The Defending Joe Biden Mega-Thread

Gergar12

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All right I am going to get a few things out of the way, I have ADHD, and schizoaffective disorder bipolar so I have warped views of the world and I switch positions and get bored a lot. I also only have a part-time remote position on the weekends. And no, I didn’t write this with ChatGPT 4.0. Yes, I have contrarian positions too.

Now despite all of this, I have never changed my mind that Joe Biden is the best overall president in terms of social, economic, and foreign policy in decades and someone who rivals the likes of FDR, JFK, and LBJ.

Social: Joe Biden is for abortion access, LGBTQ rights, hate crimes legislation, trans rights, civil rights over religious rights, and is against conversion therapy.

Abortion access:
It’s no secret that the Supreme Court gave the issues back to the states and that even my state of Ohio, and Texas have created an environment of hell for women. Now I am personally against abortion for my family unless the child’s life would be a living hell, or my significant other disagrees. Joe Biden being Catholic likely has a stronger position against abortion only for his personal life. But abortion is medical care and is most likely a positive externality on the micro side of things, and for women. In terms of the macro lens yes it reduces the population and if you are white it means white women having it means you are being “replaced”. But the definition of whiteness can always expand, and even if it doesn’t who cares. It’s a coping mechanism to identify with some larger group when your own life sucks and if there is no actual discrimination-based mechanism due to said protected class. (Ex. I am proud of being white because of Rome, etc. when I deliver pizzas, and talk smack on 4Chan and Twitter or I am proud of being American while my own life sucks, my children hate me, I am divorced or I am proud of being Chinese, the Dynasties meanwhile my life sucks, I have no high paying job, etc.) It’s a form of coping with insecurity. Not everyone can be a winner, not everyone can belong to a rising power (like being a woman in the West [More on this later], or China in Asia, etc.), not everyone in the status quo power is powerful (poor baby boomers, poor Gen X, working-class Americans)
Moving on, abortion is very important even if you don’t support it. It means protection from rape after you have been raped, it means better materiality care, and it means women don’t immigrate to a country that has better abortion access (Like the UK, and Australia), which would cause brain drain, and lower living standards in the US. And that is all I know about it, for more info go here.

LGBTQ+ Rights:

I support it, and I identify as non-binary whenever they ask me about it on secret employer surveys. I just don’t post about it everywhere. I am straight but would date a trans woman in the future if they basically were 99.99% biologically transformed into a woman and can have children successfully, also if they are hot. But enough about me, it’s important for science and human rights that this gets put in place. What is trans healthcare other than the freedom to be what you want to be? Same with Lesbians, Bisexuals, gay men, and queer. Anything else is authoritarian.

And yes, Joe Biden supports it, and it’s a personal choice that harms no one.


Hate crime protections;
It makes you more free than religious rights. Organized religion is a has-been that has seen the most dynamic people leave it for actual science. Religious centers should be community centers, and religious views as a personal choice, not an I can deny service to a trans cake wanter based on the fact that my organizations have existed for years despite the fact they spoke Latin or had slaves back then. It’s annoying that I can’t create my religion called the simulation keepers where I keep people out based on having degrowth economics, but you can interpret religion based on 1000-year norms to obscure modern society and exclude people from public places of commerce, and public life.

I already mentioned trans rights.

Civil rights and I will add in DEI: There is a growing consensus among Asian men and white men that DEI, affirmative action, and civil rights somewhat are outdated. Since opposition to civil rights is so clownish, I won’t give it my time, but DEI and affirmative action are important. It means better products and better-designed products.

In Genshin Impact they hired some young Korean feminist lady who loved to hate on men, but she ended up designing Furina(Which I am still kicking myself for picking Navia, and the Hydro dragon over her). Her design is amazing, her combat kit is as innovative as Childe’s was. Is she a DPS no, but she opens up more ways to play the game(Even if most of the time as a level 58 all I do is wait for updates, and events, and explore when I have to), No she is not a big titty goth girl but the designs in Genshin are all special and not cringe like the new Tomb raider where rumor has it the reason people in the west design more ‘normal’ looking characters so the woman doesn’t feel bad looking at them and do things such as not have an eating disorder, do plastic surgery and have their male colleagues say stuff like I want to have sex with my character when in reality a well-designed character is well designed even if they are sexy but they need to be well designed(and likely confident) like Guilty Gear vs old Mortal Combat games where they are hot and poorly designed). Also like if your male colleague saying stuff, you don’t like to go to HR for fuck sake. Granted we live in a world where everyone male and female alike is insecure so it will happen still.

