He has delivered the largest economic recovery plan since Roosevelt, the largest infrastructure plan since Eisenhower, the most judges confirmed since Kennedy, the second-largest healthcare bill since Johnson, and the largest climate change bill in history.
Given the congress he has to work with, one could argue he’s been a better President than Obama was.
He’s been a better president than Obama was.
It’s not particularly close in my opinion.
I’m hella biased, but the SAVE plan and not accruing interest on student loans as long as you make payments is a huge win.
There’s no reason they couldn’t have done this under Obama…
Edit: just wanted to mention that this restructuring for student loans had absolutely nothing to do with Congress
The SAVE plan and the rules around PSLF really do make medical school a lot more viable for people like me. Doctors get paid a pittance in residency, and the interest on medical school loans would add up really fast on the old income-driven repayment plans.
Trust me I fully understand.
I went to med school, finished back in 2018.
If I never step foot into a hospital again it’ll be too soon.
I work from home now as a cloud engineer for a large US-based mortgage company.
I’m very happy now. I’ve already made my piece that my $350,000 in loans can only be solved by making minimum payments for 20 years.
All that being said, a lot of people are in a different boat than myself.
Their loans are much more manageable and I’m really glad they’ll be able to pay them off because interest isn’t accruing.
Who knows? I make enough now that I’m actually going to have to sit down and calculate whether it’s worth it to pay the loans off myself or just make minimum payments for 20 years and have the rest forgiven.
The SAVE plan and interest no longer recruiting is the only reason these possibilities are there.
Otherwise I’d have to resign myself to making 20 years of minimum payments and hoping that forgiveness plan is still in place.
In terms of stuff leftists want, Obama overpromised and underdelivered, while Biden underpromised and overdelivered. I’m not sure he actually delivered all that much more than Obama did on an absolute scale, but when expectations ranged from “1994 crime bill guy” to “at least he’s not Trump,” pretty much any policy that manages to edge past mediocre is a pleasant surprise.
I agree too. Obama had charisma and was a great speaker, but policy wise Biden is much better.
If Obama was firmer many current problems would not exist today. But it is easier to say now.
Obama was generally pretty terrible. Obamacare was a disaster and about the only good policies he had were around car emissions, which were significant but still. If you factor in the amount of political capital he had in 2009 it’s sad really.
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Some things never chnage
Weird, I never see Record oil extraction on his list of accomplishments, I wonder why that is? 🤔
He’s been ok. Way better than that last guy though!
I feel that he is mostly honest and wants to do the right thing but he doesn’t always get it right. At least he tries.
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For a president of a war mongering country like the US he is ok. But he is still a president of the US so murdering brown people is a sport for him.
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Obama was catastrophic in foreign policy. He was just a puppet that did whatever the CIA told him to do. Netanyahu didn’t like him because he was black that’s about it.
He started like three wars, left Libya in chaos by overthrowing Gadaffi who didn’t want to give him oil, didn’t close Guantanamo Bay (one of his main promises), proscecuted Edward Snowden for exposing US war crimes, and a whole slew more.
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Bush was indeed far worse than Obama. Yet Obama continued everything Bush started. Obama did not save the middle east, he ruined it even more by starting three extra wars. It’s two sides of the same coin on foreign policy.
The only time Trump went Obama tier full idiot on foreign policy was when he drone striked the Iranian general Suleimani, he claims israel had a role in that. Luckily this didn’t lead to major escalations in the region.
Aside from that Trump just continued drone striking Syria, a war that Obama started.
Many middle eastern leaders aren’t the friendliest dudes. Gadaffi certainly wasn’t. But the questions that every American forgets to ask is “if we kill this guy, will the next guy be better or worse”? If you look at the state that Iraq, Libya etc are in now, it was certainly many times better before America destroyed it.
Of course that is an irrelevant moral question. The only real reason America kills leaders in the middle east is when they stop abiding the rules of the American Oil Cartel.
2011/03/20: Western oil companies operating in Libya have privately warned that their operations in the country may be nationalised if Colonel Muammer Gaddafi’s regime prevails.
From wikipedia:
The killing of Muammar Gaddafi took place on 20 October 2011
Obama bombed millions using drones.
He is also OK for being a president of the US.
