What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Barrister]

Harris leads Trump in one poll, 42-41%.  Surprisingly a HIllary Clinton-Kamala Harris ticket polls best at 43-40, althogh Clinton is not really a serious candidate at this point.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/09/biden-clinton-harris-democrat-poll-00166937

Also an interesting article (at least I thought): - Joe Biden forgot the message of 2020.  Biden's candidacy seemed almost dead in the water early on leading to a likely Bernie win - who almost certainly would have lost to Trump.  Instead in 2020 multiple candidates dropped out in favour of Biden - who then easily rolled up the win.  Those candidates did it for the best interests of the party and country - so why isn't Biden doing the same now?

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-lesson-biden-didnt-learn-from

[Sheilbh]

I think all of that is accurate.  And raises the question - why didn't somebody step up to the plate to take him on in the primaries.  It can't be a shock to those in Washington that he is not lucid.

Here's the most alarming possible reason: they don't believe what they're saying about Trump. They think they can handle a second term and that it'll be no worse than the first term. So they don't want to piss off other people in the party, limiting their options in 2028.

Whether it's only Sanders really challenging Clinton in 2016, or not pressuring RBG, or the Obamas, Clintons etc coming out in support of Biden the day after the debate - I think there is an alarming degree of complacency among senior Democrats. I don't think it matches their rhetoric - so either they don't really believe it or they think being polite/not rocking the boat matters more.

[Admiral Yi]

Different things here.

1. Inflation - yes, this is a global phenomenon, and the Fed has done about as well as could be done. It is possible in theory to deliberately push deflationary policy, but that would be nuts.

2. Climate Change - recognizing that there are powerful forces constraining effective action, that still leaves quite a lot that could be tried. At the very least, the Democrats in the Biden era have not done a great advocacy job of pushing back on the Overton Window - this is one area where a Gavin Newsom type might do a bit better.  There is also more that can be done to harness the politico-economic zeitgeist and link pro-climate policies to economic nationalism and national security, playing up the competition with China on key technology development and roll out.  The latter has been Biden's approach, but he hasn't sold it that effectively.

3. Ukraine - It is certainly well within American capacity to provide more money, more guns, more support.

4. Israel-Palestine : just because America cannot "solve" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, doesn't mean that it completely lacks any policy options.  There are a lot of things America can do to impact realities on the ground.

2.  I was responding to Valmy's post about new policies that solve problems.  Trying to convince voters is not a policy, at least as I understand the word.

3. This one I concede.  More aid would be a new policy, deploying US troops would be a new policy, etc.

4. See #2 above.

[grumbler]

I think this sentiment that nothing can be done is part of the general move towards authoritarianism

100%. One of the best moves the fascists can make is to convince anyone who opposes them that fascism winning is inevitable.

Fuck that.

That's a good move, but a better Fascist move is to convince the public that things are terrible, despite all of the objective evidence pointing the other way.

It might be nice if the Democrats could articulate some attractive vision for the future, but that's not where Biden and his advisors live.  I think that the message that "things are going great, let's not rock the boat" could be easily supported by the evidence and would appeal to the undecideds and moderates.

[Oexmelin]

I am not sure evidence is really what is missing from the current political moment.

[DGuller]

It's hard to get people fired up about status quo.  The very insinuation behind that term is negative, as if humans are utterly incapable of getting to a place where just staying there is pretty good.

[Razgovory]

Something I've noticed is how people keep saying everything is terrible, but it really isn't.  The London Blitz was terrible, we've had 18% inflation over 4 years.  I'm not ecstatic about that, but it's hardly terrible.

[Jacob]

I've been banging the drum that propaganda and influence operations are key to our current political moment for quite a while.

I find it ironic that the right wing some time ago (maybe a decade) were frothing at the mouth about the left's alleged "moral relativism" and embracing of the subjective nature of reality when reality obviously is objective; and now the right has gone all in on "I reject your reality and substitute my own" as a strategy and succeeding with it.

[Valmy]

I am not big on calling modern rightwing nutcases fascists or Nazis, I mean besides those that are explicitly so, but one thing they definitely have in common with the Nazis is adopting every stupid or bad idea regardless of its origins.

[grumbler]

I am not sure evidence is really what is missing from the current political moment.

I am convinced that lack of public awareness of the evidence is a key factor in allowing many of the never-Trumpers to conclude that Biden is no better and so they should stay home.

[Tonitrus]

Something I've noticed is how people keep saying everything is terrible, but it really isn't.  The London Blitz was terrible, we've had 18% inflation over 4 years.  I'm not ecstatic about that, but it's hardly terrible.

Maybe so...but if the people/polls are saying "the economy is terrible", but economists/politicians are arguing "Whaddya mean? Low unemployment...thing are fine!"...that is a losing argument.

