What are Joe Biden's strengths?

List them itt.

Is not Donald Trump.

ppl on the internet will be less weirdly obsessed with what kind of dumps he takes

has dogs

doesn't tweet by himself

is genuinely compassionate

has beaten the average male age of mortality

ppl on the internet will be less weirdly obsessed with what kind of dumps he takes

― Gab B. Nebsit (wins), Sunday, November 8, 2020 3:47 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

We will assume he is a "regular joe"

lol

says humorous things like "look, fat"

nice to have civility back

Knows which wu tang album is the best

has more hair now than when he was 38.

Is committed to throwing a more perfect spiral than his predecessor

Likes trains.

ppl on the internet will be less weirdly obsessed with what kind of dumps he takes

is not a lying dog-faced pony soldier

knows what "lying dog faced pony soldier" refers to

spry

https://j.gifs.com/L74myv.gif

Who will be our first lady President-Elect to come out sprinting to the podium, I wonder. Could it be Kamala? She does seem to have equally muscular hindquarters.

It seems to me he has had more authentic working peer relationships with Black people than most white Americans have, especially most white Americans his age.

Will heighten the contradictions.

Likes trains.

I think he has a few.

I don't think he'll run again in 2024, so not having reelection on the mind can be a good thing. (And could also be a bad thing.)

I'm almost 60, so this is a heavily biased statement: being old sometimes gives you perspective. (And sometimes relegates you to an odious man-child.)

He's not at war with the world. As presidents go, he doesn't seem particularly neurotic.

I'll skip political advantages he may have, because I don't want to trigger a pile-on.

this thread about Joe Biden rules

Likes trains.

― The Bosom Manor Michaelmas Special (silby), Sunday, November 8, 2020 12:57 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

is catholic ✞

he can bench, like, a lot

The Speaker of the House will answer his calls.

has both his balls and his word

He won't be reading Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President and tweeting at it all day long.

^ rong thread

No--that's a strength, the not-reading and the not-tweeting.

Trump is an ace at not-reading.

bump

Biden is a politician, in the truest sense of the word. Biden sees his role, in part, as sensing what the country wants, intuiting what people will and won’t accept, and then working within those boundaries. In America, that’s often treated as a dirty business. We like the aesthetics of conviction, we believe leaders should follow their own counsel, we use “politician” as an epithet.

But Biden’s more traditional understanding of the politician’s job has given him the flexibility to change alongside the country. When the mood was more conservative, when the idea of big government frightened people and the virtues of private enterprise gleamed, Biden reflected those politics, calling for balanced budget amendments and warning of “welfare mothers driving luxury cars.” Then the country changed, and so did he.

A younger generation revived the American left, and Bernie Sanders’s two campaigns proved the potency of its politics. Republicans abandoned any pretense of fiscal conservatism, and Trump raised — but did not follow through on — the fearful possibility of a populist conservatism, one that would combine xenophobia and resentment with popular economic policies. Stagnating wages and a warming world and Hurricane Katrina and a pandemic virus proved that there were scarier words in the English language than “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,” as Ronald Reagan famously put it.

Even when Biden was running as the moderate in the Democratic primary, his agenda had moved well to the left of anything he’d supported before. But then he did something unusual: Rather than swinging to the center in the general election, he went further left. And the same happened after winning the election. He’s moved away from work requirements and complex targeting in policy design. He’s emphasizing the irresponsibility of allowing social and economic problems to fester, as opposed to the irresponsibility of spending money on social and economic problems. His administration is defined by the fear that the government isn’t doing enough, not that it’s doing too much. As the pseudonymous commentator James Medlock wrote on Twitter, “The era of ‘the era of big government is over’ is over.’”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/opinion/biden-jobs-infrastructure-economy.html

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/ce/Manugactorinconsent2.jpg/220px-Manugactorinconsent2.jpg

https://media4.giphy.com/media/c12vYfKIs2WRi/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47ondgwb45qfwa7fk6n2oj7kg2zbdrh4elg2ilho08&rid=giphy.gif

keep working for the anarcho-idealist revolution, milo. if you keep true to it, forever refusing to accept anything less, you will never regret your choice. because regrets won't be thinkable.