Obama was pretty bad on the war front.
- Obama killed US citizens without a trial in foreign countries.
- Continued and escalated drone strikes.
- Violated the war powers act with respect to Libya.
- Egypt coup + Bengazi was a massive failure.
- Created power vacuum for isis to rise.
- conducted military operations in foreign countries without their knowledge or consent.
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You are pretty much entirely incorrect. Before 2011, Egypt was under the control of Hosni Mubarak, a brutal dictator with mostly friendly ties to the U.S. The Egyptian people eventually revolted, and they were not happy with the U.S. afterwards; they pelted then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s motorcade with tomatoes and eggs when she came to visit after the uprising.
The Muslim Brotherhood won the majority of the Egyptian parliament afterwards, and elected Mohammed Morsi as President, but their rule lasted barely a year before the were also met with massive protests. The military forced Morsi out and basically established a military dictatorship in 2013. There were always rumblings that the U.S. was working behind the scenes with the Egyptian military to destabilize Muslim Brotherhoods civilian government, but there’s no evidence of that. The Egyptian Military government then blamed the Brotherhood for a terrorist attack, a claim the Brotherhood denied, and banned the Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood were repressive and definitely supported terrorism, but they did not rule Egypt before 2011. There were a small blip between U.S. backed dictators.
If he didn’t run a campaign against Bernie, I’d agree. Bernie could have done wonders for this country.
Not so subtle reminder that YOU are not immune to propaganda.
Maintaining the status quo in the face of looming danger does not make you a great president.
The best thing about Biden is that he is not Trump.
Also we’re not only supporting a genocide, we’re footing the bill.
Word. We’re just in a situation that being a mediocre Democrat is “good”. The bar is in hell.
I’m 37 years old, the bar has been in hell for my entire existence and more than likely a handful of decades prior
Big facts. History is gonna treat Biden like it treated Coolidge. Hes good at the appearence of doing his job but will be blamed for lack of action preventing what comes after him. Be it this election cycle or 4 years from now. Hes letting the fascists have their dress rehersal at the southern border and it’s far from the first time hes refused to go hard on fascism. It’s becoming a matter of when, not if.
Background: I supported Bernie in the 2016 primaries; I ended up voting for Hillary. In 2020, Biden wasn’t even my 3rd pick in the Primaries (Warren, Sanders, maybe Buttigieg and even Steyer.). I still voted Biden, despite a clear lack of enthusiasm because I know how much easier it is to break and corrupt things than to simply maintain it or build upon a trillion-piece puzzle.
Overall, Biden has been a pretty great President if only for one simple fact: The genuine experience and expertise of his cabinet. When I think of Donnie, I think of Bill Barr, Richard Spencer, Mike Pompeo, and other scum of his cabinet. These people are psychopathic, smarter than Trump, and dangerous. While they’re incompetent in their actual roles, they leveraged their offices to incredibly nefarious ends.
The true stars of Biden’s administration has been his advisors and cabinet: Blinken, Yellen, Garland, Austin, Kirby, Bill Burns, Jake Sullivan, etc. These are the people that keep the machine running. Who actually take advice from reputable experts in respective fields, like Dr. Fauci.
So yes, given the bigger picture, Biden has been a great President; partly because of stability; partly because of contrast with chaos.
And folks, yes, it’s campaign season now. Expect a massive influx of ads and opinion pieces and a general attempt to drum up energy and awareness to a crucial election. Don’t shoot yourselves in the foot; the right has massive megaphones of propaganda they’re using every single fucking day to distort reality. Don’t be afraid to push back.
Don’t forget Betsy Devos, the education secretary who’s essentially never gone through public education, daughter of billionaire Edgar Prince.
A secretary of transportation Elaine Chao married to freakin Mitch McConnell of all people.
A Postmaster General Louis DeJoy with no experience at USPS who owns delivery companies that directly compete and contract with them who hasn’t been ousted yet…
People rag on Joe’s purported poor mental capabilities, but his power is from having effective, competent people in his cabinet who are not merely sycophantic conservative donors.
I knew I’d forget a bunch of terrible people… There were so many…
Don’t forget the blatant nepotism and incompetence from Ivanka and Kushner, etc.
