A sober rant about liberals and the GOP

[Nomad4Ever]

This is a follow of a blog post I made a little while back that I've been meaning to type up. You can read it here.

Drunk rant about liberals and the GOP

I'm a couple of drinks in, so I'm going to preface with that and also try to keep this as to the point as possible. I can type better than I can read so we will see how this turns out. Basically, I'm frustrated. I'm angry at the GOP for blocking any change we have at progress. I'm angry at the...

debatepolitics.com

Firstly, I need to preface this with something (sadly). No, I do not support the GOP in any manner. Any criticism I could levy at the DNC is 10x as true for the GOP. I voted nearly straight ticket Democrat in 2020 and will again in 2022, donated to Bernie's campaign, and am currently working on getting in touch with my local Democrat party to do canvasing ahead of midterms. That said, this post is mostly critical of the Democrats. Consider this a fair warning Liberals.

As a leftist, I spend no small portion of my time lamenting my political allies. As we approach the two year mark of Biden's presidency many of my criticisms and fears of Biden and the Democrats broadly have come to pass. Biden has quietly set aside many of his campaign promises, not with a vicious fight where the GOP and middling senators like Manchin were dragged through the dirt; made clear by the administration that it is their fault his goals weren't accomplished.

No, he abandoned many of these fights almost immediately before they even began. Not only that, but he has been almost infuriatingly unwilling to drag the GOP for blocking what moderate reforms he does support.

Here are some of the main policy criticisms I have of the Biden administration. This post will be rather long, but I wanted to discuss my feelings in detail (with sources!) in contrast to my drunken rant post.

(continued)

 

[Nomad4Ever]

As to Yemen’s civil war, shortly after taking office, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that he was “ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” Yet subsequent reporting made clear that U.S. support continued in the form of “defensive” support, including servicing Saudi aircraft and providing other logistical and intelligence support. Critics maintain that this amounts to continued support – albeit indirect – for Saudi operations in Yemen. (Source)

We continue to support an autocratic monarchist state as they commit regular war crimes against their neighbor. Hey, as least we aren't profiting off of it by selling them weapons anymore I guess!

President Joe Biden is again proposing that the ban on legalizing the sale of recreational marijuana continues in D.C., another setback for local officials and advocates who celebrated Democratic control of the White House and Congress as a sign that the six-year-old prohibition would eventually be lifted. (Source)

Literally the easiest win in political history. Support to federally legalize marijuana is at an all time high, with an overwhelming amount of support from Democrats and independents...and even a slim majority among Republicans. And he proposed a bill that kept it illegal. The DNC could have road out a federal legalization of weed for the next decade as a political talking point.

President Joe Biden has signed off on a $29 billion spending increase to his requested fiscal year 2022 national defense budget....The national defense total in the 2022 omnibus spending bill is $782 billion, a 3.9 percent increase over the administration’s request for 2022 and a 5.6 percent increase over the 2021 appropriations. (Source)

Not that this is surprising. There is no political interest in reducing or maintaining our defense spending. But for those that would like to see it lowered it is foolish to expect such action to be championed by establishment Democrats.

Biden could use executive powers to push a bipartisan plan that includes elements of Republican and Democratic proposals, political strategists say. Biden made police reform a major part of his presidential campaign, but instead, his administration has proposed a more than $32 billion increase in funding for police in the 2023 budget. (Source)

🤡

Absolutely ridiculous. Were Democrat and Republican police reform bills shut down in the senate? Yes. But nobody forced Biden to propose an increase to police spending that is more than what a medium sized country spends on defense. Just to exemplify how cartoonishly ridiculous this is;

(Source)
Our police force would be the third highest funded military in the world...behind OURSELVES then China, and nearly twice as much as Russia spends.

(Continued)

 

[Nomad4Ever]

Then...there are the political wins.

