President Biden

[Couchpotato]

Really for a senile old man who thinks he's FDR reborn and a democrat party that thinks it has a mandate, you'd think there would be more posting on this thread.. Crazy I tell ya.

Biden's just not trump that's all and no he never was a moderate to begin with. So keep embracing the far left ideology Mr. President as midterm elections are coming in 2022.

 

[dteowner]

Well, let's see. Biden's got the mainstream media carrying water instead of in open attack mode like they were with Trump. Upset righties aren't burning down their own cities, unlike the lefties under Trump, meaning less opportunities for the mainstream media to blame Biden for things even if they suddenly got the inclination to do so.

And, admittedly, Trump was a jackoff, which inflamed people to be more vocal with their bile. Besides, it just feels wrong to pick on a senile old man like Sleepy Joe.

 

[Carnifex]

I've been no fan of Biden's since he got pinged for using other folks' materials a few decades ago, lied about it constantly until it was literally shoved in his face. Having said that, he benefits from following an actual non-human in the office, yet I still expected much more from not only him, but some of the serious aces he's put in place. There's some real talent there, yet for the past eleven months it seems they've mostly been sitting on their collective hands.

 

[daveyd]

Well, I don't know how much talent they have... unless we're counting their talent to fail upwards. But at least, unlike Trump, Biden surrounded himself with people who project an aura of competence.

American politics never ceases to amaze depress me.

The right, completely out of touch with reality, as per usual, continue to spew nonsense about Joe Biden supposedly being a radical leftist like they'll always do with any politician with a D next to their name.. Centrists / liberals seem largely disappointed with Biden, which is actually somewhat of a surprise to me, as I suspected after Trump they'd be fine with a do nothing milquetoast corporate Democrat... though I guess when he can barely put a coherent sentence together it's harder to buy his BS than it was to buy into Obama's.

All the left can really say is, we told you so.

 

[Couchpotato]

Well I don't know what to label Biden as he won on promising unity, healing, and not being Trump. Yet since day one everything he does just keeps pissing off conservatives and centrists. That hasn't promoted any type of healing or Unity just more division.

 

[Myrthos]

If you think Biden is far left then you are just not looking far enough to the left
To me he is to the right of the center, just where democrats have always been.

I know it is all relative and that the US hasn't been exposed to actual socialism, but in my world view the US presidents just differ in how far to the right they actually are

 

[Couchpotato]

Well right & left politics mean something different to Europeans. When we say far left in America it's usually the socialist progressive block and it's growing young voter base.

Example being AOC, the squad, and Bernie Sanders are the best examples.

We don't mean Fascists and Communists.

 

[Carnifex]

I would agree with Myrthos in that Biden is by no means an absolute left-ist. Not even close. Yet right now, his entire legacy or lack thereof is spinning in neutral. Heck, he had more impact as a veep than he's done up to this point, in all honesty. I want him to succeed, the bloody country NEEDS him to do so, yet for that to happen he's going to have to make some hard choices and take sides on a few serious issues. Soon-ish.

 

[Ripper]

Yeah, the idea that Biden is a hardline leftist is not a serious proposition. The reason this nonsense about the far-left is cooked up is so that the large swathe of the US population that are, in fact, pretty in-tune with the far-right can convince themselves that it's a perfectly reasonable reaction to the excesses of "the other side". Which is of course what they've been claiming since fascism got going, and what we see round here from time to time.

It's obvious bollocks, but it works within the borders of Republican Narnia, which is all it needs to do.

 

[daveyd]

Well I don't know what to label Biden as he won on promising unity, healing, and not being Trump. Yet since day one everything he does just keeps pissing off conservatives and centrists. That hasn't promoted any type of healing or Unity just more division.

Well, him pissing off conservatives isn't really surprising is it? I mean when's the last time mainstream conservative pundits had anything positive to say about a Democratic president? They're going to complain about anything he does because he's got a D next to his name. They're partisan hacks.

Take the ACA for ex. An insurance mandate system is not a leftist healthcare plan. We want to abolish private for-profit health insurance, not force citizens to purchase give them money for inadequate policies. Insurance mandate was originally advocated for by the Heritage Foundation, Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, and Mitt Romney. Really the only thing remotely leftist about ACA was medicaid expansion, but state govt. had to do that. Yet basically every Republican opposed it anyway, because it became "Obamacare".

Republicans didn't give Bill Clinton credit for all the conservative policies he signed into law like NAFTA, the crime bill, welfare reform, etc.

Well right & left politics mean something different to Europeans. When we say far left in America it's usually the socialist progressive block and it's growing young voter base.

Example being AOC, the squad, and Bernie Sanders are the best examples.

We don't mean Fascists and Communists.

Sure when it comes to politicians those are the closest things we have to leftists in government.. though they'd probably be better described as "Social Democrats" than Socialists and IMO it's debatable how committed most of them are to the policies they claim to support.

Though I think it's more useful to think of political spectrum in a square than a line:

I don't know what label I'd assign to myself exactly, but I'm definitely somewhere in the lower left.