In spite of myself, I kinda like Biden. Could be way worse
Underrated comment, absolutely spot on.
The subtle power of lowered expectations.
“everything is bad, nothing can ever actually be good”
Compared to another 4 years of Trump? Absolutely.
But I don’t have to be ecstatic to choose between a prehistoric career politician, and an embarrassing, felonious dinosaur
How dare you besmirch the good reputation of dinosaurs like that!
I mean, at least with dinosaurs the most I have to worry about is being eaten. With our government there’s being eaten AND homelessness!
Being eaten cures homelessness!
Are all this “wow Biden was actually the greatest president ever but we didn’t notice” news that started floating around a part of his upcoming election campaign?
I was curious because of how unashamedly propagandist this article is. So I clicked on the author link. It seems this is the only article he’s ever written for this website (I hesitate to call it a news outlet). Also, it says he’s a former republican political consultant now working for the Lincoln Project. That’s apparently the name of a moderate republican PAC that is trying to fight Trumpism.
So why would a political news website outright publish propaganda from a PAC without any commentary? I’ve never heard of the new republic before, but they seem to be an otherwise unremarkable progressive political magazine. I couldn’t say whether the new republic is getting paid by the PAC to publish this, or whether they just took it because it generally aligns with their own stated political views. I will say that, although it is mentioned at the bottom that the author currently works for the Lincoln Project, I had to really look for that. it also wasn’t clear to me at first this was a PAC. So in my opinion, proper journalistic ethical standards are not being upheld here.
Given the article’s origins, it’s pretty safe to say none of this is genuine. These are moderate republicans who hate Trump, trying desperately to destroy Trumpism. If they truly believed their own article they’d be democrats. And if you’re here wondering if the article is worth reading, I’d say it is practically fully content-free. It’s all just hopium.
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Good to know, thanks. I’m not too familiar with the American news media, although I know there’s a lot of it around. I checked them briefly and they didn’t seem all too different from e.g. Huffington Post or other similar sites, which is why I called them unremarkable. It’s interesting to see they have a long history.
I don’t think this materially affects any of my conclusions on the article itself though.
Welcome to American media! Brand new dogshit media companies made to make profit mixed with century old names, bought and turned to shit to make profit!
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You know it! I’m just thinking what’s the point? I don’t like Biden, but I gotta vote for him anyway cause the alternative is way worse. I DO NOT want to go back to seeing 24/7 news feeds about Trump doing something worse each day or playing golf for the nth time.
You know one of the few things I liked about Biden was that I was able to go days or sometimes weeks without hearing anything about him. Campaign seasons suck.
Yes, the Biden presidency has been blissfully “boring”. I might have hoped for better, but I’ll settle for stagnant compared to 2016-2020.
Boring? We are involved in two major regional wars with constant threat of escalation, global economic chaos, and the highest inflation in a generation. Fallout from a pandemic, the feds have been raising interest rates to the point the whole economy is fundamentally changing.
We are living through historic times. I feel like the world hasn’t been normal or “boring” since Dec 2019
All reasons why we need solid leadership. I’d take a 3rd candidate, but if its going to boil down to Trump v Biden, then its an easy Biden pick.
i think there’s no scenario where biden wins this upcoming election
the situation with israel/iran is gonna kill him. he enters the war in force, he loses election because he’s starting another war in the middle east. he does nothing, and he loses because he appears weak.
he just had a press conference because the special counsel released a report saying he was mishandling classified documents just like trump. the report stated one of the reasons he’s not getting prosecuted is “he’s a well intentioned old man with a bad memory”
i guarantee that’s going to be on attack ads all over come election time
look at the republican primary in nevada. trump got removed from the ballot - so he told his supporters not go out and vote because it didn’t matter.
so who won the primary? the options were nikki haley, tim scott, and mike pence. Haley got about 30%… but the winner with 63% was “none of the above”
even when trump isn’t on the ballot, even when he tells his supporters not go out and vote… he still dominates.
if you look at the polls- https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/
trump is winning nearly every general election poll vs biden
i feel like the democrats are sleepwalking into a trump victory by rallying behind biden
only chance is some sort of legal action taking trump out of the race (which i find unlikely at this point) OR trump has a stroke or something
There’s too much good fodder for attack ads. Remember how he said he wouldn’t seek reelection?
