I miss threads having titles, but not nearly as much.
Biden is a very traditional, conventional, middle-of-the-road choice as nominee and there's a 99 percent chance that's how he'd govern, if he wins.
I'm deeply ambivalent about that - I don't mean wishy-washy and okay with either option, I mean really fucking torn - and I assume most people around here are too.
It's your fault that Sanders got fewer voters than in 2016?
3 And as the mainstream moves left, Biden will move with it, no resistance whatsoever. Winning the culture was always necessary, but in a Biden regime it also turns out to be sufficient as well.
I liked the article more than I thought I would -- I guess I'm as resistant to the idea that the Obama/Clinton approach to policy is inferior to the Biden approach as anyone -- but you can't argue with the results. Although, as portrayed in the article, VP seems like exactly the right job for Biden, where he could really shine, and I suppose it's fair to say that O could probably have made better use of Biden's talents.
As time goes on, I find myself more and more comfortable assigning HRC 0% of the blame for her defeat. OK, sure, you can say she lost in part because she's an uppity broad, but guess what: one of those words is clearly surplussage. Analyses that go into 'well, how uppity was she?' seem to me to miss not just the point, but to gloss over the ugly underlying truth.
6.1 has a lot of truth to it, but yet... Why is Biden against marijuana legalization? It's so weird.
Biden is a very traditional, conventional, middle-of-the-road choice as nominee and there's a 99 percent chance that's how he'd govern, if he wins.
I love Biden's answer about the filibuster.
My question was simple. Democrats don't have a path to 60 seats in the Senate. So how will Biden keep his agenda from dying at the hands of the filibuster? Would he support filibuster reform, or elimination? Biden's reply was his campaign in miniature, reflecting both the instincts that have made him successful and the caution that has frustrated many on the left.
"I think it's going to depend on how obstreperous they" -- meaning Republicans -- "become, and if they become that way," he replied. "I have not supported the elimination of the filibuster because it has been used as often to protect rights I care about as the other way around. But you're going to have to take a look at it."
I don't want to get too optimistic*, but at this point I'm solidly behind the idea of eliminating the filibuster** and I think that might be the right way to do it -- to have a president who isn't visibly acting out of complicated political calculation but just frustration with obstreperousness.
* If I had to bet, I'd guess the filibuster survives through 2024.
** Though, ouch, the map makes me think Republicans will have a majority in the Senate more often then Democrats, I still think the filibuster is not helpful at this point.
I will go read the article after this post. This may be too optimistic. The US economy today is comparable to post-1929. The pandemic is terrible.
When running in 1932, FDR was a traditional, conventional, middle-of-the-road choice. He had to react to the times. I think some have even noted that Biden understands major moves are needed. I think I am talking myself into enthusiasm for Biden.
7 My guess is that he doesn't see it as mainstream yet.* Maybe more accurately, he thinks there are more votes to lose in blue collar white communities on this than there are to win. I kind of doubt that, but then I don't really understand people who could at this point be considered swing voters at all.
* AISIMB we had an effort to embrace legalization at the state party platform convention in 2018. It failed. Some part of the failure can be ascribed to procedural objections to how it came up -- basically Berners refusing to follow the normal process, I think -- but my understanding is that it still would have gone down because candidates in swing districts argued that it would hinder them. I don't think we even had the discussion in the 2020 platform convention, but now it's on the ballot, which is the right way to do it here.
7/10: does "Decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically expunge all prior cannabis use convictions" not count somehow? It is part of the laundry list of policy positions, so there's no sense of priority, but it could easily not be there.
I think we're voting on full-on Colorado style legalization. Actually, we have two ballot measures, one for the marijuana lgalization, and a constitutional amendment allowing for a minimum age of 21 (rather than 18 which is otherwise adulthood.)
11: Decriminalize used to mean "just issue a fine", not legalize. But expunging convictions is something not all legalization states have done, and is a large part of the racial justice side.
Does it mention The Onion's key role in promoting a Joe Biden who's fun, a little goofy, and kinda cool in an endearingly outdated way? That's bound to have done a lot of work among people who read funny things online but don't pay a lot of attention to politics. It's probably also gone a ways toward shaping media portrayals.
Several times I've seen Black friends posting a thing abuot Biden that's basically, "You know why we think Biden will be all right? Because he played second fiddle to a Black man for eight years, and never once acted like that was a problem for him."
Likewise, I remember back in spring people talking about who Biden might choose for VP and some folks saying "Whoever Jim Clyburn tells him to." Because Clyburn's endorsement got him South Carolina, the snowball that started the avalanche.
"You know why we think Biden will be all right? Because he played second fiddle to a Black man for eight years, and never once acted like that was a problem for him."
Yep. I think that could be correctly described as an expensive signal.