So I was rather taken aback to discover President Biden has almost totally halted drone strikes, and airstrikes in general, around the world. It's a remarkable foreign policy reform, but also a remarkable failure of both government communication and media coverage. A hugely significant change in foreign policy has happened — and almost nobody is paying attention. (Source)

One of my main criticisms of Democrats is that even when they succeed they fail to politically capitalize on it. There is almost zero messaging coming out of the DNC about this. Why? This is a big deal and something Biden is directly responsible for. Here look, "Trump pledged to stop 'endless wars' but his airstrikes in Afghanistan increased civilian deaths by 330% since 2016, Biden ends destructive US policy and saved lives of innocent kids". That one is for free DNC.

Before any of you conservatives get too excited by my posts, another one of my main criticisms of Democrats (and especially Biden) is that they don't push back hard enough against the ghoulish GOP and especially their rhetoric.

But while Democrats are increasingly emboldened by the president’s handling of the crisis in Ukraine, party leaders are struggling with how to translate that into a clear and concise message to neutralize Republican attacks and help stave off a GOP takeover of Congress.

In his State of the Union address this week, Biden seized on the images coming out of Ukraine, applauding the stand of everyone from regular citizens to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy against the invading Russian forces. But so far he’s avoided directly mentioning those within the GOP who have praised Putin — a type of contrast that other Democrats are now sharply starting to make.

“‘We’re Zelenskyy Democrats. And they’re Putin Republicans’ would be my bumper sticker,” (Source)

An anecdotal example. But there is a clear pattern. Another even starker example is the DNC's failure to completely lambast the GOP for Justice Thomas clear and evident conflict of interest. A breach so severe in any sane world it would call in question his continued service on the Supreme court and is direct evidence of corruption. Yet we hear almost nothing about it.

To truth is that establishment Democrats are...well...establishment. Biden doesn't want a comprehensive response to climate change. He doesn't really care about police reforms. He clearly doesn't care about legalizing weed. He doesn't want to reduce military spending. Climate change is of moderate concern but isn't being treated with any urgency.

If you want to see these issues solved, liberal Democrats aren't it. We need to get more progressive anti-establishment Democrats like Bernie Sanders and The Squad into office if these are issues you care about. Stopping Trump and the concerning extremist trend in the GOP is critically important and I'd obviously vote for Biden again over Trump, but another decade of Biden presidencies won't fix these issues.

 

[Schism]

It's broken; money does all the talking and career politicians are stuffing it in their pockets.

And then there's the looney left, and the Democrats who enable them.

And we can't ignore the kooky right, and the Republicans who enable them as well.

 

[cpwill]

You've clearly done some real homework on this; policy driven debates are the best. Thank you.

I find your take interesting, however. I am constantly hearing from the Right that Biden is screwed because his administration is captured by the left - that his attempts to lead moderate-left are stymied by his own staff.

Respectfully, on that front, I think, the left may have bought into an ENTIRELY implausible understanding of what was in the realm of the possible, given the smallest Congressional majority in American history.

I have some - policy driven - thoughts on why the administration may be acting in the ways it is for a couple of those items above. How would you like to address them?

 

[Questerr]

It's broken; money does all the talking and career politicians are stuffing it in their pockets.

And then there's the looney left, and the Democrats who enable them.

And we can't ignore the kooky right, and the Republicans who enable them as well.

The “looney left” has a handful of representation in Congress and have to fight their own party tooth and nail to get even token reforms implemented.

The “kooky right” is now the base of the Republican Party and there’s only a handful of members of Congress who will resist their agenda at all. Every insane far right desire is becoming part of the official party platform.

They are NOT equal or the same.

 

[Lloyd Christmas]

This is a follow of a blog post I made a little while back that I've been meaning to type up. You can read it here.

Drunk rant about liberals and the GOP

I'm a couple of drinks in, so I'm going to preface with that and also try to keep this as to the point as possible. I can type better than I can read so we will see how this turns out. Basically, I'm frustrated. I'm angry at the GOP for blocking any change we have at progress. I'm angry at the...

debatepolitics.com

Firstly, I need to preface this with something (sadly). No, I do not support the GOP in any manner. Any criticism I could levy at the DNC is 10x as true for the GOP. I voted nearly straight ticket Democrat in 2020 and will again in 2022, donated to Bernie's campaign, and am currently working on getting in touch with my local Democrat party to do canvasing ahead of midterms. That said, this post is mostly critical of the Democrats. Consider this a fair warning Liberals.