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Most important election of our lives, fighting for the sake of our democracy, literally everyone from Russia to China to Saudi Arabia is out to get us so we have to stick together, don’t you care about climate change, don’t you care about immigration reform, don’t you care about student debts and health care?!!!
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Actually, the last four years have been incredibly normal. What are you even complaining about?
Can’t believe it is both the Best of Times AND the Worst of Times. Crazy.
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You find genocide boring?
I could go on citing the achievements of a president who actually cares about governing. All of these actions and numbers are important, but none matter as much as what Joe Biden has done to restore stability and decency to the presidency. One of the greatest gifts of a democratic civil society is the freedom not to think about government, to wake up and not worry about the mood of a leader. Joe Biden has made governing boring and predictable, both fundamental rights of the people in a healthy democracy.
As a Canadian this was one of the greatest benefits of the Biden Presidency. I can rest assured Biden won’t be contradicting the weather service, licking Putin’s boot or whatever stupid thing that’s going to end up on Canadian news five times a week.
This article is an archetypical “come on America!” fanfare to drum up patriotism and exceptionalism, it feels over the top to me as a non-american. However, I suppose we’ll have to try everything for Democrats to stop whimpering about Trump and sleep-walking towards his dictatorship.
none matter as much as what Joe Biden has done to restore stability and decency to the presidency
I expect more from a president than just not being an incompetent criminal.
Obviously biden not being an incompetent criminal is a huge plus, but I’d be embarrassed to cheerlead someone who’s greatest accomplishment is not being trump.
The article lists a slew of accomplishments that can be touted as the Biden administration’s greatest, please feel free to read it.
I know that acting President-like is something that should be a bare minimum expectation of a President, but here we are. I won’t lie there are a bunch of things I didn’t like from Joe but there are a lot I do, the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act is my top pick. It’s the first step in a while that the U.S. got serious in funding public rail transport.
Let’s also not forget that the republicans are in a position to hinder any real progress. That’s how the system is designed, unfortunately. Biden would have achieved much more had the republican party not been so strong, and the only way to fix that is forcefully at the ballots.
Americans always act like the presidential election is the only one that matters. Having the presidency only gives you so much if you can’t rely on the senate.
The system was not designed that way. The filibuster is a self imposed rule that can be suspended and has been before.
And two shit bag “Democrats” fucked that prospect up, so what’s the point of bringing it up now? Filibuster may be “self imposed,” but when two wolves in sheep’s clothing stop any meaningful attempt to nuke it from orbit to get shit done, it is a sad rule the rest of us get to suffer because.
I’m just talking about the system. It was designed for 50+1 on normal votes.
Why did you put scare quotes around Democrats? Manchin and Sinema are all the party is.
The system is designed with the assumption that politically elected representatives would seek compromises in an attempt to reach what is best for the country, making sure it is very difficult for one fraction to get absolute political power.
The Republicans at some point realized the dominant strategy in this system, assuming their goal is power rather than the improvement of society, is to never compromise and to fuck everyone over at every option. The way the system is designed they are in a great position to do a lot of damage that way.
This article is an archetypical “come on America!” fanfare to drum up patriotism and exceptionalism, it feels over the top to me as a non-american.
It feels over the top to me, and my family’s lived in the US since 1733.
One thing I like about Biden is he’s boring and I can mostly ignore him. That’s what I really want from my government.
For liberals, maybe. For leftists, fuck no.
In Europe, he’d be on the right
Anywhere, he would be. Using location as a barometer for left vs right, rather than the actual mechanics proposed, is bourgeois methodology.
If you want to know where democrats fall, leftists are a bigger enemy to them than Republicans and Trump.
“Actually you poors are having an amazing time and everything is great, you’re just too stupid to realize it.”
On average, wage growth has outstripped inflation in the last 2.5 years, so most people are better off, income-wise: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Unemployment is near historic lows as well: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE
Stock market is currently insane, but that’s probably just an AI bubble.
On average, wage growth has outstripped inflation in the last 2.5 years
fair
so most people are better off, income-wise
This doesn’t necessarily follow. Is it possible to run inflation vs wage growth for the bottom 2/3 of earners? Top-heavy growth could distort the data.