Masturbating to fanfic about Biden as FDR, now that will change the world.

tbf, "he has no political convictions" is not fundamentally a strength

If you ever studied FDR, you'd approve of him no more than you approve of Biden. Probably less.

can't wait until this white supremacist rapist mass murderer croaks

well, Trump has a few years in him.

him too

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNaeurYBkFV/?igshid=x0lqu3np9zbl

The Fresh Prez of DC

I don't think much of Klein, but I think jaymc quoted the least convincing part of that piece. The preceding parts that aren't really about Biden the individual--that essentially the younger generation are forcefully rejecting neoliberalism--are more interesting/credible. If nothing else, they kind of track with how my boomer parents became Democrats: the GOP making itself indefensible intellectually, reading Piketty, etc.

I don't know why he felt the need to include something as vacuous as this though:

When the mood was more conservative, when the idea of big government frightened people and the virtues of private enterprise gleamed, Biden reflected those politics, calling for balanced budget amendments and warning of “welfare mothers driving luxury cars.” Then the country changed, and so did he.

probably because he sucks

trying and failing to imagine boomer parents reading Piketty

never forget that he was successfully duped by paul fucking ryan

(xp)

Masturbating to fanfic about Biden as FDR, now that will change the world.

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Thursday, April 8, 2021 1:41 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You might be right, but I don't want to tell my grandchildren I didn't try, call me an idealist

uh what?

Biden was the first person to treat Ryan in public like a goddamn unfunny joke.

one of the few worthwhile, lasting consequences of his vice presidency

Simon is referring to Klein I believe

xp
lol whenever the EK v MY thread gets bumped I realize my sense of Klein's ~thing~ is v vague. I think I used to conflate him and Daily Kos guy

trying and failing to imagine boomer parents reading Piketty

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, April 8, 2021 3:11 PM (two minutes ago)

haha yeah they're not typical in a lot of ways (UK immigrants for one), but like my dad donated to Steve Forbes back in the day and this fall he was out canvassing for the Dems

Whatever, I still have a high opinion of Klein. I'm wasting my time here.

I think I used to conflate him and Daily Kos guy

Klein is the one more likely to die using his lanyard for autoerotic asphyxiation.

don't kink shame

What a weird thing to say.

I guess the question is that if biden (or anyone else) is a horrible person but does good things in office (or vice versa), does it really matter?

this isn't a rhetorical question, I don't know what I think -- I feel like the answer most consistent with what I otherwise think is no, but I'm not totally comfortable with that. but I'm even less comfortable with yes, so...

(and also biden is not just doing good things in office; the spending stuff is so far better than expected but on immigration he has so far been predictably awful)

Americans lose their minds over many things, but (a) Israel (b) brown people racing across an open border to take assistant vice president of HR positions at Applebee's destroy them.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 7, 2021 3:27 PM

He's also saber rattling with Iran and China and Tony Blinken might as well be openly pining for a couple of good Central American coups like the old days.

We're at month 5 of these puff pieces designed to make liberals feel good about Biden but it's still all countenanced on the idea that he's talking a good game (which he's really not). It's just kind of sad - even if you want to say it's too early for results (he caved on the minimum wage in the COVID bill without a fight, the first test), is it really necessary to keep running this shit?

Extremely gross of the Biden administration to engage in Trumpian immigration policy by pressuring Mexico to turn away migrants entering Mexico from Guatemala—and possibly in exchange for vaccines. @revolvingdoorDC https://t.co/uQMW2Ne0aK pic.twitter.com/ANMjCOBm4z

— Alex Kotch (@alexkotch) March 19, 2021

Righteous dude

When the mood was more conservative, when the idea of big government frightened people and the virtues of private enterprise gleamed, Biden reflected those politics, calling for balanced budget amendments and warning of “welfare mothers driving luxury cars.” Then the country changed, and so did he._

A couple of regulars here can tell me how stupid and naive I am--and god, I hesitate to post here anymore--but is there not a reasonable parallel between Biden and LBJ when it comes to being pulled in directions different from where he was 10 or 20 years ago? And if Biden doesn't move anywhere near as aggressively as LBJ did in 1964, I don't think the math there is hard to figure out.

LBJ dragged his legislative genius with him when he became president; no one expected him to use it on behalf of the most far-reaching lib policy since FDR and in some cases surpassing FDR's because LBJ broke the back of Dixiecrats.

