166
Ocasio-Cortez endorses Biden's reelection campaign, sending a strong signal of Democratic unity
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Politics
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Wow, a lot of vitriol on this topic! Okay, so, for my first post on Lemmy I am going to make a positive leftist case for Biden.
Biden is not the problem! He wants to do big things; he wants be a great president. If congress sent him voting rights, reproductive rights, major climate action, and many other leftist priorities, he would sign them. He could definitely be better, but he is mostly not standing in our way. How many decades would you have to go back to find another president you could say that about?
Biden is not the problem. Congress is the problem. State and local governments are the problem. Nimbys are the problem. We have a lot of problems to solve but the presidency is not one of them. What we need to do with the presidency is simply reelect Biden and then get on with the work of solving the actual problems.
Biden is still a centrist, also known as a fascist enabler.
The man is not for labor, see ending the railroad strike, one of the most infuriating moves a so-called great president could perform.
If he truly wanted to do great things, and not be hindered by the backing of capital, he'd be moving fast and breaking things more than the previous administration. He's not.
I understand your frustration but also encourage you to pay more attention to what happens behind the scenes. Your position on the railroad strike is outdated/misinformed relative to what happened a month ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave
In other words, Biden instructed his administration to double back and force the hand of the railroad companies to get the union exactly what they wanted.
IBEW statement. this is one of the unions involved, and their official statement on the matter. pretty positive.
I think you're wanting him to be more like LBJ, using his political power to drag reluctant congress members along, and you're right, someone like that would have gotten more done. But LBJ wasn't perfect either, and the LBJ approach isn't the only way to get things done. Another way is more bottom up, get the support in congress and then just have a president who's willing to go along. I'm guessing that's probably AOC's intention, to bring liberals and leftists together so we can present a unified front and get majorities in congress.
But yeah, I agree about the railroad strike. Also the vaccine patents. He's not perfect.
I don't think Biden wants to do big things.
I think it's a bunch of kids with little life experience. On one hand their passion recalls fading memories of my own young, idealistic self in my 20s. On the other hand, politics doesn't work with raging hardliners. On the third hand, the world is pretty fucked, the US is going to hell in a handbasket and I don't think geriatrics are who we should be voting for. You say Congress is the problem, but really, it's voters. Voters just fucking suck. But unless someone wants to do away with any type of democracy, shitty voters is where we are at.
you're not wrong, politics is about compromise and in the most successful nations no one gets what they want and no one leaves the bargaining table happy. the question is, how does one work the politics of coalition and compromise when the people you're supposed to coalition-build and compromise with are raging hardliners. How does one find a middle ground with open christian nationalist fascists?