That chart is median wages, so it’s more middle-heavy.
Looks like bottom 25% still saw real wage growth since pre-covid, but not as much. Says non-supervisory and production worker wages increased faster than the overall median in the last 12 months though: https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-purchasing-power-of-american-households
How many middle class people do you know with 2 jobs and no stock options?
I really only know lower-middle-class (family) and and upper-middle-class people (professional acquaintances). The lower-middle-class people I know do seem to be doing better since pre-covid (some had their unions negotiate decent wage increases, some got promotions into superivisory roles, some switched jobs with a big pay bump). The upper-middle-class people I know are doing much better, until maybe recently (some have been laid-off, but they may still come back on top).
I do not currently know anybody with 2 jobs. I know people who work lots of overtime to increase their income though. I’m not saying the poor and lower-middle-class shouldn’t be making more money, I’m just saying they’re doing a bit better, on average. Real wages have not been stagnating or declining like they have in many long periods in the past.
If you hopped jobs yea sure you get a pay bump. Not if you stay.
Stop confusing democrats/liberals with leftists.
Democrats will probably almost universally agree that he’s been a good president. Tribalism is a hell of a drug.
It’s the leftists that won’t. And speaking as a leftist, he’s done a lot better than I thought he was going to. He ended up pushing for more progressive ideas than I thought he would. Good for him. He’s been stymied by the courts and his own party on some of them. And that why I, as a leftist, think the democratic party is still (less) trash. They had a majority for two years. Did some stuff. Could have done more. You can be all “but but Manchin/Sinema” all you want, but I’ll bet all the money in my pocket against all the money in your pocket, than if Manchin and Sinema were to announce that yes, they’d vote to abolish the filibuster, there would be two other democratic senators who would come out and say no. And that’s fine as it relates to their world view. They’re liberals. They’re not leftists.
Dude blocked the strike, fucked the BBB and is supporting genocide.
Fuck Joe Biden.
Eh, I’m of two minds about the strike. On the one hand, he got the rail workers their sick days after the fact. On the other, he really pissed me off and threw labor under the bus by making it illegal (again) for them to strike. You can’t be a pro labor president and take away labors most powerful tool.
I don’t know anything about the BBB.
100% with you on Gaza.
the fact he made it illegal tells any leftist all we have to know
Your patriarchal assumptions of “he” are very telling
Is Biden not a “he”?
EDIT: Not trying to be a smartass I genuinely don’t understand what they’re trying to say here.
The person I was replying to originally said:
the fact he made it illegal tells any leftist all he has to know
They edited it after I commented without saying anything.
Ohhhhh ok. Appreciate the context thanks.
On the one hand, he got the rail workers their sick days after the fact.
They were fighting for 15 sick days. How many did each of the 12 unions get?
Democrats will probably almost universally agree that he’s been a good president.
Looks like he’s slid into around 60/40 approval within his own party. Indies have him 30 pts lower than that.
And speaking as a leftist, he’s done a lot better than I thought he was going to.
Okay, but what about if you’re speaking as an unaligned voter in a swing state?
Then I’m saying “at least he’s not openly fascist but the democratic party still fuckin sucks.”
I mean, I wish. But Democrats threw tens of millions of dollars to a “Pro-Trump” Dem Senate candidate in Tennessee. Mayor Adams, up in NYC, has echoed a host of the Trump “immigrant invasion” talking points, when confronted with bus-loads of women and children kidnapped and displaced by governors’ Abbot and DeSantis.
Then you’ve got Sinema in Arizona and Manchin in West Virginia and even John Ossoff of Georgia demanding hundred of millions for bigger and more heavily armed police forces to clamp down on any kind of public dissent in their historically red states. Our AG is once again refusing to close the torture camp in Gitmo, while Anthony Blinken runs around the Middle East peddling advanced weapons systems to extremist governments in Saudi Arabia and Nigeria and India.
You can “Trump would be worse” all you like, but this shit is truly awful on a scale its hard to overstate.
Pretty sure “but the democratic party still fuckin sucks” covers all that.
How do you describe any of this as less than open fascism?
Tell me about your leftist policy beliefs.
And here comes “No TRUE leftist!”