I'm holding my fire because both houses of Congress have passed only one of Biden's bills; but the bills themselves, like the infrastructure one, surpass to such a degree my idea of what a Dem president or Congress were capable of in the Reagan/post-Reagan era that I have to quash my hopes.

What surprises me: the disorganization if not outright lethargy of GOP resistance.

That’s a big part of the narrative that’s been manufactured since before Super Tuesday - this guy who was in the Senate for almost 40 years, ran for President twice in that time and played a leading part in most of the bad legislation from Democrats was just a backbencher with no agency.

Which also excuses any ongoing or future failures, because as a blob with no opinions of his own, Biden can’t stop Manchin from torpedoing them before the midterms.

If you transplanted LBJ's legislative genius to 2021, would it matter? Could he lean into Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene and browbeat/sweet-talk/horse-trade some sense into them? My guess is no.

Scoop: Biden plans to request $715 billion for his 1st Pentagon budget—a decrease from Trump-era spending trends, @rtiron and @ACapaccio report.

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) April 8, 2021

Serious question: Has the US defense budget ever decreased year to year?

according to this, it did during the Obama years, which I'm honestly surprised to find out

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget

middle half of the Obama years, I should say

Multiple times in the '90s.

lol, I should not smoke before posting, there was no "middle half". Latter half I mean.

The first time anyone ever heard of Dick Cheney was because he was the Secretary of Defense during the closing of military bases under HW.

Which also excuses any ongoing or future failures, because as a blob with no opinions of his own, Biden can’t stop Manchin from torpedoing them before the midterms.

― Joe Bombin (milo z)

I'm not sure what this means. Even if he had been the equivalent of Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, he can't stop Manchin from torpedoing liberal bills before the midterms?

milo wants a strong president, one who can dictate to congress.

The notoriously powerless imperial Presidency.

Biden cannot physically vote for Manchin - but Biden has the power to harness the media that is gleefully covering for him at every step, the power to direct the party bureaucracy and funding, the power to... put up a fight. The first test for which was the $15 minimum wage, where he couldn't be bothered to make a phone call to Manchin.

It's almost like Manchin functions as a convenient fall guy to kill progressive policies, allowing Biden to govern more in line with what you'd expect from the previous five decades of his political career.

If it's simply impossible for President Charm and Deals to accomplish his campaign promises because of Manchin and Sinema, though, maybe it's time to stop publishing essays lauding his new progressive soul which isn't convertible to progressive policy.

lol, I should not smoke before posting, there was no "middle half". Latter half I mean.

middle half makes sense! years 3 through 6.

FWIW Moodles u r clearly not the only one smoking something itt

I know, how about those hippies in the White House, amirite?

milo, you still haven't answered the question: a President Warren or Sanders would've dealt with a recalcitrant Manchin, so what then?

As I said: put up a fight. Use all the might held by the most powerful person in the world to pass the extremely popular agenda that got him elected President. Currently, the unelected Senate parliamentarian is more powerful.

"What if he makes Joe Manchin mad tho?!" That might keep the John Lewis VRAA from getting passed! Oh, wait...

If all of that is too much to ask, impossible, whatever, fair enough, all is hopeless and we know that everyone saw through the puffery of 'the most progressive platform ever' that wasn't going to happen from the beginning and yada yada yada. Whatever - but that doesn't make the 'secret FDR' crap from the liberal media any less annoying.

milo, you still haven't answered the question: a President Warren or Sanders would've dealt with a recalcitrant Manchin, so what then?

As I said: put up a fight. Use all the might held by the most powerful person in the world to pass the extremely popular agenda that got him elected President. Currently, the unelected Senate parliamentarian is more powerful.

"What if he makes Joe Manchin mad tho?!" That might keep the John Lewis VRAA from getting passed! Oh, wait...

If all of that is too much to ask, impossible, whatever, fair enough, all is hopeless and we know that everyone saw through the puffery of 'the most progressive platform ever' that wasn't going to happen from the beginning and yada yada yada. Whatever - but that doesn't make the 'secret FDR' crap from the liberal media any less annoying.

But I mean, if we're double posting, you keep leaving out the part referring to the media narrative on Biden, as evidenced by Ezra's beautiful column above.

No-one here cares about the Media Narrative. If so, name names. Why do you care?

If President Bernie or Warren gave it their all and failed because of "recalcitrant Manchin" then we'd see column inches about the missteps of progressive governance, the firebrands had no respect for Senate tradition and couldn't cut deals.