Ironically if Bernie had become President I think most leftists probably would've been pretty disappointed with him but liberals / centrists might've loved him. He was still a compromise for us on a some issues. For example, His foreign policy record isn't great, while he opposed the Iraq War in general he's supported drone strikes and US imperialism.

 

[dteowner]

Rather than a line or square, I've always thought of the spectrum as a horseshoe. That puts the "ends" much closer together (like they tend to work in reality) than a linear model but still maintains the lack of a linkage between those "ends" which is implied by a square.

 

[daveyd]

I'm more inclined to see it as a fishhook

 

[JDR13]

I'm more inclined to see it as a fishhook

Eh? As a centrist myself, I couldn't disagree more with that. I don't think the fish hook theory is meant to be entirely serious though.

 

[dteowner]

it mostly inhabits popular discourse, as a means of satire intended to discredit the horseshoe theory.

Yeah, it's crap but he did use it in the right context at least.

 

[Stingray]

Because the Biden administration is a pretty mediocre example of a run-of-the-mill, neo-liberal Western state; whereas having Donald Trump in charge of the world's dominant superpower was quite alarming for most rational people?

Nah, not at all. It's because on the internet, it's more fun to talk shit about politicians than it is to cheer them on - and in this particular forum, 95%+ of the posters are on the Biden side (and the few that aren't don't post because they don't want to get piled on). So, here, a Biden thread would never be too active. On other forums with the opposite type of population, threads about Joe Biden are extremely busy - there really is lot of material to laugh at.

 

[Ripper]

Nah, not at all. It's because on the internet, it's more fun to talk shit about politicians than it is to cheer them on - and in this particular forum, 95%+ of the posters are on the Biden side (and the few that aren't don't post because they don't want to get piled on). So, here, a Biden thread would never be too active. On other forums with the opposite type of population, threads about Joe Biden are extremely busy - there really is lot of material to laugh at.

Well, there's some truth to that. But, again, I don't think that's because the place is so overwhelmingly left-leaning. I think there's a lot of folks who are centrists, or centre-right by most standards, and who find Biden a rather unremarkable "moderate". I think the US Republican movement has moved to a pretty extreme position and normalised it, but to most folks, of most stripes, it's pretty shocking and far more likely to provoke comment.

I personally have no problem with mockery of Biden and the corporate stooges of the Democratic party, but the trouble is that the right is not producing much good comedy these days. I mean, Norm MacDonald who I was posting about recently was very skeptical of the left, and also hilarious, but most of what I see these days is painfully unfunny partisan hacks; that's by no means exclusive to the right, but the right seems to do it almost exclusively.

With regard to people being afraid of getting piled on - oh, you snowflakes! When I first dived in here, I got dogpiled all the time. If you have something to say, deal with it!

 

[Pladio]

I don't see Biden doing too much but in comparison to Trump I feel that's a good thing. Just bring things back somewhat to being reasonable.

 

[daveyd]

Eh? As a centrist myself, I couldn't disagree more with that. I don't think the fish hook theory is meant to be entirely serious though.

No, it is not an entirely serious political theory, but I think it has as much credibility as horseshoe theory. More seriously, I can understand people being in the "middle" some social issues like gun regulation (actually I'd say I'm moderate on that one myself). Some issues are complicated and controversial for a legitimate reason.

But in other cases, where I see an issue as rather black & white, centrists tend to advocate for incrementalist policies and "compromise" to the point any progress made would be so far from what's needed it may as well be doing nothing. Which seems to be where we're headed with climate change. While facing impending mass extinction some in the "reasonable center" seem to think we ought to be more concerned with things like our national deficit.

 

[JDR13]

But in other cases, where I see an issue as rather black & white, centrists tend to advocate for incrementalist policies and "compromise" to the point any progress made would be so far from what's needed it may as well be doing nothing. Which seems to be where we're headed with climate change. While facing impending mass extinction some in the "reasonable center" seem to think we ought to be more concerned with things like our national deficit.

I'm a centrist only in the sense that I don't really lean either way on the political spectrum, (Though I find myself disagreeing more often with the right nowadays or at least what constitutes the right in America), not in the sense that I think everything should be met half-way. I think it's pretty easy to look at most proposed policies and decide whether or not I agree with them.

I'm sure there are people out there that are satisfied with stalemate-type compromises, but I tend to think that's a minority even among centrists.

 

[Pladio]

No, it is not an entirely serious political theory, but I think it has as much credibility as horseshoe theory. More seriously, I can understand people being in the "middle" some social issues like gun regulation (actually I'd say I'm moderate on that one myself). Some issues are complicated and controversial for a legitimate reason.

But in other cases, where I see an issue as rather black & white, centrists tend to advocate for incrementalist policies and "compromise" to the point any progress made would be so far from what's needed it may as well be doing nothing. Which seems to be where we're headed with climate change. While facing impending mass extinction some in the "reasonable center" seem to think we ought to be more concerned with things like our national deficit.

Moderate and centrist do not necessarily mean the same thing.

You can be a radical centrist, essentially espousing centrist views with big reforms.
You can be a moderate liberal or a radical liberal. You can be a moderate conservative or a radical conservative.

I am not articulate enough to explain it myself, so I will leave you with a wiki article, which I know isn't perfect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_centrism