Conversion therapy: is a cope by religious right-wingers who hate people who think differently to them. In my opinion, I don’t think trans healthcare is mature enough and trans women need too much plastic surgery to look like hot real-life women, but that is my opinion. Same with gay men, and lesbian women it’s a freedom choice, and proof that almost every religion needs to die, and be replaced by community centers.

Economics:

Joe Biden supports free trade, strong unions, less concentrated economic power, a stable safety net like social security-Medicaid-Medicare and building more houses also expanding the Affordable Care Act as well as better infrastructure, and education

Free trade (minus China, plus NAFTA & USMCA) is a fairly calculated strategy on Joe Biden’s part. While he hasn’t moved the 5nm semiconductor plants away from Taiwan and South Korea to the US, and Western Europe so that if China or the US gets in a war there (Or North Korea and South Korea), we would have enough chips for our phones, AI, etc. He has done well for the US in terms of trade. Because of free trade and likely parts of the previous administration avocado prices are at all-time lows, and inflation is down in the US (minus housing). Because of this, he has led an economic recovery on par with Obama’s and FDR's. Now China is interesting, I read a lot about them.
Yes, it’s not most of the Chinese population’s fault the older men who lead the CCP or CPC want a showdown with the US, but Biden needs a way to punish China for their arms race, and aggressive policy actions in Beijing against Taiwan or ROC. But it’s been brutal for the Chinese population, with massive youth unemployment in China, low-paying jobs, and multinationals leaving(including tech), and this is mostly having to do with Xi’s policies of rabble-rousing against the US(And doing a poor job at it), China could have easily done a more peaceful policy on Taiwan(Increase economic growth, then in an economic depression offer Taiwan to reunify in exchange for a stimulus). (I will state more on the foreign policy part)

Furthermore, Biden’s free trade has meant Mexicans, Colombians, and others have increased living standards. He didn’t interfere in the election of Lula and gets along with AMLO (even if AMLO is a prick on Ukraine like Lula and unlike Lula on the cartels) We have handled inflation a lot better due to Biden’s free trade actions.

Stronger union policies: Appointments to the board on unions have meant blue-collar work, and work, in general, has gotten increased wages. It has also meant people in other industries who have been historically underpaid like restaurants, and retail can demand better rights and fairer compensation. Of course, many CEOs don’t like this, and there has been a small but growing effort by people like Dean Phillips, and CEOs to help Trump. Stronger unions will not occur under ANY republican admin including Haley who would crush unions and union power.

The social safety net is interesting: I used CHIP as a child, and I have a grandparent who will use SS, Medicaid, and Medicare. I find not working boring so I will work until I die, but that option shouldn’t be mandatory. Biden despite a congress that obstructs, does little, and refuses to get a new policy for the modern age passed has prevented social security from being cut Obama who was viewed as willing to cut a deal with Republicans in exchange for them getting along better back then. Also, Social Security could in theory get rid of the cap on income above certain amounts and help it be funded for decades on end but they won’t do that because the upper middle class hates it, and because they recently got rid of deductibles for high earners in liberal states with higher states income taxes.

Joe Biden and his democratic party have attacked NIMBYism (Other than Newsom and the CA democratic party, LA, and San Francisco) or Not in my backyard politics which has meant baby boomers hoard their houses and their beneficiaries who are oftentimes left wing are against more housing for ‘environmental reasons’. Houses are being built everywhere, and 5-over-1s are being built everywhere despite those with housing privilege being against it. In my opinion, Mixed-use development is better.