As a leftist, I spend no small portion of my time lamenting my political allies. As we approach the two year mark of Biden's presidency many of my criticisms and fears of Biden and the Democrats broadly have come to pass. Biden has quietly set aside many of his campaign promises, not with a vicious fight where the GOP and middling senators like Manchin were dragged through the dirt; made clear by the administration that it is their fault his goals weren't accomplished.

No, he abandoned many of these fights almost immediately before they even began. Not only that, but he has been almost infuriatingly unwilling to drag the GOP for blocking what moderate reforms he does support.

Here are some of the main policy criticisms I have of the Biden administration. This post will be rather long, but I wanted to discuss my feelings in detail (with sources!) in contrast to my drunken rant post.

(continued)

I do hate how Biden is blamed for not getting things he wanted, when he can't get the votes to do anything? Manchin and Sinema are basically republicans, and the GOP doesn't vote for Dems? W

Now, some of the points about what Biden is doing holds merit, but often times their hands are tied. Also, there is so much shit going on Biden has to deal so I can see not getting to everything. It's one fire after another, pafrticularly now with hte stupid Russia war preventing any positive gains of overcoming the pandemic

He probably is pandering to the republican vote with increased PD spending
Utlimately, it may be by design. Both R and D are making bank so its probably a cycle on purpose. Dem base wants things but the Dems never get veto proof control and republicans block anything. And then the cycle repeast and idiots go back to do nothing republicans. probably by intent. Dems probably don't want to get the things their base wants done, they always have Rs to blame for bloicking. Although, Dems don't have power, they don't have ScOTUS, they can't get anything done other than things that are fillibuster proof.

 

[The Mark]

It's broken; money does all the talking and career politicians are stuffing it in their pockets.

And then there's the looney left, and the Democrats who enable them.

And we can't ignore the kooky right, and the Republicans who enable them as well.

Our local framing and context for what is considered left and what right is skewed to the right.

This makes perfectly sensible centrist things like government-funded healthcare seem wild leftist silliness to some who aren't paying attention to the larger context.

 

[Nomad4Ever]

I find your take interesting, however. I am constantly hearing from the Right that Biden is screwed because his administration is captured by the left - that his attempts to lead moderate-left are stymied by his own staff.

In some ways, Biden's presidency has been extremely progressive. I'm happy about quite a few of his actions. His response to the Ukraine crisis for example. I thought the original BBB and infrastructure bills were fantastic. That said, I think it is pretty clear that Biden has at best been pulled over slightly by the base Bernie Sanders managed to build, but isn't series about any meaningful leftist policy (unless infrastructure spending is leftist )

Respectfully, on that front, I think, the left may have bought into an ENTIRELY implausible understanding of what was in the realm of the possible, given the smallest Congressional majority in American history.

Oh, don't even get my started on the Bernie voters that feel betrayed Biden didn't instantly implement single payer healthcare or whatever. That's why I primarily focused on actions Biden and the Democrats have taken not related to an inability to pass bills.

I have some - policy driven - thoughts on why the administration may be acting in the ways it is for a couple of those items above. How would you like to address them?

I am certainly interested.

 

[multivita-man]

Respectfully, on that front, I think, the left may have bought into an ENTIRELY implausible understanding of what was in the realm of the possible, given the smallest Congressional majority in American history.

This is an understatement. I think the Bernistas thought that just because they had the power to **** things up that they had real power. They pushed Biden into believing that because they know how to post memes on twitter that get lots of RTs that they are some sort of super powerful caucus, thus arm-twisting him into believing that he needed to go against his own instincts as a moderate politician. In football parlance, they thought they could just overrun Joe Manchin and all he did was just stuff the Bernista caucus at the line of scrimmage for loss of yardage, over and over and over again. They were pushing for ever-larger spending that was never going to get signed off on, all while the inflation story was growing like a burning wildfire.

 

[Mr Person]

His stance on weed is absolute shit.

I tend to fault presidents what they do and do not do with the time they reasonably have available, relative to the importance of the initiative. For example, I was and am pissed that Obama didn't walk in with a more detailed plan for Obamacare. It's what the Clintons did, but it didn't work then. Perhaps he took the wrong message. He was largely elected for that plan, so it should've been there.