The right has RINOs so I guess the left gets to have LINOS or something.
the United States is now producing more oil than any country in history.
lmao
Horay! Plus a little war profiteering; supporting a bit of genocide never hurt right? Not like his is the first administration to do it.
I don’t think Biden has links to any of the defense contractors profiting from our proxy wars. This isn’t a Haliburton situation. And he’s been reasonably tough on Israel. There’s a reason it’s Bernard Sanders who is the only one who can be really tough on them in Washington.
Reasonably tough would be following our laws and cutting aid off when there’s credible allegations of widespread war crimes.
We cut off funding for UNRWA for allegations against 12 workers out of several thousand. That’s the standard every other country and organization we fund operates by. Israel is straight up killing the journalists reporting on their war crimes and … Nothing.
To be clear, how we get widespread with a country and 12 with an organization is that with countries we’re willing to give aid to specific parts that are better behaved. So it has to be widespread there to be completely cut off. Still Israel has met that standard ten times over by this point.
Remember when Biden said no new *fracking on federal land? Then the Department of Interior, headed by his appointees, approved 1000 more drilling requests in the first year than Trump?
Pepperidge Farm 'members. they can’t grow cookies anymore because the oilly water kills the cookie plants.
Remember when “he did that”?
Ackchyually, Biden is a hero for doing thiis brave thing
#Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics: he stood up to the oil industry
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/07/joe-biden-big-oil-lng-permits
In the election year.
After approving more than Trump did.
I call shenanigans.
You’re missing the point. Republicans have spun this tale that Biden is waging war on energy. All the data is the opposite. Of course he has to talk about this. If he rolls over and takes it, stupid ass moderates will believe it and reelect Trump, who will actually wage war on energy
So Bidens gotta become more and more conservative to appease moderates
How well did becoming more and more liberal to appease progressives work out for Bernie?
If a commanding majority didn’t turn out for Bernie with free college, universal and free health care, forgiven student loans, and legal weed, I don’t think going further left is going to get Biden a whole lot of votes. The sad fact of the matter is that the middle actually shows up to vote, so you have to cater to them.
The whole “I’m not going to vote unless I’m inspired” bit has backfired horribly on progressives and socialists. Turnout for Bernie only confirmed the conventional wisdom. Politicians will try to win voters, not non voting complainers.
Youre not doin much convincing if it boils down to we should continue doing things worse because its more popular. The goal isnt winning some game at the cost of all of your principles, its implementing progressive policies.
Would you rather compromise on some of your principles to win and get to implement 50% of your progressive policies – or not compromise and lose and implement 0% of them, while conservatives meanwhile implement more conservative policies?
Thats not how i see things. On a sliding scale from progressive to conservative, we’re already on the conservative side, further into the conservative side than when Biden started. And we’re just going more in that direction. From union busting, to zionism, more roads and cars and fossil fuels, harsher border treatment, more military spending.
Do you think we’re more likely to get to the future you want if Trump wins or if Biden wins? I highly doubt it would be the same.
Energy independence isn’t a conservative position??
Fossil fuel support is
Just admit you don’t give a shit about poor people who have to get to work with the only vehicle they can afford, which uses a combustion engine
I thought you were talking about energy production. We can get into vehicles if you want, progressive countries do things a lot differently than we do on that front too. Both being more considerate to poor people and reducing fossil fuel usage.
I will literally nut in my pants if we build a transnational passenger rail system on par with Europe
He’s been a boring mediocre president, but it’ll take that any day over a Republican.
Boring has been great, honestly. I didn’t know how much I needed a president who just got things done and wasn’t making headlines every day.
I wouldn’t say he’s mediocre tho. Domestically he’s had a fantastic first term. I hope he brings some kind of CHIPS Act level stuff like an axe to the housing market yet, at least something to tease for his second term. International results have been a different story, Afghanistan was a disaster but also a call that needed to be made (and should have been made before him), and his handling of Israel so far is appalling. I’m sure it’s more complicated than we know but still - let’s hope he makes some tough demands there before too much longer.
In the end I agree with you, better than a GOPer and infinitely better than Trump in any of these situations.
If we gaslight ourselves hard enough, maybe we’ll be happy.