Healthcare is complex: one man’s cost is another man’s wages. And Joe Biden has attempted to attack it on the margins, but I suspect I will die before we get Medicaid for all or Medicare for all. That said Joe Biden has spearheaded the mental healthcare age and I would know as I got my ADHD and anti-psych medications(Not Adderall or Ritalin too jumpy), and help America get through Covid 1000 times better than Trump. Can he do better yes, but Congress won’t let him, and Trump won’t get you M4A either. Also, lower drug prices.
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Infrastructure: Joe Biden has created two separate bills on Infrastructure which is two more than the orange distraction. One had to do with America’s crumbling infrastructure and was a general stimulus that got us out of a recession. The other had to do with climate change and clean energy (The poorly named Inflation Reduction Act) If he did nothing but the below, I would still vote for him as an HSR lover. (High-speed rail)

Education: It’s tough but Joe Biden has created a better environment for education. His attacks on for-profit private education work, and are evidence-based. He has forgiven student loans based on income which the media hasn’t mentioned but as a college student, I used it to forgive my loans. PS If you want an easy degree that will be the future proof go for English and learn to prompt engineer LLMs. I did economics and political science with a 75% focus on foreign policy.

Foreign Policy: He has the correct policy on the Monroe Doctrine, China, Russia/Ukraine, Iran, and the Middle East, somewhat on Israel/Palestine, immigration, climate change, NATO, Europe, cartels, AI, and drug crisis.

Monroe Doctrine: He deterred Venezuela from invading Guyana for Oil, didn’t attack Lula, and has good relations with AMLO(Prick). We do have not such moral and reasonable policies since the US helped Mexico fend off the French.

China and the US Military: He has stopped Chinese EVs from swamping the US like parts of the EU, and Australia (I like their EVS as a product, but they are dumping them onto us). He has increased arms to Taiwan, sent the Marine Corps to train the ROC military, like Obama has dedicated 70% of the US military there, got Japan to rearm against China, got Vietnam to do the same, Increased Indian-US relations against China, decreased Pakistan-US relations to help India, which is against China, threaten Tik Tok from running interference against the US with psy. ops from their algorithms funded the B-21 Raider Bomber under budget something unheard of, funded a new US Navy destroyer project, funded NGAD and maybe FA-XX, created the M-10 Booker light tan for mountain warfare and more firepower at smaller trooper levels, created missile teams Marine Corp, kept the Abrams factory in Lima Ohio my State open and now it sells them to Poland and Taiwan(I remember my government teacher being against it and whose laughing now), lower F-35 price and created more F-35 capabilities along with Trump(More missiles in Sidekick which was sold to Finland in the HX fighter program), had the balls to deploy the Gerald Ford, and the list goes on. My personal favorite is the C-130s, and C-47s carrying pallets of long-range missiles.

Russia/Ukraine: Biden has led Ukraine to having F-16s from Europe, modern 3rd gen tanks like Abrams M1A1(Wish it was the M1A2SEP1 and 2), Challenger 2, Leopard 2 tanks, other 2nd gen tanks, CV-90, Bradley M2s, HIMARs with ATACMs missiles, Javelin, NLAW, German Gepards, stingers, UK Star streak which is the best MANPAD in the world. lots of small arms and other anti-tank, lots of long-range artillery like M777 and others, 155mm ammo, somehow got soviet arms for Ukraine. All of this is to save a country under attack by a land-grabbing aggressor. Alongside EU financial support, and support for NATO, the EU which yes is being attacked by short-sighted Republicans will leave Ukraine in a stronger position to eventually get Crimea, the Donbas, and Luhansk********. (If Trump doesn’t win and Congress gets its act together [Okay fine if the Dems win back the house since Senate Rs want Ukraine spending too])

Iran and the Middle East: He has not invaded Iran even though doing so and arming the moderates and liberals could yield a permanent security state against radical Shia and Sunni radicalism, but the logic works since we need to deter states from fighting wars versus launching another Iraq times 1.5. Still, he has maintained global commerce against the incoherent Houthis who at first were like attack on Israeli ships then attacked all Western and Israeli Ships, and then just straight up attacked anyone near the Red Sea. Also, he did try to verbally attack the Saudis but failed because the US consumer wanted cheap energy and low inflation which is reasonable (trying is better than not trying). He left Afghanistan and took as many educated people away from there as possible granted I would have done more like lease whole 777s and 787s and more C-130s plus C-47s to do so but the US political system has its limits on immigration gone numerous studies on how immigration leads to reactionary politics.
Israel and Palestine: Okay this one is a little hectic. I believe that there is a 10 to 30% chance Trump will do better on this issue. He has better relations with Abbas vs the current Israeli PM based on stupid reasons like the Israeli PM congratulating Biden early. But Biden got Israel to not halt water, and will soon end the food blockade as well, and it’s a shift. In my mind, I can see him and Netanyahu getting into screaming matches in private over how Israel has handled Hamas in Gaza so take that for what you will. He has made many remarks against Israel for dropping bombs on civilians and killing indiscriminately.