But we have to bear in mind that there is only so much attention, will, and time. It is not reasonable to demand a politician move on all promise/initiatives, and downright insane to expect they can. Circumstances dictate. Covid and now the war against Ukraine loom huge, and he's still done far more than I thought he'd be able.

The pot stance is absolute shit. But he's an old drug warrior, and that was one reason my only vote for him was in the general election, not the primary.



That's much briefer than either blog/post, so perhaps I'll have to go back and go through in more detail. But it really should be flagged: we all know politicians make "promises" and we all know they don't keep them, even the majority. Some is because they needed the votes. They had to get elected to do anything. But a ton of it is simply because of what is possible in politics. It's a world of wheeling and dealing, greased elbows, and a horrifically massive sprawl of interests and the people they employ to both lobby congress and infiltrate exec agencies.

"Swamp" frankly insults the situation. So does "labrynthine" and "byzantine". It's a ****pocalpyse of a mess, but it also probably couldn't work with anything approaching reasonable efficiency.

I do hate how Biden is blamed for not getting things he wanted, when he can't get the votes to do anything? Manchin and Sinema are basically republicans, and the GOP doesn't vote for Dems? W
<>

Let me append that to my basic list. Presidents are limited.

 

[Schism]

The “looney left” has a handful of representation in Congress and have to fight their own party tooth and nail to get even token reforms implemented.

They had Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi dressed up in an culturally appropriated African costume taking a knee to a fraudulent charity.

The “kooky right” is now the base of the Republican Party and there’s only a handful of members of Congress who will resist their agenda at all. Every insane far right desire is becoming part of the official party platform.

The GOP stripped Greene of her committee assignments.

They are NOT equal or the same.

Extremism is extremism regardles of the extremists preferred subject matter.

 

[Schism]

His stance on weed is absolute shit.

I tend to fault presidents what they do and do not do with the time they reasonably have available, relative to the importance of the initiative. For example, I was and am pissed that Obama didn't walk in with a more detailed plan for Obamacare. It's what the Clintons did, but it didn't work then. Perhaps he took the wrong message. He was largely elected for that plan, so it should've been there.

But we have to bear in mind that there is only so much attention, will, and time. It is not reasonable to demand a politician move on all promise/initiatives, and downright insane to expect they can. Circumstances dictate. Covid and now the war against Ukraine loom huge, and he's still done far more than I thought he'd be able.

The pot stance is absolute shit. But he's an old drug warrior, and that was one reason my only vote for him was in the general election, not the primary.



That's much briefer than either blog/post, so perhaps I'll have to go back and go through in more detail. But it really should be flagged: we all know politicians make "promises" and we all know they don't keep them, even the majority. Some is because they needed the votes. They had to get elected to do anything. But a ton of it is simply because of what is possible in politics. It's a world of wheeling and dealing, greased elbows, and a horrifically massive sprawl of interests and the people they employ to both lobby congress and infiltrate exec agencies.

"Swamp" frankly insults the situation. So does "labrynthine" and "byzantine". It's a ****pocalpyse of a mess, but it also probably couldn't work with anything approaching reasonable efficiency.

They got your vote. You got played.

That's how they operate.

 

[Jay59]

How can Biden be blamed when he can't get the votes to do anything?

They blamed Trump when he couldn't get the votes. It's standard procedure.

Manchin and Sinema are basically republicans, and the GOP doesn't vote for Dems?

The is getting deep. Manching and Sinema are straightforward centrists, like Collins and Murkowski of the Republicans.

If things are so divided, how did Trump manage to find bipartisan issues to get passed?

Why are democrats being blamed for non stop blocking of anything by the republicans?

They aren't.

sounds like the BS narrative that keeps the stupid cycle of always going back to the do nothing but bankrupt the coutnry with wars and tax cuts for the wealthy Republicans.

Wealthy Democrats, but most of this is reasonable.

Now they have SCOTUS and many courts.

Elections have consequences.

Now at the state level they are rigging things even more

Democrats lost 1000 state levels seats during the Obama administration. People have been telling you that you are on the wrong track for well over a decade.

