this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Only idiots are saying both sides are the same, but the only way to make Biden look good is to compare him to Trump. Such a low bar.
Lowering insulin prices is great, but its just another bandaid on the gaping, infected wound that is the US healthcare system. What happened to the public option that candidate Biden talked about so much?
Lowering cannabis to schedule 3 is a step in the right direction, now we can have legitimate legal studies on the drug. But this doesn't have to go in baby steps, he could have just descheduled it. We will still be arresting and prosecuting and jailing, ruining lives and wasting loads of taxpayer dollars.
The infrastructure bill is just clearing the maintenance backlog, we still have no real plans for high speed rail. Our infrastructure is 10-15 years behind China and falling further behind.
Pray tell, how would Biden get that passed with the current political setting?
Biden is a president, not a king, he can't just deschedule marijuana unilaterally without causing problems, he needs Congress to help. Look at your answer to my first question to see how that gets done. Some info: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/20/over-80-groups-urge-biden-administration-end-federal-prohibition-marijuana-and
Again, look at your answer to my first question.
It feels like you want Biden to fix everything, while completely unaware of how our government works. Which brings us to why people compare Trump to Biden, because people will have to vote for one or the other in the election. Is you want better and more extensive changes, vote for the Democrats that can only take baby steps at the moment. When they get more control on Congress, they can make bigger steps.
When Biden was elected, Dems controlled both houses of congress. What stopped him from pushing his public option plan then?
What is stopping him from pushing to deschedule cannabis completely? Even if congress gets in his way, people would give him massive credit for actually trying.
You say we need to elect more Democrats to make bigger steps, but we did that in 2008 and 2020 and still we get baby steps. Why?
If the president is so powerless, then why are people worried about project 2025 and "dictator on day 1" Trump? Surely they must be confused, because the adults in the room like you know that the president is actually unable to pass meaningful legislation.
Please educate me since I'm completely unaware how our government works.
Manchin and Sinema, mainly, but also the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Forgot already?
Because reasonable people don’t want the president to attempt authoritarian rule in order to progress his agenda. The fact that it is possible to do that is a big fucking issue and yet here we are, watching it happen with Trump. That doesn’t mean Biden should do it. It should not [and cannot be allowed to] happen at all.
Could have been ended forever with a simple majority vote.
Doesn't senate require at least 60 votes to avoid filibuster?
And 50 + a tiebreaking vote by the vice president to end the Jim Crow filibuster forever.
I can never tell when someone is arguing in bad faith or legitimately saying something off-their-rocker.
If Biden gave the order to eliminate his political opponents, nothing would happen because the amount of Biden fanatics is pretty low. Trump has enough fanatics in his ranks (which include a lot of military/police) that they would just do it, legality be damned. And with the current supreme court legality is a fluid concept in favor of republicans, and they know it.
This is completely false. They had control of the House, and a tie breaker for the Senate. But that didn't matter much because they need 60 senators to pass legislation without Republicans impeding.
It would be the judiciary that gets in the way as well as Republicans. You'd have people saying Biden is an idiot and only doing this to make it seem he's trying while not actually accomplishing anything. He's making meaningful progress now. Congress is who can actually fix our marijuana laws in a federal sense.
Your premise is wrong again. If you have few Democrats in control you get baby steps. If centrist and progressives had the house, and 60 senators and the executive branch, larger steps would be taken. That's not happened in about 24 years or longer. Republicans have had that more times so you can see the progress they've made at bettering out country these last 24 years.
For the same reason it's easier and faster to shoot someone in the face than it is to arrest them, put them on trial and imprison them, Trump isn't going about playing by the rules, and he has many Republicans supporting him. If Biden breaks rules, both Republicans and Democrats would step in to fix that.in addition, Trump doesn't care about what will last, short terms goals are fine with him. Biden wants legislation that will get passed and not struck down by a conservative court.
They could have changed the senate rules to do away with the filibuster forever with the simple majority they possessed. They chose not to.
Progress makes us realize how far behind we still are. But we still need to make progress, we can't just do nothing and pretend it's fine.
We do have plans for highspeed rail, we're building it in California, Navada, Florida, and the north east corridor right now, with plans to extend the network and add new lines.