Didn’t attack Lula, he didn’t attack Lula because the other Brazilian candidate as a Trumper, hated the rain forest for some reason (for the cattle trading with China), and just was an awful guy.

Has good relations with AMLO: I mean the guy is unlikeable, has shit social policies, and good economic policies, and is letting the cartels rule parts of his country like Sinaloa and cross the border. I don’t know how Biden gets along with him given the fentanyl crisis, Hezbollah being in his country through the cartels, and China using Mexico as a route to dump products in the US. That one takes the cake.

Immigration: There are policies where old men grow trees whose shade, they will never benefit from this is one of them. The US has a low birthrate because of climate change and its aftershocks like a worsening geopolitics arena, and so forth. This has led to more income inequality as people seek more bunkers vs community support. Those bunkers won’t help if society collapses. But with more immigrants comes more workers, better food, people willing to build housing, and more patriotic Americans. Every American is a recipient of a birth lottery that they have won (Unless you are homeless, or very mentally ill which I am, but thanks to education I can handle it better). The problem with that logic is the problem of induced demand the more immigrants come to the US, the more immigrants will want to come, and the more will try to come. I would cap it at 1% of the population per year, given housing problems in the top 10 metros which many immigrants want to go to. (Either that or they go to a family member) If immigrants disperse into more varieties of cities like the top 1 to 20 metros, we could see 2%, and if they are willing to build new cities and go to rural areas (good luck with that given racial tensions) we could have 1 billion Americans and still maintain a good, rising standard of living. That would do wonders for our economy, be mixed for climate (cities good, more consumption bad, and stabilize the geopolitical situation aboard. I assume that Biden wants at least 2% a year but that is better than Trump’s likely .5 or 1%.

For my story I happen to be lucky into a family by birth that got to the US via family immigration not everyone is that lucky. For that to happen you need sponsors, marriage most likely, and direct relative relations. That is more luck than being meritocratic and is not in line with America which has been the refugee for the poor, and destitute and later became a superpower because of this investment into future goods of labor. Keywords future goods; means a better future think AI, immigration and babies, infrastructure that lasts longer, education, and good policies to enable it. In theory, you could do land like just extend your coastline outwards but it’s very hard and not efficient maybe if we were a type 1 civilization. This paragraph is at the heart of my ideology which is why I don’t fit neatly in left vs right politics.

Climates change: Joe Biden has thrown the kitchen sink at climate change with a Green Deal lite embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act and has supported every type of green tech that is useful such as Solar, wind, and fusion nuclear. EVs from union car makers, efficient appliances, rejoining Paris Climate Accords. I could write more but I am tired… He has given tax write-offs to people who buy even Tesla whose CEO he does not like for union reasons.

NATO: He supports it, supports an Asian NATO via the QUAD, and has backed Europe vs Trump who stated he won’t defend either Ukraine, ROC Taiwan, or Europe if Russia attacked. Based.

Europe: He gets along with Britain but of course is a true friend and attacks British military preparedness in good faith, gets along with Marcon, and gets along with Scholz in good faith, obviously he doesn’t get along with Hungary’s Orban, and Poland given its new leader which gets better relations with him too, likely got Romania to seize Andrew Tate’s property to counter scams and propaganda. Also supports Ukraine and is shipping US LNG to Europe as of yesterday (Don’t know why he stopped we are in this together).

Cartels: It’s an internal Matter in Mexico, and Biden can’t interfere plus he is attacking the precursors to fentanyl. Plus, the DEA, Homeland Security, Border Patrol, and others are getting better under him. Imagine the border patrol being good guys vs Texas State Militias under Abbot.

AI: A future good in terms of economics, Biden and the US won the AI arms race against Russia, and China because of US tech policy, and the US being more relaxed towards dynamic people who happen to be gay like Sam Altman. Plus, the government and university research helped. Biden has maintained this AI war against China, and Russia and is winning it.

