Politics

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.

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?

That's cause he's still basically a 90s Republican.

... But at least he's not a straight up nazi

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).

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.

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.

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.