Biden has also been funding renewable energy, and fighting inflation, forgiving student debt, and providing funding for first time home buyers.
We absolutely still need a public option for healthcare, and to decriminalize cannabis, but I don't think you're giving him enough credit. Biden has done more to help unions than Clinton or Obama. He's been getting a lot done with a divided congress.
In 2008, both China and the US announced competing high speed rail initiatives.
According to wikipedia, China now has 43,000 km of high speed rail. The US has 80 km of high speed rail.
Yes Cali has plans for high speed rail, its pretty much the same plan from 2008.
And going down your list- renewable energy, fighting inflation, student debt forgiveness, homebuyer assistance - all of these are tepid, surface level initiatives that do not solve the underlying problems. So you're right, I dont give Biden much credit.
Man, the self-righteous delusion going on in this place.
Libs are SOOO desperate to believe something other than reality (not you, your haters).
Check calendar
As it turns out, as the date changes the world changes as well. Sometimes you can't have it all, sometimes plans have to change.
Sorry you don't like the progress we have made 👉👈
I'm not asking for "it all", I don't expect it to be perfect. I'm just pointing out the glaring contrast- China successfully built high speed rail, and the US has failed (so far)
I dont like the progress we have made because I believe in the promise of America. America can do so much better. We should be building rail just as fast as China, but instead we are building at 1% of their pace and people like you call it "progress".
I agree with everything you said here except America having promise. America doesn't have promise, it's been holding the world back for a long time now, and bullying all the other nations. It would be best for it to crash and burn like all the other nations it made crash and burn.
Mask off "leftist" moment here
I think the fact I am English has as much bearing on this opinion as being left-adjacent. My country helped form the United States, and many of us (not just leftists) are disturbed at what has happened since we were kicked out. I mean it's a common stereotype here that Americans are dumb, fat, and racist.
Pot meet kettle rofl
You fuckers are just as bad as us, you're just more polite about it
Yeah the fact we are now only moderately better than the USA is disturbing. Hey at least we don't have fascists and right wing nut jobs trying to take over the government. Likewise you don't go broke from getting ill, even if the care isn't as good as it used to be.
Got bad news for you bruv
We weren't the ones having people invading the capital. When have we had fascists trying to take over?
Can you actually say I am wrong? America is known for modeling in foreign affairs, sponsoring coups and starting civil wars, and just straight up invading places. You're even worse than China, and China has a bad track record.
Many of those other nations are much worse than the US.
America has been holding the world back in the sense of separating combatants in fist fights. We have been global peacekeepers for almost a century now and it's been an incredibly good thing for the human race. Not to mention our technological advancements. The rise of the USA has been a good thing for humanity, though it does have its downsides.
The first part is sort of true, but nobody does it more aggressively than America and Russia.
You aren't even close to peacekeepers. You are literally sponsoring genocide in Palestine. You started a whole war in Vietnam and then lost. Stop pretending to be the good guys.
We have completely lost to Big Business at this point. No leader is willing to attack them and make meaningful legislation to rein them in because (stupidly) wealth growth revolves around financial markets and not actual production of goods. If you mess with the stock market you ruin everything from retirements to people’s employment. So government’s hands are tied and all they can do is treat the symptoms instead of the disease.
In a recent survey of 154 historical scholars measuring presidential ranking through the accomplishments of all 45 presidents, Biden ranked 14th, while Trump ranked dead last.
Its easy to say Trump makes another presidential option look good, because that's absolutely true. But it's a little dishonest to say that Biden's not a decent president with a list of accomplishments that stand independent of Trump.
Personally, I believe Biden forfeited any claims to decency when he went on national television and lied to the American people about seeing pictures of 40 beheaded babies. This gruesome story, proved false by any serious accounting of Oct. 7th, was told to justify the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
But I guess I'm just an idealist.
You're right, totally the exact same as trump
Using Trump as an excuse for deplorable behavior is not a good look. We need to do better than a race to the bottom.
I like the royal "we" like as a collective we all are capable of doing better. Look around. We are fighting just so we don't get an actual fascist.
As long as half the nation wants someone like Trump, we have to do what it takes to make sure that doesn't happen, because if it does we may not be able to pick someone better next time.
"A little dishonest"
A lot more than a little.