You’re gaslighting yourself in the other way. There are two kinds of low information voters. The first kind uncritically worship their “side” because they’re misinformed about the vices. The second kind are cynical and critical no matter what, even when policies help them, because they’re misinformed about the virtues. The right tends to do the first, the left tends to do the second.
There’s a reason why the most informed left leaning people are the most strongly in support of Biden. Including people like Bernie Sanders and AOC, both of who have praised him for governing progressively.
Meanwhile you’re a high information voter because you accept articles such as this one at face value as well as the opinions of politicians saying their side is doing a good job?
Look, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a low information voter. People are busy, and reading endlessly about politics is an unproductive hobby, just one of many out there.
But it is absolutely true that the most critical people on the left tend to be extremely vague on the specifics. Because they don’t know the specifics. And being baseline critical allows them to protect their ego. “Those powerful elites won’t fool me!” And don’t get me wrong, powerful elites are trying to fool you. But one of the ways they do that is by convincing you that nothing ever gets better. Nothing is worth supporting. That every policy is as bad as any other. Everything that looks good is actually secretly bad.
Here’s an example. Lack of competition and enshittification is frequently in the news. Inevitably, someone will comment that “both sides” are corporate shills, and it’ll get a ton of upvotes. Anyone who knows anything about the current FTC knows that that’s insane. In a shocking move, Biden appointed a young progressive firebrand as the head of the FTC, Lina Khan. She literally wrote the academic article starting the super progressive New Brandeis school of anti-trust. This new FTC has been sometimes clumsy, but super aggressive against corporations. This was an olive branch to the far left. And it’s one of the many reasons why progressives who are paying attention begrudgingly appreciate Biden.
That’s nice and shows that we should continue to apply pressure so that they continue to put more progressive people and policies into practice.
Totally agree. But pressure is both positive and negative. It means rewarding good policy, not just criticizing everything. Biden has made many moves to satisfy progressives. But if none of it matters electorally, why even try? Why not go back to pandering to centrists and conservatives?
I reward them with my guaranteed vote, which happens to be guaranteed because the alternative is worse.
The progressive vote is hardly guaranteed. It’s fickle, hyper critical, divided, which enervates us as a voting bloc. Conservatives are the most reliable voters, and, surprise surprise, they wield outsized political power.
Im a low information voter because my information comes from sources that arent propaganda?
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At best he’s been inoffensive. He’s a “great” president only in comparison to the last guy.
He’s been better than Obama so far. He’s got way more worthwhile legislation passed (with fewer Democrats in congress), he pulled out of Afghanistan, which both Obama and Donnie knew we should do, and his economic recovery was faster than Obamas.
he pulled out of Afghanistan,
no. trump pulled out of Afghanistan, which is why it was a fucking shit show.
Why was it a shit show? It was one of the most successful pull-outs of all time.
They just packed up and left instead of trying prolong it with a bloody civil war between the American pedo police and the Taliban
“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/30/politics/state-deparment-afghanistan-withdrawal-report/index.html
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/US-Withdrawal-from-Afghanistan.pdf
From the last one:
President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor.
…
Over his last 11 months in office, President Trump ordered a series of drawdowns of U.S. troops. By June 2020, President Trump reduced U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 8,600. In September 2020, he directed a further draw down to 4,500. A month later, President Trump tweeted, to the surprise of military advisors, that the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be “home by Christmas!” On September 28, 2021, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley testified that, on November 11, he had received an unclassified signed order directing the U.S. military to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan no later than January 15, 2021. One week later, that order was rescinded and replaced with one to draw down to 2,500 troops by the same date. During the transition from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration, the outgoing Administration provided no plans for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies. Indeed, there were no such plans in place when President Biden came into office, even with the agreed upon full withdrawal just over three months away
Seriously… have you all forgotten what went down? Memories like goldfish.
Oh, lets take a look at articles detailing the equipment left behind:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/afghan-weapons-left-behind/index.htmlhttps://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/afghan-weapons-left-behind/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/afghan-weapons-left-behind/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/afghan-weapons-left-behind/index.html
Oh… and if that’s not enough for you, lets talk about the human cost of
packing upjust leaving:https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/us-left-78000-afghan-allies-ngo-report-rcna18119
https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/helping-afghan-allies-america-left-behind-luke-coffey
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/09/how-many-americans-and-allies-are-left-in-afghanistan/
oh, and our reputation on the world stage, because you know, we weren’t the only western power in Afghansistan: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/29/1119973093/how-u-s-allies-view-the-country-a-year-after-its-withdraw-from-afghanistan
TL/DR: It was a shit show.
