- cross-posted to:
- usnews@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- usnews@beehaw.org
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I’m a progressive, and nothing pisses me off more than other progressives being useful idiots for the right wing agenda.
What’s the point of whining like this if you’re not willing to understand the political realities of the US government and the current Democratic and Republican parties? Biden didn’t WANT to give up most of his social agenda, but he was forced to give it up in order to get ANYTHING done at all. Manchin and Sinema (may she step on legos barefoot every day for the rest of her life) blocked any attempts to get the social programs through the reconciliation process, and that doomed them because they certainly couldn’t pass the filibuster. Do people think Biden WANTED his social programs to be blocked?
The fact is, because of fifth columnists like Manchin and Sinema, the social programs will be blocked by united GOP obstruction until the Democrats have enough votes to overcome them. If a greater number of dissatisfied progressives actually came out to vote for progress instead of staying home wishing for perfection, we might have had a 52-48 senate majority and the BBB plan might have been passed nearly in its entirety. Instead we had a coal baron and a future Fox News correspondent block all the environmental and social programs that came up for vote and Biden was forced to compromise his vision.
I’m halfway convinced that people like the author of this article don’t really want progress, they want revolution. They don’t actually care about people getting hurt, they just want to see the utopian future they dream of being directly implemented. Newsflash, revolutions are usually a bad thing for the poor. The people who have the most capability to generate and apply force usually come out on top in a revolution. Those people aren’t the poor, they’re usually elites who currently aren’t in power. If the US had a general revolution right now, the new power structure would likely consist of the “good” billionaires and their military leaders, who would eventually coopt the power structure to make certain they stayed on top as usual. Society would be disrupted, millions would suffer, and fundamentally very little would change except the titles of the people exploiting labor.
If you don’t attempt to understand history and the structure of the systems that govern you, you will be continuously taken advantage of by those that do.
NO GOOD. ONLY PERFECT. THE CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD WILL CONTINUE UNTIL WE ARE PURE.
God damn, if this isn’t the most
perfectgood description of it I’ve ever read
I’m not mad Biden couldn’t do more, I’m disappointed that our system still works like this. A few thousand people in flyover country can stop needed change in its tracks.
Voting more in blue areas might make the Democratic Party more progressive, but it won’t solve the problem of our government giving waaaaaaaay too much power to North Dakota.
I’m politically hopeless but I’ll keep voting D as much as I can because you say it helps.
That agenda never materialized, and the government instead cut off the temporary aid programs — leaving many millions of Americans struggling to stay afloat.
Didn’t the Republicans manufacture a debt ceiling crisis and demand the above aid cuts under threat of sending us into default? Am I remembering correctly?
Apparently now it was Biden the whole time?
It’s always baffling to me how easily the republicans can do bad things and then just say “the Democrats did it.” I’m always reminded of when Mitch McConnell filibustered his own bill because the Democrats got behind it.
Remember the tax cuts passed under Trump? Businesses got it forever. Guess whose tax cuts are about to expire, and guess who is going to get blamed for “raising taxes“ afterwards? 
You’re remembering correctly.
Yes, it was ultimately Republicans who forced the politicization of the debt ceiling, but Biden really did not put up much of a fight. You have to ask yourself if the GOP really would’ve plunged the world into economic armageddon just for a handful of aid concessions. I think it was complete bluff, and Biden probably knew that but the reality is he’s pro-austerity. He can’t say it outright since it’s unpopular, but he’s still quite conservative and believer in the economic/corporate status quo. It might be deliberate, or it might be that he’s literally just not imsginative enough to see outside his own bubble.
It tracks when you look at his stalling on student debt relief too; people like AOC were recommending he use the Higher Education act from the very beginning, precisely because it was more legally resilient, instead he chose a path that we more or less knew would result in failure in the courts.
But he pursued that route because, as he explicitly said, he didn’t want Americans getting used to debt relief as the norm. More or less indicating that he saw this as a temporary political tool to bump his poll numbers, rather than trying to confront the broken debt system that will inevitably create a repeat of the situation we’re in now.