With Biden, despite supposedly the 'most progressive platform ever' and his genius at charming fellow Senators and his newfound progressive bona fides (see Ezra's beautiful column, above) - it will be the voters' faults. They didn't give Democrats 60 Senate seats, nothing could be expected. Joe just does what the party tells him to do.

Haha, the progressive Biden, "AOC says what Biden did here is good," Republicans are helpless at the onslaught of progressive policy etc. shit is posted constantly here.

R u ok

lol

i love these revives because i get to see all of your asses and some of them are pretty funny.

The notoriously powerless imperial Presidency.

Biden cannot physically vote for Manchin - but Biden has the power to harness the media that is gleefully covering for him at every step, the power to direct the party bureaucracy and funding, the power to... put up a fight. The first test for which was the $15 minimum wage, where he couldn't be bothered to make a phone call to Manchin.

It's almost like Manchin functions as a convenient fall guy to kill progressive policies, allowing Biden to govern more in line with what you'd expect from the previous five decades of his political career.

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Thursday, April 8, 2021 6:17 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/joe-biden-and-green-lantern-theory-presidency-on-the-media

lol, the Ezra double down

Famously used to justify Obama’s failure to pass the public option with 60 Democratic Senators, only for it to come out that Obama preemptively told Lieberman there was no pressure on him to accept it.

Brendan Nyhan, not Ezra

Vox-era Ezra was a huge proponent of that particular piece of excuse-making.

The Presidency: no big deal, unless we need to hector you into voting for our guy.

In case people missed it, What are Joe Biden's flaws? is open for business and awaiting your pungent observations.

B-but...aw, man, did I drag this soapbox all the way in here for nuthin'?!

If your lecture notes include a passing mention of trains, you're still good in here.

joe-biden-and-green-lantern-theory-presidency-on-the-media

Is the theory that he is G'nort?

Biden cannot physically vote for Manchin - but Biden has the power to harness the media that is gleefully covering for him at every step, the power to direct the party bureaucracy and funding, the power to... put up a fight. The first test for which was the $15 minimum wage, where he couldn't be bothered to make a phone call to Manchin.

Is $15 minimum wage popular in WV?

Really dunno why that Klein piece needed to be written - it's centrism 101, p much the same rationale that's been given for supporting middle of the road candidates around the world for ages. You can suscribe to that line of thinking or oppose it but surely at this point we're all familiar with its substance?

What needs to be written

safety manuals

Technical docs, def

dope rhymes

Really dunno why that Klein piece needed to be written - it's centrism 101, p much the same rationale that's been given for supporting middle of the road candidates around the world for ages. You can suscribe to that line of thinking or oppose it but surely at this point we're all familiar with its substance?

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, April 9, 2021 5:34 AM (three hours ago)

Is "centrism" an immutable pol philosophy that's always the same regardless of context? I'm not inclined to further defend that piece, but that seems like an odd response to an argument that "the center" has shifted (tbh I'd be more open to an argument that the idea of "centrism" should be discarded)

The center is always shifting, no? So centrism can give you a more or less ambitious pitch depending on what the perceived centre is at any time, but that doesn't change much in the overall rationale.

I guess I just read that piece more through the lens of registering the shift (which ftr I think Alfred has done a good job of around here) and less in terms of supporting Biden/centrism, but that's probably because I literally couldn't care less about the latter. Obvs it would be more interesting if Klein thought through the supposed "radicalism" he sees in Biden's domestic agenda and realized it is actually the neoliberal "center" that is deeply radical but lol

Hmmm, ok. I do think the shift has been amply registered through the past few years, but maybe that's by dint of having it mentioned exhaustively - and perhaps overstated - in a lot of the leftist stuff I read.

It's definitely been overstated. I'd say the key difference in April 2021 is there are some material legislative results of "the shift" rather than just new rhetoric / a handful of electoral wins. But anyway, we'll see...Klein's piece is certainly premature.