Yeah Trump did an amazing job GTFO’ing afghanistan instead of starting another useless proxy war.
As much as I hate Orange man, withdrawing from Afghanistan has to be the best thing he actually did. There are plenty of reasons to hate on him such as ruining abortion and trying to prevent any non-white person from existing in America, but Afghanistan withdrawal is not one of them.
This was fully Biden’s fault by the way:
The handling of the evacuation operation has been one of the areas where the administration and the State Department have received the most criticism, as thousands of Afghans who had served alongside US forces were left behind and those on the ground struggled through perilous circumstances to try to reach the airport and get out before government-led evacuation efforts ended.
Trump had no choice, as the war was won by the Taliban in like a week’s offensive.
No he didn’t and no it wasn’t.
Trump signed the deal in feb of '20, and started the process rolling. Trump took it from 13k troops to 2.5k by the time Biden took office. Biden continued along the nominal plan largely because you can’t just stop massive troop movements like that.
as for it being a shit show; we left behind ~350k rifles, there were helicopters (littlebirds, blackhawks,) drones (boeing scan eagles); over 50 AFVs- mostly M1117’s; 60 mortars and artilery pieces;
Over a hundred civilians died during the withdrawal, and thousands of civillians who worked with the US (on the promise of being protected, no less,) were left behind on the tarmac.
You’re right. It wasn’t a shit show. that’s far too generous. It was a giant, shitty clusterfuck.
“Biden continued along the nominal plan largely because you can’t just stop massive troop movements like that.”
Yes you can. He had every opportunity to stop and reverse the withdrawal.
And that’s your shit show? That’s the cleanest withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2000 years. With the Afghan gov. collapsing within days, how clean do you think it possibly could have been?
He’d have to have sent troops back when he got into office. We weren’t getting the interpreters out without controlling the ground ourselves.
That was politically and logistically unfeasible.
Look at the time span from Biden entering office and the withdrawal, then look at the time span from September 11, 2001 to the invasion of Afghanistan. Reversing the withdrawal months in advance was logistically well within the capabilities of the US military and would have been politically less risky since withdrawals are extremely hard to execute as well as the US military executed this one.
edit: Massive changes/reversals in military objectives are implausible on the scale of hours or even days, but making sudden changes, moving masses of men and material in a new direction to do a new thing on short notice is one of the abilities of a good military. The notion that the US military, a very good military, couldn’t reverse itself when given months to do so isn’t well thought out.
Yeah as far as legislation goes he’s been one of the most effective presidents we’ve had. It’s been overshadowed by the media, constant rhetoric about his age and the small handful of mistakes he made. All in all he’s been good.
It has been overshadowed by funding the genocide of Palestinians
The same would happen under Trump. No escaping that truth. So pick your poison.
Start rioting. If those are your only options.
Or you know, we could all get involved with the primary and off season election process and work to elect people that are inherently better than the options we got. 🤷♂️
Right, business as usual neoliberalism will save the country founded on the back of a genocide and a 300 year slave trade. Good call dude.
Ahh yes I too like to refer to my housing and food costs being historically high as a handful of mistakes.
Also, 27,000 Palestinians.
He must have quite big hands.
I have a feeling Biden has less to do with the rising costs of everything than the overt corporate greed displayed by the largest megacorps in the U.S. that own 90% of everything, but what do I know?
The US government absolutely has a hand in food prices. The housing price is something he could do stuff about but just won’t.
He’s the best president of my lifetime, which isn’t saying much.
Are you 8?
Biden has been forceful in pushing back against Republican obstructionists and right-wing extremists than Obama ever was and should’ve been. That’s a huge thing for me.
Nope, been alive since Reagan. Obama was a milquetoast do-nothing that cared more about what Republicans thought than the people who actually voted for him. We delivered him a supermajority and what did he do with it? He stripped the public option from Obamacare to please Republicans and then left it out despite not getting a single Republican vote.
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