unreasonable and imply a strike would be their fault. I wouldn't have nearly as much problem with it had that statement never been written.



None of this contradicts what I posted. Good for the railworkers. It doesn't change that Biden amplified anti union rhetoric.
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I could not disagree more. What he did was the correct thing to do. The union got almost everything they wanted, including paid sick days, and the country didn't have go into an economic crisis.

I suspect your view is more about your dislike of Biden and 'centrists' than anything else. But, I'm not going to argue further about this because it's ripe for an endless back and forth and I'm not in the mood.
 
gnome said:
I get what he's trying to do: he's trying to appear "not so left" so that people wary of unions might vote for him.
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That's not what he's doing at all. What he's doing is telling the unions, don't worry, I'll help you, just don't have a massively disruptive strike that has a huge negative impact on the economy.

And then he came around and helped them.

It's not about politics, it's called leadership. The union got a lot of what it wanted (not everything, that is the nature of negotiation), and it didn't require a strike to do it.

Seriously, the train workers union is happy and appreciates Biden's help in making an agreement happen. That's NOT "anti-union" at all. He helped them get an agreement that they are happy with.

Some might call it "the art of the deal." And Biden did it masterfully.

I realize that the current republicans have messed with everyone's head, but this isn't a ******* game. It's about coming up with solutions to problems. It's how government can work.
 
gnome said:
I get what he's trying to do: he's trying to appear "not so left" so that people wary of unions might vote for him.

But I've really got to ask--how big is that slice he's trying to pick up? How many anti-union people do you know that would vote for Biden ever in a million years, regardless of his union stance?

I don't think he's learned that Republican-lite is not what he needs to be. If he wins it's because for some reason the Republicans seem determined to nominate incredibly odious and unpopular individuals. Any Republican with a speck of charisma and sanity would mop up Biden in the general election, I'm convinced.
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I don't see it as a straight voter issue. It's more about the importance of cash and not alienating the donor class.

I think he trades some votes in states he doesn't need for votes in states he does need, but who knows the effect on the party ticket as a whole if a few hundred million of support goes bye bye. If it comes down to that the money is going to favor fascism over socialism.

The GOP is a whole different issue. They aren't going to field a viable candidate with sanity for roughly the same reason Biden isn't going to start channeling Eugene Debs. It's just not what they are. They need to find a way to move from Trump in a way that doesn't cause his supporters to turn on them and that's going to get trickier and trickier the more clear it becomes that Trump is in real criminal jeopardy because that's going to entrench those in his cult of personality. They will never have the numbers without those people.
 
pgwenthold said:
That's not what he's doing at all. What he's doing is telling the unions, don't worry, I'll help you, just don't have a massively disruptive strike that has a huge negative impact on the economy.

And then he came around and helped them.

It's not about politics, it's called leadership. The union got a lot of what it wanted (not everything, that is the nature of negotiation), and it didn't require a strike to do it.

Seriously, the train workers union is happy and appreciates Biden's help in making an agreement happen. That's NOT "anti-union" at all. He helped them get an agreement that they are happy with.

Some might call it "the art of the deal." And Biden did it masterfully.

I realize that the current republicans have messed with everyone's head, but this isn't a ******* game. It's about coming up with solutions to problems. It's how government can work.
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:bigclap
 
Stacyhs said:
I could not disagree more. What he did was the correct thing to do. The union got almost everything they wanted, including paid sick days, and the country didn't have go into an economic crisis.

I suspect your view is more about your dislike of Biden and 'centrists' than anything else. But, I'm not going to argue further about this because it's ripe for an endless back and forth and I'm not in the mood.
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I'm pretty much a zealot w/r/t labor issues. You aren't. Most people aren't. That's literally the only disagreement here. In isolation he did a good thing helping railroad workers despite forcing them to accept a deal they didn't ratify. IMO public humiliation followed by silent support isn't exactly a healthy dynamic, but I can respect to some small degree the pragmatic choice being made there and that Biden isn't exactly Bill Heywood so what would I expect.