I think it was complete bluff, and Biden probably knew that but the reality is he’s pro-austerity. He can’t say it outright since it’s unpopular, but he’s still quite conservative and believer in the economic/corporate status quo. It might be deliberate, or it might be that he’s literally just not imsginative enough to see outside his own bubble.
i don’t see how you can make this argument when he’s presided over the largest expansion in social spending since the Great Society and has approved something in the ballpark of 4 or 5 trillion dollars in new spending between stimulus bills and his political priorities. a serious debate in the Democratic caucus was over whether to spend “just” 1.75 trillion or go for 2.2 trillion in spending. if this is austerity the word has absolutely no meaning at this point.
The amount of money spent isn’t necessarily some kind of virtue. I could pin three dollars of climate funding to a trillion dollars of military spending and call it a “historic climate bill” but it won’t make it so. And that’s essentially what a lot of these big pieces of legislation have been, tons of pork wrapped up with a nice name and enough social spending to say you spent on climate or infrastructure or whatever even if it’s not a fraction of what needs to happen.
I can make the claim that Biden is pro-austerity because Democrats had the option to raise the debt ceiling back when they controlled the House. They could’ve done it whenever they wanted and avoided any possibility of the GOP using it to gamble (something they knew very well would happen). Instead they took no action on something that would’ve been very simple, because it was an easy excuse.
It’s the constant squandering of opportunities that gives away the game to me, Biden is just playing the same old shell game Democrats always do – professing their love of progressive policy on one hand, and then hamstringing unions, stalling on promises and taking unnecessarily unstable legal routes to try and accomplish things so that those efforts get killed in the courts.
Biden is, at heart, a conservative. He’s not a MAGA lunatic who thinks we should put trans people in camps, and that is good as far as that goes, but his entire career has been spent at the far right of the democratic party. I should clarify, that when I say he is pro-austerity I meant he’s pro-austerity for the American working class, he has no problem giving large handouts to corporations. He fights for the status quo because that’s what keeps the corporate money flowing in Washington.
“Stalling on promises” You mean trying to do shit but have Republicans do everything possible to stop the law and if it passes they do everything they can to not comply???
I think THAT is what you mean.
No, I mean like Obama explicitly promising to use his super majority to pass abortion protections and instead, when the time comes, simply saying it’s not a priority and passing a republican-crafted forced insurance bill. I mean like forgoing the opportunity to raise the debt ceiling when you have control of the house and then capitulating to a cartoonishly obvious bluff of threatening to decimate the economy. I’m talking about having people recommend a legally sound route to forgiving student debt, and instead wasting time going down a route that people are already telling you will be struck down in the courts.
Establishment democrats and establishment republicans work together to stop progress. That’s what being bipartisan means in this political context. The democrats ability to constantly tie their own hands is a trick worthy of the circus.
Obama had a super majority for 72 days and even then that required independents to caucus with them. Independents who are the reason the health care talks stalled. This isn’t Obama’s fault it’s Liebermans. No matter how many times you repost this bull in this thread it still won’t be true. Stop doing the GOPs work and convincing people to not vote for the only side that is doing anything to stem the tide on every issue you are bringing up b
I’m not telling people to not vote democrat in the general, I’m saying that if you keep electing people like Biden in the primaries then there will be no meaningful long term progress away from the corporatocracy we are stuck in. Ever. Not “a little slow progress” not “generational change” not “good instead of perfect” we will continue to backslide because yes, the GOP is pulling backwards with all their might, but the establishment democrats are sitting on the cart with corporate money shoved in their mouth and calling it progress.
Things are not getting better because we are not putting better people in office, they have been getting worse, we are losing rights at an unprecedented speed and if people like Biden cannot effectively fight that they need to get out of the way, urgently.
Biden has declared his climate funding “once in a generation”. Yet we’re nowhere close to addressing climate change and we easily spend many times that amount yearly on things like military and corporate welfare without blinking an eye, so what does that tell you about his motivations and sense of urgency? That’s him telling you he thinks what he’s done is good enough for a generation and can go back to waiting on wall street.
You have to ask yourself if the GOP really would’ve plunged the world into economic armageddon just for a handful of aid concessions
Yes. They would rather Biden look bad than America look good.