 

[multivita-man]

His stance on weed is absolute shit.

I tend to fault presidents what they do and do not do with the time they reasonably have available, relative to the importance of the initiative. For example, I was and am pissed that Obama didn't walk in with a more detailed plan for Obamacare. It's what the Clintons did, but it didn't work then. Perhaps he took the wrong message. He was largely elected for that plan, so it should've been there.

I'm gonna potentially pick some nits, but what about Obamacare did Obamacare not put out in detail? He got the most ambitious and impactful piece of healthcare legislation since the 1960s passed. That was his one job, and he did it. It wasn't perfect, but it was a legislative win and it's a foundation that can be built upon. In fact it's a legislative victory that keeps on winning, because every time the GOP threatens to take it away they got shocked in the dick like they've just pissed on an electric fence.

Legislatively, Obama did what he was supposed to. He brought a big Christmas wish list, gathered people around the table, figured out what he could get done and what he couldn't, and didn't trip over his own dick wasting time trying to accomplish the unattainable just to build street cred with the progressive activists.

This is the opposite of what Biden did - and it's partly why Biden is now floundering, which is ironic when you consider that one of Biden's assets is that his time in the senate should have enabled him to be a coalition builder and a room reader. I don't entirely blame Biden, though; the activist twitter, MSNBC, Young Turks, Intercept left has characterized centrist coalition builders as nothing more than corrupt backroom dealers and obsolete relics from the 19th Century, and terrorized them with their Trotskyist threats to just tear it all down if they don't get their way.

 

[Questerr]

They had Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi dressed up in an culturally appropriated African costume taking a knee to a fraudulent charity.



The GOP stripped Greene of her committee assignments.



Extremism is extremism regardles of the extremists preferred subject matter.

Nancy Pelosi is one of the ultimate Liberal Moderates in the Congress. She's nowhere even close to "the looney left".

You think Greene is the only far right member of the Republicans in Congress? Anyone who aligns with Trump and his agenda are far right.

 

[aociswundumho]

Literally the easiest win in political history. Support to federally legalize marijuana is at an all time high, with an overwhelming amount of support from Democrats and independents...and even a slim majority among Republicans. And he proposed a bill that kept it illegal. The DNC could have road out a federal legalization of weed for the next decade as a political talking point.

[...]

Absolutely ridiculous. Were Democrat and Republican police reform bills shut down in the senate? Yes. But nobody forced Biden to propose an increase to police spending that is more than what a medium sized country spends on defense. Just to exemplify how cartoonishly ridiculous this is;

No disrespect intended, but how could you be surprised by either of those? Biden wrote the 1994 crime bill, and Harris was a prosecutor during Cali's three strike era, and both of them are rabid drug warriors.

 

[Nomad4Ever]

How can Biden be blamed when he can't get the votes to do anything?

I specifically focused my criticism on areas that do not involve an inability to pass legislation. Obviously that is not something Biden or the DNC can directly control.

Now, some of the points about what Biden is doing holds merit, but oftne times their hands are tied. Also, there is so much shit going on Biden has to deal so I can see not getting to everything. It's one fire after another, pafrticularly now with hte stupid Russia war preventing any positive gains of overcoming the pandemic

Again, several of my criticisms centered on areas where Biden actively went out of his way to block progress...or effort we could just stop making. Like supporting the Saudi government.

He probably is pandering to the republican vote with increased PD spending

I disagree. And **** him for doing it.

Do you really think more than a few hundred GOP voters were swayed by this? They don't care about policy. And if it was a just to pay lip service to the GOP then why increase spending in proportion to that of a mid sized first world country's military budget?

 

[eohrnberger]

This is a follow of a blog post I made a little while back that I've been meaning to type up. You can read it here.

Drunk rant about liberals and the GOP

I'm a couple of drinks in, so I'm going to preface with that and also try to keep this as to the point as possible. I can type better than I can read so we will see how this turns out. Basically, I'm frustrated. I'm angry at the GOP for blocking any change we have at progress. I'm angry at the...

debatepolitics.com

Firstly, I need to preface this with something (sadly). No, I do not support the GOP in any manner. Any criticism I could levy at the DNC is 10x as true for the GOP. I voted nearly straight ticket Democrat in 2020 and will again in 2022, donated to Bernie's campaign, and am currently working on getting in touch with my local Democrat party to do canvasing ahead of midterms. That said, this post is mostly critical of the Democrats. Consider this a fair warning Liberals.