I already mentioned the Drug crisis, but Bidne via dis democratic party is experimenting with drug decriminalization and so fore and while there are hiccups to that he has done a good job at handling it by giving it to people who know more than him on this issue and has lessen weed regulations to schedule 3.

That’s it my hands hurt. I will debate these points tomorrow, no I am not getting paid by BIden most of this is off the top of my head.
 
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Ag3ma

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Sure, I think on policy, Biden should actually be a winner. But I'm not sure people really vote on policy that much.

It is long known that what really makes people change their mind is not so much being presented with reason and logic that demonstrates the point rationally, it's having an emotional engagement to motivate a change in opinion - and obviously the deeper someone has an emotional connection to their existing belief the bigger the emotional impact to get them to change.

So how do voters feel about Biden? That's actually where a lot of the problem is. He got the presidency as the boring, safety candidate against the hurricane of shit that was Trump. But now four years on he's still not inspiring and conspicuously more doddery, whilst the memories of shitstorm Trump have faded and lost potency.
 
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gorfias

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LBJ was the worst human being in the history of politics. Please, throw that comparison out.
He cheated to "win" his Senate seat. No cheating then, no Senate seat, no VP pick, no POTUS. Pretty good pic for worst human being in politics ever.
Defending Joe? I'll give it a shot.
IF the climate crisis is not a complete hoax, Joe is trying to tell the populace that this "crisis" is a serious matter. So, we got that going for us.
 

tstorm823

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He cheated to "win" his Senate seat. No cheating then, no Senate seat, no VP pick, no POTUS. Pretty good pic for worst human being in politics ever.
While Kennedy was in office, he and Goldwater had planned joint campaign events for the 1964 campaign. They were to go as candidates for opposing parties to the same places, have unmoderated debates between them, and take questions from a bipartisan crowd.

Then Kennedy was assassinated.

Johnson outright refused to debate Goldwater, and instead pumped out a bunch of insanely inflammatory tv ads about Goldwater, at a level of sleaze that I genuinely believe has never been matched before or since.
He's not even the worst human being to have been US president - at bare minimum, not since 2017.
Trump and Johnson are not terribly dissimilar in their poor character, but one of them weaponized the major institutions of America against his opponents, and the other is the primary target of those same institutions.

On topic, if I'm defending Joe Biden, I would praise his ability to follow which way the wind is blowing. Inconsistency is often criticized in politicians, but not only should opinions change with circumstances, positions changing with the will of the people is an underrated thing in representative governance.
 
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Bedinsis

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While Kennedy was in office, he and Goldwater had planned joint campaign events for the 1964 campaign. They were to go as candidates for opposing parties to the same places, have unmoderated debates between them, and take questions from a bipartisan crowd.

Then Kennedy was assassinated.

Johnson outright refused to debate Goldwater, and instead pumped out a bunch of insanely inflammatory tv ads about Goldwater, at a level of sleaze that I genuinely believe has never been matched before or since.
Is that your sole reason for calling him the worst human being in the history of politics?
 
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Ag3ma

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He cheated to "win" his Senate seat.
Very likely, albeit in the Democratic primaries rather than the senatorial election. Although read this for context.

Johnson was probably himself defrauded of that senatorial seat in a previous election through the same process. That was just the way that the parties ran things back in the day. Machine politics because discredited for a reason - but these sorts of schemes were the routes by which hundreds of federal representatives and senators will have been selected in their day (never mind mayors and state politicians). It is faintly absurd to pick out LBJ for special attention when the whole system was rotten.
 
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tstorm823

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Is that your sole reason for calling him the worst human being in the history of politics=
I'm not sure you want me to keep going further down that rant. There are lots of reasons to despise the man, and all the reasons people have to like him were just him making Kennedy's initiatives worse and taking credit for them. He got into the Senate by actually cheating and getting the courts to ignore his really blatant ballot stuffing, he was picked as VP to carry the segregationists in the south because he was himself a wild racist (then he built the foundations for the lie that the Republicans are the real racists using the CIA and his friends in the KKK to actively shift the narrative), he got to be president only through political assassination (that is speculated about to this day), he set the precedent for modern attack politics, he was known to mistreat people of other races, he was known to flash his penis at colleagues in the White House (and call it Jumbo), he sent America into the Vietnam war while his heiress wife made a fortune off defense investments, he condemned studies suggesting black Americans wanted better jobs and nicer neighborhoods and instead enacted the Great Society programs that created the projects and recreated America's welfare system into the shameful thing it is now, where it does little to help people help themselves and instead locks them into cycles of government dependence.