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Oh it’s bidens fault that two of the democrat caucusing senators blocked the social programs he tried to pass? Tell me you don’t understand anything about politics in 2023 without telling me you don’t understand anything
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Oh lmao. Yeah I was super confused by that ending line there.
I believe GP is being sarcastic friend
That’s cause he’s still basically a 90s Republican.
… But at least he’s not a straight up nazi
I know it’s hip to call Biden a 90’s R because he didn’t pass every policy the left wants with a slim majority, but do you even know what a 90’s Republican is / stood for? Because that’s when the party turned to Newt and I don’t see him doing ANYTHING close to that.
Right. Maybe a 70s Republican, but certainly not 90s.
One of the weird things that sticks out to me from the Gingrich era is a David Letterman top 10 list. Top ten ways to mis-pronounce “Newt Gingrich”. One of them was “Neutered Lungfish”.
So every time Gingrich gets brought up, that’s what goes through my head. “Neutered Lungfish.”
Can we please have a rule for extreme partisan hackery on both sides to be banned? Leave this nonsense on Twitter (or whatever it’s called).
no. for one thing: how would you even define “partisan hackery” here other than “an opinion you don’t like”?
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Can we also ban extreme non-partisan hackery that makes “both sides” claims no matter how extreme one side is.
What a bunch of crap. Even Republicans love the success of Bidens economy, even though they’ll never admit it publicly.
You can’t complain when you’re never satisfied.
I don’t see anything being done about the extreme cost of living. Food and rent prices are still stratospheric, wages have not caught up, and homeless tents are everywhere. Maybe Wall Street investors are doing better, but we the people sure aren’t.
Those are a signifigant issues globally.
And each country blames it’s own leaders, when the problem seems to be more systemic than the fault a single country’s leader.
Well, rumor has it that Chinese billionaires have been buying up housing in western nations in order to park their money outside of China where the Chinese tax authorities can’t get to it. If that’s true, then that would drive up housing costs in multiple countries at the same time, and those countries’ leaders aren’t stopping it, so those leaders are to blame.
Canada actually passed a law prohibiting foreign buyers of real estate. It hasn’t had much of an effect on housing costs, because when you’re looking at millions and millions of people, a handful of billionaires really doesn’t change the underlying problem very much.
It hasn’t had much of an effect on housing costs because it’s too late. Claw back all the housing they bought up, sell it off to citizens at reasonable prices, and then you’ll see an effect on housing costs.
Foreign owners only account for a small share of the Canadian real estate market. According to Statistics Canada, a government website, non-residents owned 2.2 percent of residential properties in Ontario and 3.1 percent in British Columbia in 2020. The percentages were 2.7 and 4.2 in the Toronto and Vancouver metropolitan areas, respectively.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/6/why-is-canada-banning-foreign-homebuyers
I’m not personally convinced that freeing up maybe 3% of the housing stock (large amounts of which are probably rented) would have a significant effect on the housing market. Maybe, just maybe, there’s been a chronic lack of new supply for decades?
Nah, I’m sure it’s just those dastardly Chinese.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s been a chronic lack of new supply for decades?
Then why is this only now, only abruptly, becoming a problem?
Rent prices are dependent almost exclusively on local market circumstances, and essentially all urban markets are plagued by a drastic lack of supply due to underbuilding of housing for decades combined with more and more people wanting to move to cities. The federal government doesn’t actually have that much authority to regulate housing, which is something generally relegated to the states. However, Biden has provided some incentives for loosening zoning codes and some other programs to encourage more housing construction, though there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.
Democrat state and local governments have absolutely done a horrendous job here as well, to be clear, though California at least is beginning to change course out of raw necessity.
Rent prices are dependent almost exclusively on local market circumstances, and essentially all urban markets are plagued by a drastic lack of supply due to underbuilding of housing for decades
That would explain a gradual increase in housing costs over decades, but it doesn’t explain housing costs skyrocketing in only a few years.
combined with more and more people wanting to move to cities.
What in the world for? I can’t imagine wanting to live in conditions like that.
The federal government doesn’t actually have that much authority to regulate housing, which is something generally relegated to the states.
