Cont: The Biden Presidency (3)

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acbytesla said:
Two things, Reagan was a politician with charisma. I give you that. People liked him. But his policies were terrible and put the nation on the wrong track.
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In the worst way. It wasn't until much later that we learned such horrible things as his complete indifference to the AIDS crisis. And, closer to home, he was inches away from canceling the Voyager spacecraft Grand Tour—an opportunity that wouldn't come around again for 700 years. But even those merely scratched the surface. He convinced us that all that catering to the short-term interests of the rich was a the way to make America strong, and it had long-term consequences we're still dealing with.

Biden lacks the charisma that Reagan had. I wish he was younger and a better politician.

Still, his policies are first rate and he has succeeded far beyond I could have imagined.
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I'm happy to have set fairly low expectations for a Biden presidency and therefore to have been satisfied.

Do we need another Biden term? Maybe not. But what's the alternative? The Republican party has gone nuts. The last thing this country needs is for a Republican to be elected. Can you imagine SCOTUS being even more corrupt than it already is?
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I wish I could think of a credible alternative. We don't necessarily need another Biden term, but we may have to settle for one (which honestly wouldn't be all that bad). I'm not sure we could survive another Trump term. I'm just not excited about another Biden administration, but only because I foolishly hope for something better to emerge. But I'm terrified of another Trump administration.
 
JayUtah said:
In the worst way. It wasn't until much later that we learned such horrible things as his complete indifference to the AIDS crisis. And, closer to home, he was inches away from canceling the Voyager spacecraft Grand Tour—an opportunity that wouldn't come around again for 700 years. But even those merely scratched the surface. He convinced us that all that catering to the short-term interests of the rich was a the way to make America strong, and it had long-term consequences we're still dealing with.

I'm happy to have set fairly low expectations for a Biden presidency and therefore to have been satisfied.

I wish I could think of a credible alternative. We don't necessarily need another Biden term, but we may have to settle for one (which honestly wouldn't be all that bad). I'm not sure we could survive another Trump term. I'm just not excited about another Biden administration, but only because I foolishly hope for something better to emerge. But I'm terrified of another Trump administration.
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I don’t think people give Biden enough credit. He comes across as your nice old grandpa. Seems hard to take seriously. But with a razor thin majority he did get a fairly major piece of legislation passed and managed to push through a number of judicial appointments.
 
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acbytesla said:
I don’t think people give Biden enough credit. He comes across as your nice old grandpa. Seems hard to take seriously. But with a razor thin majority he did get a fairly major piece of legislation pass and managed to push through a number of judicial appointments.
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This is true. A while back someone was making the "what's he done?" claim so I posted a very long list of what's the Biden Admin. has accomplished so far...even with the GOP and SCOTUS hamstringing him every inch of the way.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Boomers in the 2020s: Pickleball
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The fastest growing demographic for playing pickleball are those under 24.

Players aged 55 and up were the largest age bracket of pickleball players in 2021, comprising 19.8% of total participants. Players aged 18 to 34 were the second largest age bracket, making up 18.5% of total participants. The average age of pickleball players was 38.1 years in 2021. The average age of pickleball players is dropping and declined 2.9 years from an average of 41.0 years in 2020.
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https://www.pickleheads.com/blog/pickleball-statistics

Happy Birthday!
 
acbytesla said:
I don’t think people give Biden enough credit. He comes across as your nice old grandpa. Seems hard to take seriously. But with a razor thin majority he did get a fairly major piece of legislation passed and managed to push through a number of judicial appointments.
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My knee-jerk is to attribute those more to Congress than to Biden, but let's give the President his due praise. The judicial appointments are especially important. Blunting the GOP capture of the judiciary is super important.

Also important is the notion that I have low expectations for a Biden presidency not so much because I think Biden is incapable, but precisely because there's a huge mess to clean up and because there are so many obstacles. No, he doesn't have the charisma of a Ronald Reagan or a Barack Obama. Yes, he has more senior moments than I care for. Would that there were a better candidate, but in my book he's been a successful President.
 
dudalb said:
I am really temtped to start a rant against the Gen Xers just to show you can do that crap with ANY generation.
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Yeah, but don't bother ranting against Gen X, they won't care. They can't be made to care.

And no, I don't care enough to defend this broad generalization. I've already lost interest in
 
JayUtah said:
My knee-jerk is to attribute those more to Congress than to Biden, but let's give the President his due praise. The judicial appointments are especially important. Blunting the GOP capture of the judiciary is super important.