If you take Trump's failures of character and merge it with a more conventional corrupt politician from the major parties, you get the worst of all worlds, and his name was Lyndon Johnson. And he did all of this in a party with such an iron grip on the sources of public information in America that scholars continue to rank him among the better presidents. It's absolutely ridiculous.
 

Ag3ma

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No, this post suffices. Thank you.
If you imagine hating a person so much that you always take the most negative possible interpretation of them and everything they do, you get something like Tstorm's view of LBJ.
 

tstorm823

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If you imagine hating a person so much that you always take the most negative possible interpretation of them and everything they do, you get something like Tstorm's view of LBJ.
Says the person who somehow simultaneously treats Trump as a savvy manipulator, a mafioso, and an incompetent baffoon.
 

Ag3ma

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Says the person who somehow simultaneously treats Trump as a savvy manipulator, a mafioso, and an incompetent baffoon.
Manipulation is a skill. Mafioso represents a way that one conducts one's business. Incompetent is inability to do a task well. There are lot of people out there who are intelligent, persuasive, unethical, and bad at their job.

Some might argue it could be the general description of a politician.
 

meiam

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Sure, I think on policy, Biden should actually be a winner. But I'm not sure people really vote on policy that much.

It is long known that what really makes people change their mind is not so much being presented with reason and logic that demonstrates the point rationally, it's having an emotional engagement to motivate a change in opinion - and obviously the deeper someone has an emotional connection to their existing belief the bigger the emotional impact to get them to change.

So how do voters feel about Biden? That's actually where a lot of the problem is. He got the presidency as the boring, safety candidate against the hurricane of shit that was Trump. But now four years on he's still not inspiring and conspicuously more doddery, whilst the memories of shitstorm Trump have faded and lost potency.
So my point of view is that most people have a really hard time figuring out if they're doing better or worse and have a very zero sum view of the world (for someone/a group to do better, somebody else/some other group must do worse and vice versa).

This means that they vote not based on who sounds like they'll improve their life but rather based on who will wreck other groups life worse, because, for them, it mathematically means that they're own life will improve as a results.

This is why Trump is so popular as a candidate, its very clear he'll make things worse and Trump supporter think this won't affect them because "he's one of us", it'll only affect "other". This is why you sometime saw people who were negatively affected by Trump decision say something along the line of "he's not hurting the right people!", they want him to hurt people, just not them.

This is Biden biggest failing, he's trying to make things better for everyone (genuinely or strategically, I don't know). This means, for large segment of the population, that he's not doing anything for them, a very "what have the roman ever done for us?" situation. The left want a candidate that hurt the rich, because they think it'll magically make them better off. The right, and right leaning, want someone to hurt... well pretty much everybody (liberal, LGBT, racial minority, other religion, etc.). But that's not what they find in Biden.

Considering Biden had an hostile supreme court, a razor thin senate and a house that flipped on him, what he accomplished is astonishing. He also started with condition that led to the biggest increase in inflation in decades and somehow him and his team managed to calm thing down without causing a recession or mass shortage. But that's the problem, everybody did better under him, which trough zero sum world view, means nobody life improved. And so he's viewed as a bad candidate. Like it or not, hate is the dominant force in politic at the moment, and for any candidate to do well they have to project it.

My overall point of view is that I'm really glad I'm not American.... except the hate monger are also winning up here in Canada. I have no idea if this hate politic is a new phenomena or just more open nowaday and I also have no idea how to get out, outside of the whole "Eastasia" route, which doesn't really fix the issue.
 
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So my point of view is that most people have a really hard time figuring out if they're doing better or worse and have a very zero sum view of the world (for someone/a group to do better, somebody else/some other group must do worse and vice versa).