Well, they’re failing catastrophically, and almost no one seems to be complaining. Do people like paying outrageous property taxes?
However, Biden has provided some incentives for loosening zoning codes and some other programs to encourage more housing construction, though there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.
That isn’t going to do anyone any good as long as billionaires are allowed to hoard real estate.
Democrat state and local governments have absolutely done a horrendous job here as well, to be clear, though California at least is beginning to change course out of raw necessity.
California is the worst of them. My family and I fled California in the early 2000s because of extreme housing costs. Last I heard, our modest suburban house sold for over a million dollars. Madness. The whole place must be a giant slum by now, with dozens of people per house.
The portrayal of “Bidenomics” as a success story serves as a classic illustration of how power structures manipulate economic indicators to project an image of prosperity, obscuring the underlying reality. While the figures may indicate growth and a decrease in unemployment, they are detached from the lived experiences of millions who continue to suffer from food insecurity and financial hardship. The discontinuation of essential aid programs reflects a broader systemic failure, where policies are shaped by elite interests at the expense of the vulnerable. It’s a pattern we’ve seen repeatedly in the history of state-corporate management of the economy, where the welfare of the general population is subordinated to concentrated private power.
Or. Or. Or. Get this… maybe the success is that they prevented it from getting so so much worse. And that it will take time before things turn around for the working class because there is nothing the federal government can do as long as the GOP exists to immediately fix any of the problems. Like what the hell do you think Biden can do that he isn’t?
I’m an honest to goodness old-school trade unionist / New Deal type, and don’t really identify with much of the Dem establishment (and parts of the counter-establishment) these days, but I definitely see some of the points my progressive friends are making. Dems, even if they lose, don’t seem to really fight on the way down. When FDR was being blocked he threatened to pack the SCOTUS until he got his way. Fuck yeah. We need more of that energy.
I do agree with my mainstream Dem friends that we have to vote strategically to keep the fascists out. That said, and even though I don’t agree with some of the more unrealistic late night dorm room bong-ripping idealism, I also don’t agree with the mainstream expectation that progressives need to roll over before the election even gets underway just because there is an anointed mainstream Dem candidate on the ballot. Fighting like hell through the primaries is the way you hold the Dem establishment accountable and keep the Overton window from drifting too far right. Because you know what? Activists on the far right are fightIng like hell the other direction, and they have been winning.
So shine on, you crazy progressive and radical diamonds. Hold the establishment accountable and push policy to the left. Want real socialism? Agitate for it. But if you lose in the primaries, have the grace to put on a disguise and show up on election day to make sure the vulnerable don’t get fucked any worse than than they already are.
Tbh, yeah. I think the reason Biden is a tough sell is that his presidency has been a continuation of a decades long tradition of not dealing with the real problems in our society. The president isn’t exactly at fault, because it’s the legislature that refuses to meaningfully deal with any real issues and the courts that enforce that learned helplessness, but they catch the blame because they’re the closest we have to an HMFIC.
What bothers me is that the Biden admin seems resigned to this fate and has now made addressing hidden/shitty charges a priority for their election platform. Like, cool, but we’ve got 99 fires raging, and hidden, shitty charges MIGHT be number 99. The Biden administration has done a lot of things that I agree with, but the only even remotely meaningful change has been the Amtrak revitalization which, tbh, could have been much more aggressive. I’ll also give Biden credit for (seemingly) starting to right the ship in terms of federal agency appointments. It’s like, the ship is fucking capsizing, but the electrician has showed up and he’s going to finally fix that flickering light. Like, okay, great, but that’s not the priority at the moment, in case you haven’t noticed. I’d like it a lot more if the Biden administration was pounding the fucking table when they’re blocked on attacking big policy issues. Put the republicans on the defense, entreat the American people to get involved and call their legislators, scream this shit from the rooftops, act like it’s a problem and you’re passionate about fixing it. Instead, we’re getting probably flimsy legislation on hidden fees.
I know sure as fuck I won’t get this stuff from the Republicans, so I might still vote for Joe, but it’s hard to be enthusiastic when there’s no appetite for having the big fights that we really need to be having.
