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Is Biden Progressive Enough For The Progressive Portion Of P(D)emocratic Party?
Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud
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I would say Biden is the most performatively progressive president we have had. His lackeys go around everywhere to every news outlet and podcast and say "Biden is the most progressive president we have ever had" and so it kind of wormed its way into the media which good for them if they want him re-elected. But that is different than it being empirically true.
Biden is adopting a harsh border stance that is pretty right-wing, he signed a bill to block train strikes (patently anti-labor), and he's pretty regressive on a lot of issues (or downright fucking ass backwards when it comes to the middle east). That being said, he has done an amazing job forgiving student debt for those hurt the worst by the crisis and his infrastructure bill has been really amazing. He also appears physically weak and has a hard time staying on message during speeches. You don't have to watch biased clips to see that he is old as fuck. Anyone who is pretending that its a good thing he's 81 is out of their mind delusional. But we are here in 2024 and that's the choice and age is not something we can magic away.
I did think it would be super interesting if he picked someone as his successor, or ran as co-President with someone younger. Obviously it wouldn't be Kamala if that was the choice. Still kind of hoping he picks a new VP because if he kicks it, Kamala doesn't really have the temperment or professionalism to handle the presidency. She can barely handle friendly NYT interviews with kid gloves on without getting really rude and unprofessional. There are many things they could have done to address this issue that would actually please potential voters and they went with "He's not old! Or, yes he is old, but he is SO WHIP SMART". Again a line trotted out by everyone in the Biden inner circle. I also think his inner circle has been way too small, again, something that happens when you have a doddering elderly statesperson. There are basically "minders" that walk them from meeting to meeting and remind them constantly why they are talking. At least he doesn't stroke out on stage like the other elderly statespeople.
Rules: We only discuss Biden, his progressiveness, and want we would want to see / not see in the coming 4 years (as well as the general election campaign). NO discussion of Trump please! No rehashing of 2016. No Bernie/Warren rehashing.
Biden is adopting a harsh border stance that is pretty right-wing, he signed a bill to block train strikes (patently anti-labor), and he's pretty regressive on a lot of issues (or downright fucking ass backwards when it comes to the middle east). That being said, he has done an amazing job forgiving student debt for those hurt the worst by the crisis and his infrastructure bill has been really amazing. He also appears physically weak and has a hard time staying on message during speeches. You don't have to watch biased clips to see that he is old as fuck. Anyone who is pretending that its a good thing he's 81 is out of their mind delusional. But we are here in 2024 and that's the choice and age is not something we can magic away.
I did think it would be super interesting if he picked someone as his successor, or ran as co-President with someone younger. Obviously it wouldn't be Kamala if that was the choice. Still kind of hoping he picks a new VP because if he kicks it, Kamala doesn't really have the temperment or professionalism to handle the presidency. She can barely handle friendly NYT interviews with kid gloves on without getting really rude and unprofessional. There are many things they could have done to address this issue that would actually please potential voters and they went with "He's not old! Or, yes he is old, but he is SO WHIP SMART". Again a line trotted out by everyone in the Biden inner circle. I also think his inner circle has been way too small, again, something that happens when you have a doddering elderly statesperson. There are basically "minders" that walk them from meeting to meeting and remind them constantly why they are talking. At least he doesn't stroke out on stage like the other elderly statespeople.
Rules: We only discuss Biden, his progressiveness, and want we would want to see / not see in the coming 4 years (as well as the general election campaign). NO discussion of Trump please! No rehashing of 2016. No Bernie/Warren rehashing.
Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud on
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Likely no. Because he will always not be “progressive” enough for some.
But to a certain extent that’s a good thing. I believe having a faction of the party that continues to push further after each bit of incremental progress is a good thing. It helps the party stave off complacency.
It’s good to have a group that sees progress and says “that’s nice, here’s how we go further”. However, it’s not good to have a faction that says “what you call progress is a betrayal and proof you don’t truly care”.
The labor union in question disagrees with you:
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
And his appointments to the NLRB have been the most pro-union since, again, LBJ or FDR
And this alone basically sums up the issue.
Biden is in actual policy the most progressive President the US has had in ages if not ever. But he's not progressive in a way that progressives notice, so the narrative doesn't reflect that.
I think Biden is firmly in the centre of the Democratic party and most of the things he doesn't jive with progressive wings on are things where their stances are not actually where the rest of the party or the base is at.
Now Obama is considered as bad as Bush.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
For all their defeats at the polls, I do feel like progressives are dragging the party leftward wherever progressive policy and technocratic execution align.