This means that they vote not based on who sounds like they'll improve their life but rather based on who will wreck other groups life worse, because, for them, it mathematically means that they're own life will improve as a results.
My point of view is that people will always act in what they think is their own self-interest. Unless they are some sort of martyr/true believer, they will choose whatever benefits their own self, then kin, and then kith, and then come up with some clever rationalization to their hypocrisy. Certainly people cut their nose off to spite others, but that requires an extreme hatred, and I mean a murderous hatred.

There's two narratives. One is that the economy is terrible, and the majority of Americans polled now say they are worse off under Biden, if you believe them. The other, which the media says and has been saying for the last 3 years regardless of the numbers, is that the economy is great and people are too stupid to recognize this. Whatever the truth is, one clearly lost and the people realize they are voting for their own demise, so they either jump ship or don't bother voting, and Trump is winning in the polls, if you believe them.

Here's my opinion. Wages haven't caught up with the 20% inflation since Biden took office (I'd say it's higher, but I can't prove it). Credit card debt is skyrocketing. S&P is great and all, except not everyone just received $100,000 and can liquidate it at whim. If you're well off, chances are you're more well off, or inflation was something you could ignore, but most people aren't well off. The poorer you are, the worse it gets. When black support drops from 90% to 60%, maybe it's not because Biden is a boring candidate and they simply can't tell they're better off.
 

Hades

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I have a feeling Biden will go down in history akin to Truman. Unappreciated and maligned in his own time but later becoming rehabilitated when less biased future generations look at his record. Especially his foreign policy will likely be praised given he successfully led the west's response against Russia, increased NATO with members long thought impossible, and both exposed Russia as a paper tiger while also crippling it for relatively little cost.

Of course a lot of this hinges on Biden winning a second term. If he loses and Trump can overthrow American democracy as a result then I think historians are going to be very harsh on him for failing to prevent that.

LBJ was the worst human being in the history of politics.
I don't think its wrong to declare LBJ a scumbag. After all he was a vindictive bully who liked to have his female secretaries report to him while on the toilet with his Johnson hanging out.

That said being a good person and a good president aren't the same thing. Its hard to find a more likable, sensitive and affable president than Grant yet most people would deem his presidency a failure. And in Biden we see something similar. By all account he seems quite the nice guy, and people who meet him face to face tend to empathize that. Even if you consider him a neoliberal shill in his politics then one can still easily identify him as a nice guy.

But great leaders generally are not very moral people. Many achievements in the world were made by horrible people. In LBJ's case his bullying and unpleasant backroom dealing helped very important legislation to pass. If LBJ's bad side can be weaponized for a cause then this should certainly be considered a mitigating factor. This in contrast to Trump who's many, many negative qualities don't come with any such advantage. They only hinder him and seem to come from a place of ego rather than any sort of vision. What exactly has Trump gained by being such a gigantic freak and betraying just about anyone unwise enough to team up with him? Its unthinkable that Trump could successfully force through something like the civil rights act and not just because he's a racist.

The ruler and the person are often quite different people. The tyrannical Tsar Nicolas was a shy and even gentle man in his personal dealing, and the boorish, bullying and grotesque LBJ fought to improve the plight of the poor and of minorities.
 

Ag3ma

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Jan 4, 2023
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Here's my opinion. Wages haven't caught up with the 20% inflation since Biden took office (I'd say it's higher, but I can't prove it). Credit card debt is skyrocketing. S&P is great and all, except not everyone just received $100,000 and can liquidate it at whim. If you're well off, chances are you're more well off, or inflation was something you could ignore, but most people aren't well off. The poorer you are, the worse it gets. When black support drops from 90% to 60%, maybe it's not because Biden is a boring candidate and they simply can't tell they're better off.
I think people have only a relatively vague sense of how things are going. I think to a large extent, a lot of what they have is more a "feeling", which isn't necessarily in accordance with reality, and can easily be led into wild misconceptions by advertising.

As an example, in the UK they polled the public ~10 years ago on whether crime was going up or down, both locally and nationally. The results were remarkable: big majorities thought both crime had up nationally, but that it had gone down locally, and pretty much everywhere thought it had gone down locally. They had a feel for their local area and correctly felt it was safer, yet thought there was a nationwide crime problem because that's what certain media made them think. Average public estimates of immigration, for instance, are batshit crazy, completely out of line with reality. So too economics. Everything. This I think is driven by how misleading a lot of press reporting can be. But these fact-divorced ideas about how things are going make a big difference to voting intentions, alongside by that vague intuition of how things really are.