[Grey Fox]

For the people whom things are terrible in the micro/locally, they are likely also terrible for most people they know.

[Oexmelin]

I am convinced that lack of public awareness of the evidence is a key factor in allowing many of the never-Trumpers to conclude that Biden is no better and so they should stay home.

The last 8 years - heck, the last decades, when we consider things like covid or climate change - suggest that our current predicament isn't one of lack of evidence or awareness. There are thousands of fact-checking outlets; experts have been repeating data, journalists keep saying the same things about state of the economy, or the general decline in crime statistics. More venues for raising awareness about evidence, more spaces of fact-checking have not impaired Trump, and Trumpian rhetoric by much, if at all. A problem of politics isn't solved by spouting evidence, however incontrovertible it appears, and however much we'd like it to be convincing on its own. Politics is about matters of concern, and it is only distantly related to matters of fact.

[Syt]

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4764972-house-approves-voter-eligibility-bill/

Yay for political theater!

House passes bill to ban noncitizens from voting in federal elections

House Republicans and a handful of Democrats on Wednesday approved a bill that seeks to expand proof-of-citizenship requirements to vote in federal elections and impose voter roll purge requirements on states, legislation that has been touted by former President Trump.

The legislation — formally titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — cleared the chamber in a 221-198 vote, with five Democrats voting yes. It now heads to the Senate, where it is all but certain to be ignored amid opposition from Democrats.

President Biden has vowed to veto the measure.

Opponents of the bill say its core idea — establishing noncitizen voting as illegal — is redundant, and argue that its provisions will more likely lead to U.S. citizens being denied their right to vote than to preventing votes by foreign nationals.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), meanwhile, argued on the House floor Wednesday that the legislation is necessary because noncitizens have voted in U.S. elections despite it being illegal to do so.

"Even though it's already illegal, this is happening," Johnson said.

In May, Johnson told reporters, "we all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. [ ] But it's not been something that is easily provable. We don't have that number.

"This legislation will allow us to do exactly that — it will prevent that from happening. And if someone tries to do it, it will now be unlawful within the states," he added.

But most researchers who have studied voting patterns have said Johnson's intuition is wrong.

One study by the Brennan Center for Justice found 30 suspected — not confirmed — cases of noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million.

The claim that noncitizens are voting — and that Democrats are willfully importing undocumented immigrants to vote — is the bill's raison d'etre.

Johnson, nonetheless, brought the legislation to the floor as a show of unity between himself and members of the right flank on an issue that's also a Trump favorite.

The Speaker backed the idea of banning noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections through legislation during a joint press conference with Trump in April, at a time when the House leader was trying to drum up GOP support as a small group of Republican lawmakers threatened to oust him.

The former president urged GOP lawmakers to approve the legislation in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, writing: "Republicans must pass the Save Act, or go home and cry yourself to sleep."

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who introduced the bill in May, said at the time, "Radical progressive Democrats know this and are using open border policies while also attacking election integrity laws to fundamentally remake America."

Roy and Johnson have butted heads in the past, particularly over the Speaker's bipartisan budget efforts, but the two former Judiciary Committee colleagues see eye to eye on immigration.

In an op-ed in May, Roy wrote that "radical progressive Democrats aren't even trying to hide it anymore — they're publicly admitting their intention to leverage open borders and the tens of millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. to fundamentally remake America by cementing one-party rule."

Roy's stated evidence for that claim was a verbal flub by President Biden on a radio show in May — widely picked up by right-wing media — where Biden appears to refer to Hispanic immigrants as "voters."

Roy also criticized Democrats for voting against a bill that would have changed census apportionment to exclude non-U.S. citizens.

"I think they believe in their own heads, that somehow immigrants are bad and you know, we're terrible and we're always going to do bad things, when we know that's not true. We know the data actually shows that immigrants commit less crimes. That, you know, communities with lots of immigrants actually are safer," said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who emigrated from Peru at age 5.

And advocates say the bill would make it harder for some U.S. citizens to register to vote, and would purge more citizens than noncitizens from voter rolls.

"We're seeing heightened threats against elections officials and voters at the polls, especially in places where Latinos are a growing and significant part of the eligible voting population," said Juan Espinoza, senior civil rights adviser at UnidosUS.

"Harmful and false rhetoric of noncitizen voters also spreads disinformation that targets and undermines Latino voters. This bill is a dangerous political ploy being used to suppress the vote in communities of color and further undermine voting rights in this country."

[DGuller]

I think the problem with US politics has always been that the US electorate is very shallow.  Just the very concept of voting or not voting for an incumbent because "the economy was good" displays what little desire there is to give thought to politics among some voters.  When you couple that shallowness with the 21st century technology that can attack and exploit human biases with precision and effect never seen before, you have what we have now.  You can't deprogram a brainwashing victim with facts and statistics.