Also important is the notion that I have low expectations for a Biden presidency not so much because I think Biden is incapable, but precisely because there's a huge mess to clean up and because there are so many obstacles. No, he doesn't have the charisma of a Ronald Reagan or a Barack Obama. Yes, he has more senior moments than I care for. Would that there were a better candidate, but in my book he's been a successful President.
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I agree Biden is less charismatic than Obama, but I'd say he's actually governing much less conservatively than Obama ever did. Obama was a great campaigner, but was quite the disappointment in office when he turned out to be just another in a long series of conservative neolibs. The Obama bait-and-switch will likely go down as one of the great inflection points of contemporary American politics, at least when it comes to the liberal/left side of things.

Presumably if Obama were in office during this inflation scare he would have listened to the Larry Summers of the world to and adopted policies to induce a recession, which Biden notably wisely resisted (and recent economic news seems to have vindicated).
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
I agree Biden is less charismatic than Obama, but I'd say he's actually governing much less conservatively than Obama ever did. Obama was a great campaigner, but was quite the disappointment in office when he turned out to be just another in a long series of conservative neolibs. The Obama bait-and-switch will likely go down as one of the great inflection points of contemporary American politics, at least when it comes to the liberal/left side of things.

Presumably if Obama were in office during this inflation scare he would have listened to the Larry Summers of the world to and adopted policies to induce a recession, which Biden notably wisely resisted (and recent economic news seems to have vindicated).
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It's amazing how people can see completely different things when looking at the same thing.:boggled:
 
There wasn't much more Obama could do about 2 years in. He was in much the same situation Biden is now. It was also when Foxnews started picking up traction agains Obama and Dems. It worked on the bulk of rural folks and a good part of seniors.
 
Obama got Obamacare passed. It was the GOP who later gutted part of it to Americans' detriment. We're still waiting for that fantastic, cheaper and far better health plan of Trump's and the GOP that was ready to go!
 
Stacyhs said:
Obama got Obamacare passed. It was the GOP who later gutted part of it to Americans' detriment. We're still waiting for that fantastic, cheaper and far better health plan of Trump's and the GOP that was ready to go!
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Who gets the shame when you get up to 'fool me 3 times'?
 
Stacyhs said:
Obama got Obamacare passed. It was the GOP who later gutted part of it to Americans' detriment. We're still waiting for that fantastic, cheaper and far better health plan of Trump's and the GOP that was ready to go!
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It's probably worth noting that Obamacare has a number of serious problems. It's pretty much what the GOP had previously been pretending was their better health care plan, after all, rather than something actually good, and was repeatedly sabotaged from there by the GOP as Democrats practically did backflips to try to get something done and do it in a "decent" bipartisan manner. After it was passed, even those that passed it seemed rather willing to admit that it was deeply flawed, but that they would be trying to better address those flaws as things moved forward. Not that the GOP had any interest in allowing the flaws to be addressed, if they could help it.

With all that said, Obamacare was a real improvement in many ways, even with its flaws, and the GOP has indeed made it perfectly clear to anyone paying attention that they have nothing to offer but pipe dreams and death for the American public on that front.
 
Obamacare was Romneycare.

We're "still waiting" for what Obama said he'd do about health care before switching to Romneycare instead.
 
Further back than Romney, actually. Obama's plan was a public option, which was killed by constant repetitions of 'socialized medicine' because people actually liked and wanted the public option.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
Further back than Romney, actually. Obama's plan was a public option, which was killed by constant repetitions of 'socialized medicine' because people actually liked and wanted the public option.
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No partial credit for whatever better version of this law that existed only in Obama's imagination. All that the ACA accomplished was an emergency duct tape repair of our demonstrably failed privatized system, that is still highly dysfunctional. At best it's kicking the can down the road and the underlying faults remain totally unaddressed and will rear their heads in some crisis sooner or later.

Americans are still being denied necessary care because of cost or being thrown into financial ruin to get it. Hospitals still struggling to make ends meet due do the burden of uninsured and underinsured patients. Quality of care per per dollar spent is still atrocious compared to any of our peers.

Arguably there was nothing better Obama could do considering thr composition of Congress, but the ACA is not the totality of Obama's term. He had a much freer hand when it came to responding to the financial crisis a d that's where his neoliberal flag really flew.
 
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Tero said:
There wasn't much more Obama could do about 2 years in. He was in much the same situation Biden is now. It was also when Foxnews started picking up traction agains Obama and Dems. It worked on the bulk of rural folks and a good part of seniors.
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I wouldn't go that far. I felt like Obama made a huge mistake that Biden and the Democrats keep making. They keep surrendering rural America to the Republicans.

If I was President, I would be on a constant road tour through America. But you have to be the kind of politician who can do that. I think Clinton and Obama were capable of it. Biden at his age today? Not so sure. Not that he wouldn't be physically capable but he's an old man and will look like an old man. It might not be appealing.
 
It must be terribly exhausting and depressing to live in constant "the glass is always half-empty" mode which some members appear to do.
 
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