As a leftist, I spend no small portion of my time lamenting my political allies. As we approach the two year mark of Biden's presidency many of my criticisms and fears of Biden and the Democrats broadly have come to pass. Biden has quietly set aside many of his campaign promises, not with a vicious fight where the GOP and middling senators like Manchin were dragged through the dirt; made clear by the administration that it is their fault his goals weren't accomplished.

Err, I think you are discounting how unpopular many of the Biden, far more so the leftist radicals in his administration - as he's not leading nor in control of anything, policies are with the electorate, where inevitably those leftist 'theoretical' public policy prescriptions lead not to better electorate outlook and perspectives, but far worse ones, such as 'Defund the Police', but there are many others similar ones. For example the 'War on Oil' policies and regulations are costing the electorate dearly, and will continue to do so.

Why is it that the left can't manage to apply the simple question 'and then what?', and about 5 more after the first one, after the implementation of their leftist theoretical public policy prescriptions?

No, he abandoned many of these fights almost immediately before they even began. Not only that, but he has been almost infuriatingly unwilling to drag the GOP for blocking what moderate reforms he does support.

'moderate reforms he does support' Nothing moderate about the policies coming from the leftist radicals in his administration.

Here are some of the main policy criticisms I have of the Biden administration. This post will be rather long, but I wanted to discuss my feelings in detail (with sources!) in contrast to my drunken rant post.

(continued)

 

[cpwill]

I thought the original BBB and infrastructure bills were fantastic.

I think BBB v Infrastructure (which you highlight above) is an excellent case study. If Biden had taken the initial stimulus and follow-on Infrastructure bill (both of which were massive) and declared victory, he would have been solidly still moderate-left, and better positioned to respond to the later inflation.

Instead, he married infrastructure to BBB, which, in a congress this close, was never likely to pass. He spent months on it, even as inflation began to climb, reinforcing in the public mind that Biden's only response was to double-down on a key driver of the problem that they consistently tell pollsters should be the first thing to fix. It also fixed in the public mind that he was captured by the left, because he was unable to let it go for so long.

I am certainly interested.

So, agreeably this jumps out at me for personal reasons, but two items: support to Saudi Arabia and not crowing about ending CT strikes.

Ending CT Strikes:

In a word: Risk. Two kinds.

1. Security risk - highlighting that you aren't going to suppress VEOs.... does not, exactly, discourage them. Bullies tend rather to react badly to being informed that they can get away with their behavior.

2. Political risk - Biden took a massive blow with the utter, complete, disaster that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Running explicitly on ending drone strikes against terrorists - including leaders of AQ and ISIS - reinforces the view politically that he's weak, and that this reduces U.S. national security. This will especially be true if a group is able to pull off a major attack in CONUS or Western Europe.

The Republican ads for 2024 write themselves:

"After the shameful disaster of Afghanistan [cut to scene of chaos on HKIA] when the President promised to rescue Americans [cut to Biden saying we would stay until we got out all the Americans] but then abandoned them instead [cut to scene of the administration admitting it left hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan], Biden decided to hope the terrorists just wouldn't hurt anyone [cut to Biden stumbling through an announcement about how we weren't conducting drone strikes] with tragically predictable effects. [scenes of terror attack, injured being rushed off scene] President Biden. He just.... doesn't know how to keep Americans safe.".​

And that brings us to:

Saudi Arabia:

In foreign policy, there usually are no "good" options. "Less Bad" is generally what we are hoping to achieve... if we are lucky,and things go according to plan.

Part of turning off drone strikes is that groups like AQAP - which, according to their own public materials, have been assigned the task of launching "external operations" (attacks against the West) get a LOT more freedom of maneuver.