To me the scope is basically domestic economics and social policies, and then foreign stuff. Economically, simply being the POTUS puts him at odds with many on the left who view liberal capitalism as inherently immoral. Socially he seems kinda two faced to me, what with perpetuating some Trump policies at the southern border. Foreign policy wise seems two faced as well, given his response to the unjust wars being waged against Ukrain and Palestine.
It's not just that the window is shifting either. It's that the left wing of the party is moving "leftward" faster then the rest of the party.
Literally yesterday in the Immigration thread.
The whole Democratic party is shifting leftward in their policy preferences. It's just the left wing of the Democratic party is moving faster that way.
The idea that the Democratic party is moving rightward is the exactly illusion Moniker was pointing out above. Look at Clinton to Obama to Biden in terms of actual policy and platforms.
He is definitely not a "progressive", and doesn't pretend to be, so obviously he won't be considered an actual progressive. He ran as a status quo hold-the-line-on-civil-rights pro-business centrist!
My impression is that he's a little more progressive than I expected, I thought he'd wind up being center right and jettisoning more progressive issues than he has. His dogged pursuit of student loan forgiveness surprised me, for example. But once he said he'd do it he was pretty much stuck chasing the car until he caught something. Lina Khan, his FTC chair, seems to have latitude to go after big tech, even if Biden is a bit tepid. He seems to be expending capital on trying to keep conservative wins from totally gutting women's rights and LGBT rights in the worst states, and in preventing backsliding at the federal policy level.
He's added a little more government oomph to climate change efforts, though a lot of it is in business partnerships that will take a long time to pan out and have had questionable strings attached, or where things can go sideways across multiple administrations. But still, pushing for continued investment in cleaner infrastructure.
I think he's overselling himself on foreign policy (I view him as ineffective here, actually, whether that's his fault or not, given what he inherited, not sure) and on immigration, but immigration is a morass and where dreams of reform go to die.
To try to add some structure to what's becoming rambly:
I think this is probably a good record of his claims as to what he's achieved: https://joebiden.com/accomplishments/
It's notable that his top two are bipartisan; infrastructure and the economy. I'll ignore both.
Claims of success in the following progressive-wing areas:
Gun control (Safer Communities Act)
LGBT rights (Respect for Marriage Act)
Drug policy (Pardons for federal marijuana possession)
Women's rights (Executive orders post RvW repeal)
Environment (Paris Accords, various legislation and promises, unspecified (I know its Climate Corps etc))
Healthcare (ACA improvements? Vague)
Criminal justice reform ("President Biden signed a landmark executive order to promote safe and accountable policing, ban chokeholds, restrict no-knock entries by police, create a national police accountability database, and prohibit the transfer of military equipment to local police departments.")
And I guess a special mention for student debt relief??? Which isn't progressive but the youths love it so let's call it a progressive plank.
I guess my own rating of "progressive (10)" vs "regressive (1)" (just to throw some shit on the wall to get going, I wont die on any of these hills. Also, a 5 is "status quo", so 6 aint like "good", and "status quo" doesnt mean progressive) is:
Gun Control: 5/10 - Not effective, not really pushing on it
LGBT rights: 6/10 - Has been pushing for better healthcare access against some fierce critics and resistance but no coherent long lasting progress. Some states are allowed to be total dogshit.
Drug Policy: 7/10 - Cannabis reform seems to be chugging along. Some pardons? I guess? Seems to have devolved different decriminalization efforts to the states, so uneven here. Also, not super tackling drug crises nationally?
Women's Rights: 5/10 - Didnt burn enough political capital on RvW decision, erosion of right to privacy in healthcare is a huge setback in the courts. Not effective, not trying hard enough.
Environment: 8/10 - I think he got a lot done here and has mostly bit the bullet of burning money to extract concessions. The issue is longevity of policy; will a new president roll it all back and let companies pollute again? Also, hasn't really done the best job internationally on this, imo. But so much ground was given up when the US withdrew from Paris?
Healthcare: 5/10 - Hasn't done a ton imo, on insurance issues or coverage. Nothing notable.
Criminal Justice: 5/10 - Has said some things but hasnt addressed any structural issues or forced any real toothy rules into place. No real policy shifts.
Notably missing from his list are Israel and Immigration, so let's call him dogshit on those as a given.
I've found myself arguing online with people to my right on policy goals and preferences who viewed me as a centrist or center-right because I take a cynical view of the electorate and where/how we can achieve progressive results.
This one example is tantamount to denying global warming because it snowed recently.
It is entirely possible for Biden to do progressive things without himself being sufficiently progressive for a substantial portion of the electorate.
A press release from one of the several railroad unions does not prove the point you think it does.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone has really stated something all that different.