In a long-term fashion, the USA and the West generally feel like they are in decline. Relatively, it is in decline - in the sense that rest of the world is slowly but surely catching up, and are more able to challenge the West. This creates a pall of negativity, which conventional politics has been unable to dispel, hence the rise of the far right. There are elements of real local decline. Rural communities, towns and smaller cities have withered and continue to wither, because the new economy does not favour them. Their people see this and think something is terribly wrong. At a local level, from their perspective, it genuinely is.

I also think a lot of people vote on "feeling" in the sense of an affinity, "does X seem like my kind of person". The assumption is that if X talks and acts like you, he's working for you. This is of course total garbage, X quite likely doesn't give a shit about you, he's just putting the act on so you'll vote for him. But you can easily start to see the appeal of people like Trump, because he says and does things a large chunk of people like, and thus gives them a "voice" that other politicians do not. Even if that's just giving voice to their hatred and contempt, screaming abuse and threats at one's opponents. It's catnip. Feel uncomfortable about those guys with darker skin increasingly in your local area but are worried saying so will get you called racist? Yeah, now you've got someone to say it for you, and it feels great.

Anyway, the long and short of it, there are lots of reasons people can readily be encouraged to vote against their own best interests.
 

meiam

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Dec 9, 2010
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Here's my opinion. Wages haven't caught up with the 20% inflation since Biden took office (I'd say it's higher, but I can't prove it). Credit card debt is skyrocketing. S&P is great and all, except not everyone just received $100,000 and can liquidate it at whim. If you're well off, chances are you're more well off, or inflation was something you could ignore, but most people aren't well off. The poorer you are, the worse it gets. When black support drops from 90% to 60%, maybe it's not because Biden is a boring candidate and they simply can't tell they're better off.
Actually wage have increased across the board (with the poorest experiencing the greatest growth). This hold true even if you account for the increase governement transfer. And this doubly true for black and hispanic. But Biden isn't doing this by hurting group, he's just helping everyone get better off, so for most people rich getting richer = poor getting poorer, and so they think Biden is making them worse off.

 

tstorm823

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If LBJ's bad side can be weaponized for a cause then this should certainly be considered a mitigating factor.
Ok, but what about instead if his bad side was used to institute the draft and send unwilling soldiers into an undeclared overseas war with no stated end goal? And what if his domestic efforts were dedicated to creating an illusion of helping people so that his party could run in perpetuity on the pretense they are always solving the same problems while strategically doing nothing of real consequence since if they ever actually solved a problem, they could no longer campaign on it?

" These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. "
- Lyndon Johnson

Defenders of Johnson (I'm looking at you, Agema) will claim this was all very strategic rhetoric, that he didn't mean any of this, he was just trying to persuade other people who were against civil rights to vote for the Civil Rights Act. But I don't think Johnson's presidency elevated the Civil Rights movement, I believe it ended it. The Civil Rights movement in the 60s was (and still is) the end point of black prosperity in America, not the beginning. The gap between white and black prosperity in America was closing over the course of a century after the American Civil War, and had a period of rapid improvement in the late 50s early 60s. The Civil Rights movement was both the cause of and the product of black Americans gaining political and economic power, and that power was being used to make real gains, which only led to more activism, not less.

Under Johnson, they performed the Kerner Commission to determine what factors were causing unrest in the black community. The major conclusions were that they wanted better jobs, nicer neighborhoods, and to stop being targeted by law enforcement (pretty much what everyone wants). Johnson's policies did the opposite, they created welfare programs that actively discourage having better jobs, built infamously terrible government housing, and aimed COINTELPRO at Martin Luther King. Johnson saw the issues of American citizens and created programs that would address their woes on only the most surface level while actively undermining ongoing real progress. Before Johnson, the black community was gaining fast. After Johnson's presidency, the economic and political gains of the black community basically stalled out, and never really regained that momentum.

Call me crazy, but when a man says he wants to do "just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference", and then enacts policies that lead to those exact results for 50 years, I'm inclined to take him at his word.