Quote (Goomshill @ 10 Jan 2022 22:45)
A president's task is to decide what kind of strategy he wants to pursue and then be successful at it. That could be wrangling votes when in a split congress to find a compromise position. That could be unilateralism, trying to bypass congress and etch a legacy out of executive orders and exploiting chevon doctrine and finding quibbling workarounds. It could be a supermajority crusader passing the every whim of his party. Each president has to adapt to the reality of their position and find a way to succeed despite it. We've had plenty of compromising centrist presidents throughout the nations history, steeped in bureaucracy, trying to carefully balance all the interests and stakeholders. When Obama couldn't pass his policies through congress, he tried to build them out of every unilateral power he could find and invented a few new ones along the way, but he was building on quicksand and it was all swept away as soon as the next president was in.
I don't think Biden was dealt any tougher a hand than most of his predecessors. Obama faced plenty of obstruction too. Most of the big bold progressive changes are so unpopular with the American public that they elected a president who doesn't support them anyway, so we can't really say its a mark against him for not passing them. His mismanagement and being asleep at the wheel has caused unforced error in the most basic handling of foreign and domestic affairs that were already in motion, not bold new policies. Obama showed he was a competent navigator who could find a way to cheat his bold new policies into existence even if it was all just a vain affair of buying time- Biden has shown he is not competent to enforce the existing policies and basic affairs of state. Even basic diplomatic shit like the french submarine deal affair
Sorry, but I think the bolded part is completely deluded. When Obama entered office, he had a wide margin in the House and 58 seats in the Senate, which later expanded to the only filibuster-proof majority any party has had in that chamber during our lifetime.
Today, we're talking about a very different, more ideologically streamlined and radical Democratic party than back in 2009. They are still reeling from the trauma of 2016 and four years of Trump, influenced by an ever growing progressive caucus which has become triple digits strong. Give this party the same amount of wiggle room Obama had and you get a $10 trillion spending package, HR1 signed into law 1 week after inauguration, a packed Supreme Court and federal judiciary, full-blown amnesty including a fast-track to citizenship, the complete federalization of national elections, a massive hollowing out of the 2nd amendment as well as sweeping "hate speech" legislation to punish any wrongthink. And probably some overzealous climate legislation and zany shit like reparations to the Taliban or 100% federal cost coverage for third-trimester abortions.
If they end up with 55-58 votes in the Senate instead of 60, they probably go nuclear and then pass all of the above.
From a liberal pov, Biden could and should have achieved more than he did, but we must be realistic and acknowledge that he came from a fundamentally different starting position than Obama.
Quote (Goomshill @ 10 Jan 2022 23:04)
[...] Biden had no policy platform at all and no ambitions to pass any legislation during his term and instead rode a message of simply managing the status quo, and yet managed to fuck up everything he laid his fingers on and bungled foreign and domestic policy again and again and again.[...]
As a famous politician once said:
Quote (Barack Obama)
"Never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up"
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 10 2022 04:52pm