Even acknowledging that he's substantially better than Trump on both, it's been pretty shocking. I won't pretend to know his inner thoughts or behind-the-scenes goals or efforts, but the best that can be said is that if he has good intentions they've been failed by bias, blinders, and sheer incompetence in those arenas. And that's the kindest possible assessment I can offer there.
Is Biden progressive enough for me? No. That's why I didn't support him against more progressive alternatives. I'm not sure what there would be to rehash there, since I didn't think any regulars even supported Biden as the candidate.
Unless some of you guys have a viable coup planned, I can't think of any way to get a more progressive president than him this year, though.
Biden has several big flaws. He was the centrist chosen as Obama's running mate to appease older voters and is nowhere near as charismatic as him, secondle he followed a President who just did stuff and has reverted to business as usual in the government. He did embrace progressive issues after winning the candidacy, but they have felt like things foisted on him. Student loan relief felt like it was dead after his first attempt, but Schumer pushed it as a thing again. Marijuana reform is good, but just make it legal, and stop with the slow roll of all his policies.
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One of twelve rail unions regarding their negotiations with four of seven major rail companies.
I will also point out that Russo and his union management team was in the minority that didn't want to strike for better conditions, so I'm not surprised to see he was delighted to have workers gain sick days, he was happy to take none previously.
Even if you try to argue that Biden chasing up sick days after breaking the railworkers strike evens that out, he still fundamentally broke union bargaining power by forcing them to negotiate individually with rail companies instead of a block, which is the whole point of union solidarity.
Marty Walsh could have put sick day recommendations into the PEB report that formed the framework of the bill that went to Congress, rather than breaking union bargaining power.
Instead it followed an unfortunate trend of progressive legislation being split away from the core of bills and sent off to die.
Something that I'll note didn't happen with the more loathesome aspects of spending bills like billions of dollars for Israeli arms funding getting folded into Ukraine aid, or the attempt to include right wing Trump immigration policy into the same.
With regards to labour I think the NLRB work has been genuinely positive.
One person's vision cannot be the source of all policy
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
How far back do we have to go to get to a US president that didn't aid and abet genocide?
It's genocides all the way down.
I think there's some value to communicating the idea, alongside resurgent fascism and the real backsliding on issues we thought were, if not wholly settled and satisfying, at least set to a certain bar below which they wouldn't sink again, that even the disappointing center of the party can still be more progressive than what came before in absolute terms and that gaining/holding those tiny increments is important because it isn't guaranteed.
we desperately want people who act and look like us in power but power selects for a very certain type of person and its exceedingly rare that those that ascend are allowed to ascend as true believers
also Biden's pronouns are border / detention facility
I believe with Biden's urging they did eventually try to revive the right wing immigration bill on its own. The Republicans again blocked it. They did try to do it all on their own though.
I think some of it is just whiplash. He inherited a country where the foundations for lasting progressivism existed; robust federal powers in a bunch of arenas he can control fairly directly. The backsliding of the prior administration had mostly been done in reversible, careless ways, and he was able to clean it all up quite quickly thanks to institutional knowledge and being an insider.
I think if you rated him in terms of, how much more progressive than we've ever been is Biden, he'd rank pretty low. Most things are status quo to where we were in 2016, a lot of lost momentum and setbacks.
If you rated him in terms of, how progressive is the policy landscape in an absolute sense, he inherited a pretty progressive situation (for the US, anyway)? Maybe not quite height of the New Deal, but like, pretty good on a lot of things? I think Obama left him a treasure trove of levers.
So, is Biden a progressive? Not really. But the status quo is pretty progressive compared to where we were like, 10-20 years ago, and he's preserving it in a bunch of areas, so, ???
However, his administration has been swayed to embrace some policy goals that were suggested or pushed by Progressive folks in congress and otherwise.
I would like to see him continue to do more things that Progressive voters, politicians, and activists want to see put into place, but don't expect him to wrangle the thin senate majority and house minority easily either. The power of executive orders as a workaround wasn't something I was fond of during Trump's presidency, and the hostile SCOTUS currently seated is an extra wrench in things to work around as well.
If that's your standard it's getting hard into No True Progessive territory.
I'm pretty sure a strong case could be made that just about every nation / leader has aided and abeted genocide to one degree or another.
Saying Biden is the most progressive President we've had is definitely “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants” situation.
You are getting into "we live in a society" territory. Biden´s support for the genocide of the Palestinian people is pretty direct and unmistakeable, and no other nation other than Israel themselves are as culpable as Biden´s US.
You cant say that of every other nation / leader in the world, you could argue the contrary, that most nations /leaders are not actively supporting genocide, even the ones that are not progressive.
So you don't think zagdrod was refuting the point Vanguard was making?