The Biden Presidency

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Night and Day.

This video of Biden giving a Thanksgiving Address demonstrates the stark difference between Trump.

 
dudalb said:
Besided, Trumpy will let nobody assume the mantle except himself or one of his kids.
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Or a loyalist.

I think Trump is going to reach borderline Eternal President level, where anyone taking up the Trump mantle is going to have to throw his name out there every so often for the base.
 
ISTR a poster giving a one time warning some time ago that health issues (a stroke?) would be making typing posts problematic for him. Might have been dudalb.
 
I suggest "Triceps" for his Secret Service name.

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To jump in here with a somewhat relevant opinion piece...

What do progressives make of Joe Biden's cabinet picks so far?

The bad news for progressives is that there has not yet been a single person announced for an official post that the left can be enthusiastic about

The choices are still incredibly better than Trump's choices in so many ways, but they're not especially encouraging, in and of themselves.

To quote the last little bit -

They may not be thieves or rightwing hardliners, and the Biden administration is sure to be a huge improvement on its disastrous predecessor. But progressives need to watch out: on immigration, the climate crisis and foreign policy, the administration needs to be subjected to ceaseless public pressure, its inevitable serious failings called out and exposed.
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Yeah, not exactly going into this coming Presidency starry-eyed.
 
Yeah, I understand the feeling. But, most of these have to be confirmed by a Republican controlled Senate, so Biden needs at least two of Romney, Murkowski or Collins for confirmation.
That's depressing for the left, but what should Biden do?
He is very limited in doing the Trump shtick with "acting" officials from the start, because these must have been confirmed by the Senate to a different position before, or be career officials.
 
Aridas said:
To jump in here with a somewhat relevant opinion piece...

What do progressives make of Joe Biden's cabinet picks so far?

The bad news for progressives is that there has not yet been a single person announced for an official post that the left can be enthusiastic about

The choices are still incredibly better than Trump's choices in so many ways, but they're not especially encouraging, in and of themselves.

To quote the last little bit -



Yeah, not exactly going into this coming Presidency starry-eyed.
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Progressives need to remember that Biden won because he's not a progressive. If a progressive candidate had secured the Democratic nomination we'd all be contemplating another four years of Trump.
 
Craig4 said:
Progressives need to remember that Biden won because he's not a progressive. If a progressive candidate had secured the Democratic nomination we'd all be contemplating another four years of Trump.
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I question that assertion, but I'll take the win that we got without complaining.

Even so, it's not wrong to be pointedly aware of the state of things and the way that we want them to go.
 
Firestone said:
Yeah, I understand the feeling. But, most of these have to be confirmed by a Republican controlled Senate, so Biden needs at least two of Romney, Murkowski or Collins for confirmation.
That's depressing for the left, but what should Biden do?
He is very limited in doing the Trump shtick with "acting" officials from the start, because these must have been confirmed by the Senate to a different position before, or be career officials.
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Maybe progressives should accept having a President who wants to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, not lock children up in cages and protect the ACA is a win and concentrate their efforts on getting control of Congress so that maybe they might be able to get some real change enacted.
 
Aridas said:
I question that assertion, but I'll take the win that we got without complaining.

Even so, it's not wrong to be pointedly aware of the state of things and the way that we want them to go.
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Progressives need to find points where they can get their camel's nose into the tent. They should rally around Medicare for those who need it and want it with a goal to out-compete private healthcare.

They should look to making college cheaper and free for some. Don't talk to the average American about a free business degree that you're going to use to get a job as a Wall Street bond trader. Talk about a free business degree that you're going to use at the Small Business Administration, Bureau of Indian Affairs or USAID.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party needs to meet Americans where they are, not where they think they should be.
 
Progressives need to not listen to anti-progressives telling them what progressives need to do.
 
Delvo said:
Progressives need to not listen to anti-progressives telling them what progressives need to do.
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Because:
  • Progressives have been massively wrong when telling everyone else that Biden would lose. Or in fact that the only way to beat Trump was to go so far left that no centrist Democrat will vote for your candidate, much less any independent or Republican.
  • Progressives have consistently failed to get a progressive on the big ticket because (spoiler) relatively very few people are as progressive as they are, and (more importantly) no one is actually progressive enough for them.
  • Progressives have consistently failed to get the Presidency because progressives don't grow their numbers. Instead they thin their own ranks with purity tests and attacks on the left for not being progressive enough.

So with such a record, of course progressives should not listen to the massively more successful political parties for advice. Why, it's far easier to claim you would have done such a better job when you fail to get that job than it is to actually do the job when you get it. Just ask Trump!
 
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wareyin said:
Because:
  • Progressives have been massively wrong when telling everyone else that Biden would lose. Or in fact that the only way to beat Trump was to go so far left that no centrist Democrat will vote for your candidate, much less any independent or Republican.
  • Progressives have consistently failed to get a progressive on the big ticket because (spoiler) relatively very few people are as progressive as they are, and (more importantly) no one is actually progressive enough for them.
  • Progressives have consistently failed to get the Presidency because progressives don't grow their numbers. Instead they thin their own ranks with purity tests and attacks on the left for not being progressive enough.

So with such a record, of course progressives should not listen to the massively more successful political parties for advice. Why, it's far easier to claim you would have done such a better job when you fail to get that job than it is to actually do the job when you get it. Just ask Trump!
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Ouch.
 
Craig4 said:
Progressives need to remember that Biden won because he's not a progressive. If a progressive candidate had secured the Democratic nomination we'd all be contemplating another four years of Trump.
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Questionable reasoning there. More on this later.

wareyin said:
Because:
  • Progressives have been massively wrong when telling everyone else that Biden would lose. Or in fact that the only way to beat Trump was to go so far left that no centrist Democrat will vote for your candidate, much less any independent or Republican.
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I didn't see it as going far left as much as I thought progressives had the energy that most of the more moderate candidates lacked. Thank God Biden managed to edge out a victory.

wareyin said:
  • Progressives have consistently failed to get a progressive on the big ticket because (spoiler) relatively very few people are as progressive as they are, and (more importantly) no one is actually progressive enough for them.
  • Progressives have consistently failed to get the Presidency because progressives don't grow their numbers. Instead they thin their own ranks with purity tests and attacks on the left for not being progressive enough.
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There is substantial infighting among progressives and a lack of effective communication to the electorate.

wareyin said:
So with such a record, of course progressives should not listen to the massively more successful political parties for advice. Why, it's far easier to claim you would have done such a better job when you fail to get that job than it is to actually do the job when you get it. Just ask Trump!
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Obama ran as a progressive. "Hope and Change", universal healthcare, withdrawing from Iraq, do you really want "four more years" of Bush? [McCain], etc. His campaign was pretty successful on the heels of the disaster of W. Bush's two terms. Of course he didn't govern like a progressive but his model of grassroots campaigning with a progressive agenda was successful.

Now in today's hyperpolarized political landscape I think the main issue is this perception that these are extreme proposals of a fringe offshoot of the Democratic party. Again I think that popular progressives like Bernie Sanders and AOC don't communicate their ideas very well to people outside of the base. Don't double down on the socialist label in a country still filled with Silent Gens and Boomers who lived through the Cold War. Appeals to policies of other countries run into the doctrine of American exceptionalism. They should appeal to history of the U.S. instead; The Progressive Era, T. Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, FDR, LBJ, hell, Nixon established the EPA.
 
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