Had he not issued that statement I'd mostly be able to let it go.
 
The idea that putting the country first is somehow not supportive of labor or liberal enough is a joke.

Jesus, this was a scene right out of American President by Aaron Sorkin.

Shepherd: I studied under a Nobel-prize winning economist. You know what he taught me?
McInerney: Never have an airline strike at Christmas?
Shepherd: I'm going to St Louis

But Aaron Sorkin's not Democrat enough?
 
gnome said:
I get what he's trying to do: he's trying to appear "not so left" so that people wary of unions might vote for him.

But I've really got to ask--how big is that slice he's trying to pick up? How many anti-union people do you know that would vote for Biden ever in a million years, regardless of his union stance?

I don't think he's learned that Republican-lite is not what he needs to be. If he wins it's because for some reason the Republicans seem determined to nominate incredibly odious and unpopular individuals. Any Republican with a speck of charisma and sanity would mop up Biden in the general election, I'm convinced.
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From what I can see the right wing people the Dems pick up from being milquetoast Thatcherites is a tiny fraction of their base that they lose every time they abandon their core principals to pursue Thatcherism. And that's because they're trying to ape the policies of a party that actually believes in that stuff.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
From what I can see the right wing people the Dems pick up from being milquetoast Thatcherites is a tiny fraction of their base that they lose every time they abandon their core principals to pursue Thatcherism. And that's because they're trying to ape the policies of a party that actually believes in that stuff.
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Oh, yeah...the Dems are picking up all kinds of 'right-wing people'. Comparing Dems to Thatcherites is just plain :rule10
 
Stacyhs said:
Oh, yeah...the Dems are picking up all kinds of 'right-wing people'. Comparing Dems to Thatcherites is just plain :rule10
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To be fair in terms of world politics the Dems in America are pretty right of centre. Heck here in the UK the supposedly workers party, the Labour Party, is pretty right of where I would see the centre. In my lifetime (60 y.o.) the Overton Window has moved gradually and steadily to the right in most of the developed world.
 
Stacyhs said:
Oh, yeah...the Dems are picking up all kinds of 'right-wing people'. Comparing Dems to Thatcherites is just plain :rule10
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The democratic party as currently constituted is a right wing party, flitting between the conservatism of Heath and the free-market nuttiness of Thatcher and Reagan. It's not my fault US politics has flown so far to the right that you refuse to see what left wing politics actually is.
 
Parsman said:
To be fair in terms of world politics the Dems in America are pretty right of centre. Heck here in the UK the supposedly workers party, the Labour Party, is pretty right of where I would see the centre. In my lifetime (60 y.o.) the Overton Window has moved gradually and steadily to the right in most of the developed world.
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I'd narrow the right wing drift a bit. It's mainly i the Anglo-American world that the overton window has swung so far right.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
The democratic party as currently constituted is a right wing party, flitting between the conservatism of Heath and the free-market nuttiness of Thatcher and Reagan. It's not my fault US politics has flown so far to the right that you refuse to see what left wing politics actually is.
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At last check, the Progressives of the Democratic Party count as roughly center left wing. Too bad that Progressives aren't actually dominant in the party, even though their influence does appear to be growing. As it should, really, given that nearly all of Progressive policy is very popular overall.
 
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Gulliver Foyle said:
The democratic party as currently constituted is a right wing party, flitting between the conservatism of Heath and the free-market nuttiness of Thatcher and Reagan. It's not my fault US politics has flown so far to the right that you refuse to see what left wing politics actually is.
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It's always a bit strange seeing Democrats trash-talking Reagan, considering the entire party has triangulated itself into a Reaganite position. The right wing in this country has galloped so hard into extremism that Democrats seem quite liberal or even progressive in comparison, but even compared to our own recent history they are obviously quite right wing. The party would rebuke people with LBJ's or RFK's politics as progressive loonies today, and denounce someone like FDR as a full blown communist.

The party leaders would sooner risk fascist takeover of government than give up their neoliberal ideology for something more progressive and left populist.
 
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