I agree that it feels premature, though I think a lot of what he is responding to is a demonstrable difference between the Obama and Biden administrations in their attitude and approach to governing. Whether that actually produces favorable outcomes (beyond the American Rescue Plan) remains to be seen.

domestically, biden is definitely pushing for some really good things. the american rescue plan was more ambitious than anything in the obama years, and the infrastructure bill seems promising too. biden has also signaled that he wants to overturn the fillibuster. manchin and sinema have been the big obstacles to things like the $15 minimum wage, not biden.

why is biden governing like this? who knows. i think it has to do with the fact that the political landscape has changed a lot from the time obama was president. it's important not to "overstate" how progressive he is governing -- most of this is just a rational response to the current crises -- but it's also delusional to pretend that he is "just as bad" as people assumed, given his 40 year track record as a very conservative democrat.

maybe i should re-state the first part of my last post -- the ACA was ambitious too, and it did improve healthcare access from what existed before, but it was also fatally compromised. biden/harris seem to want to avoid things like that happening again, at least as long as they have a senate majority.

Serious question: Has the US defense budget ever decreased year to year?

This didn’t happen btw, Biden’s budget proposal increases defense spending.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/24/aoc-joe-biden-exceeded-progressive-expectations

Grats USA

President Biden in the next few days will unveil eye-popping new tax rates for the wealthiest Americans —a top marginal income tax rate of 39.6% and a capital gains rate of 43.4%. https://t.co/BmIB8YFwiP

— Axios (@axios) April 23, 2021

consider my eyes popped https://t.co/ZKqS1qDTIO pic.twitter.com/3EiDntikAB

— daily lobo data desk (@dailylobodata) April 24, 2021

Excited to be watching the Oscars with an ice cold plant-based beer.

Thanks Joe Biden. pic.twitter.com/Wk8MQnjkUf

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) April 26, 2021

😭😭🙏

Sitting awfully close to the screen there, Chuck

the income tax rate is familiar but i think that capital gains rate may actually be pretty eye-popping?

Lol people who thought there wasn't going to be any difference between Biden and 4 more years of Trump. Of course none of them will ever admit they were wrong.

Those idiots. We have plant-based beer now.

That plant-based beer thing was a lame 'dad joke', but one should at least acknowledge he intended it as humor.

who thought there'd be no difference between biden and trump?

it's a favorite strawman on these threads, don't worry about it

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-donors-friends-and-former-aides-expected-on-first-slate-of-high-profile-ambassadors/2021/04/27/4810d3c2-a6c8-11eb-8d25-7b30e74923ea_story.html

Sells ambassadorships to a better class of oligarch.

Vivid imagination.

After pronouncing himself "Mr. Amtrak," Biden said that "toward the end of my term" as vice president, "a headline came out in all of the papers" about how many miles he had flown on Air Force planes -- 1.3 million miles or 1.7 million miles, he said.

As he was getting on an Amtrak train that Friday, Biden continued, Negri grabbed him affectionately by the cheek and said, "Joey, baby!"

Biden said he had been concerned Negri would be shot by the Secret Service, so he had assured agents that Negri was a friend. Then, he said, Negri scoffed that Biden's number of miles traveled on Air Force planes was no "big deal" -- because Negri and others had figured out that Biden had traveled a greater number of miles on Amtrak trains over his career in Washington.

Biden quoted Negri as saying: "At that retirement dinner, we calculated it." He said Negri had explained the math, then concluded, "Joey, you traveled more on Amtrak."

Biden's account simply does not add up. Biden did not reach the million-miles-flown mark as vice president until September 2015, according to his own past comments. But Negri retired from Amtrak in 1993 and died in May 2014, according to an obituary published online and in the Asbury Park Press, a New Jersey newspaper.

i know these things aren't graded on a curve, but i can't avoid immediately thinking that would be at the 2nd or 3rd percentile of lies that trump told, in terms of either ridiculousness, lying, confusion, damage caused, or any other measure. it's not right, i guess. but i just don't care

i mean, i can't make myself care. it's wrong of me and i just don't care anymore, because everything else is falling apart as well, and most of it is more important

I doubt anyone cares, it’s just funny. In personality type, he’s basically the same guy as Trump, they would have gotten along famously if it was like 1988.

Biden’s inner life is probably more like the drinky bird desk toy than Trump’s howling maelstrom

advocates communism

There’s no Sunday scaries when you get to work for the American people every day. pic.twitter.com/3BJDdgAgRQ

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 11, 2021

this mf cannot make up his mind

Pres. Biden: “Communism is a failed system, universally failed system, and I don’t see socialism as a very useful substitute." pic.twitter.com/APo9uUOL6C

— Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) July 15, 2021