We aren't suppressing AQAP, and, the Houthi (who are allied with Iran) aren't exactly willing to suppress AQAP for us. We need someone... in the area... to keep America safe... by suppressing AQAP.... someone willing to commit violence against them, who knows them pretty well,.... and preferably who also needs to keep them suppressed for their own reasons, so they will stick at it if we urge them along.....

....And, it turns out, Russia is kind of a bad actor, so, we also need this particular someone to be a major oil exporter.....

Oh. And we need them to be able - either directly or via client states - to make sure we are able to keep our naval bases in the region.

Taking a look at a map.... there's kind of not exactly a lot of options, here. 🤷‍♂️

One of the reasons the Biden Adminstration - like the Obama administration - is so wedded to the notion of an Iranian deal is the hope that one day we can "switch sides" in the region, and support Iran against Saudi Arabia. Personally I think that's ignorant and nuts in equal measures: Iran (the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, current host of al-Qa'ida senior leaders, whose slogan is literally Death To America) has no interest in playing such a role. So, until we get flying unicorns, or Iran becomes our friend, whichever comes first, we are stuck, at least in the meantime, with the Sunni powers in the region - UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

 

[Roadvirus]

Nancy Pelosi is one of the ultimate Liberal Moderates in the Congress. She's nowhere even close to "the looney left".

Uh huh. And i'm the Pope.

 

[Nomad4Ever]

But it really should be flagged: we all know politicians make "promises" and we all know they don't keep them, even the majority. Some is because they needed the votes. They had to get elected to do anything. But a ton of it is simply because of what is possible in politics. It's a world of wheeling and dealing, greased elbows, and a horrifically massive sprawl of interests and the people they employ to both lobby congress and infiltrate exec agencies.

Well I feel like no small part of my post was spent critiquing their political strategy and had nothing to do with any lack of keeping campaign promises.

 

[Questerr]

Uh huh. And i'm the Pope.

Every single one of her positions is pure neo-liberal capitalist centrism. She doesn't support a single progressive or leftist policy beyond occasional empty pandering.

 

[The Mark]

No disrespect intended, but how could you be surprised by either of those? Biden wrote the 1994 crime bill, and Harris was a prosecutor during Cali's three strike era, and both of them are rabid drug warriors.

View attachment 67385108

View attachment 67385109

Democratic party has been moving away from being "of the poor and oppressed" for decades now.
It's why they're struggling to beat a rerun of authoritarianism.

Edit: I view the recent progressive types as an attempt to move back towards that, but it's being resisted.

Edit 2: And is not without it's own flaws.

 

[Mr Person]

I'm gonna potentially pick some nits, but what about Obamacare did Obamacare not put out in detail? He got the most ambitious and impactful piece of healthcare legislation since the 1960s passed. That was his one job, and he did it. It wasn't perfect, but it was a legislative win and it's a foundation that can be built upon. In fact it's a legislative victory that keeps on winning, because every time the GOP threatens to take it away they got shocked in the dick like they've just pissed on an electric fence.

Legislatively, Obama did what he was supposed to. He brought a big Christmas wish list, gathered people around the table, figured out what he could get done and what he couldn't, and didn't trip over his own dick wasting time trying to accomplish the unattainable just to build street cred with the progressive activists.

This is the opposite of what Biden did - and it's partly why Biden is now floundering, which is ironic when you consider that one of Biden's assets is that his time in the senate should have enabled him to be a coalition builder and a room reader. I don't entirely blame Biden, though; the activist twitter, MSNBC, Young Turks, Intercept left has characterized centrist coalition builders as nothing more than corrupt backroom dealers and obsolete relics from the 19th Century, and terrorized them with their Trotskyist threats to just tear it all down if they don't get their way.

If it were possible to place a trustworthy bet on something claiming to be able to glimpse the multiverse, I'd bet that he might just have gotten the public option. And that if we got it, we'd be at or far closer to some sort of basic single payer system now.

I'm not sure he did do what he was supposed to. He seemed to have read the Clinton experience as saying you shouldn't walk in with a list and a plan, but a list and prodding. My read was the health care agenda was a bigger motivating factor than Clinton's. (That said, I wasn't as politically aware for Clinton's).

The economic catastrophe complicated things, of course, as did Ted Kennedy's passing.