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Biden has been a fine president, but notably failed to do a number of things that are important to me such as legalizing marijuana, codifying into law RvW, ending Citizen's United, increasing the minimum wage, etc. I like Joe Biden, and he's way better than the other guy, but I wouldn't say "great".
The President cannot unilaterally do any of those things.
And the things he could do unilaterally (student loan forgiveness), he absolutely tried to do , but was cockblocked.
Absolutely. I mean, it's utterly fascinating that people think the President can somehow overturn a Supreme Court decision (Citizens United). The civic literacy in this country is fucking awful, and it's clear that a huge portion of our electorate doesn't know or understand anything more complicated than a one-line soundbyte.
Most Americans don't know how many reps are in the Senate or House
I'm not talking about Lemmy either. I mean your average person on the streets, especially in Bumfuck, IA. It doesn't affect them enough to care.
One of them is 100 and that's the actually high class people. The other is like 500 and there's a whole bunch of uggos and sub-7s in there.
For the sake of any wayward souls reading this its 100 and 435.
I don’t know, Jackson ignored the Supreme Court and I think Lincoln was planning on ignoring the courts decision on Dred Scott.
Lincoln imposed martial law and suspended habeas corpus, ignoring the Supreme Court is pretty minor in comparison.
Well the only thing stopping a president from doing something is the will of the civil service to do it and the will of Congress to impeach them. Trump proved that. Why are we still playing gentlemen's rules?
Trump is hardly notable for just doing things. Monroe told Europe to fuck off in the Americas or else with zero approval or power to enforce it. Jackson proved that by forcibly removing Indians from their lands. Lincoln did lots of questionable things during the Civil War. FDR basically joined WWII without congressional approval. Reagan managed to have people commit treason and have congress grant them immunity. Bush created gtmo as a prison camp. Obama proved it with the gulf drilling moratorium.
Honestly?
He has been fine, on the balance.
I don’t like that he’s gone around Congress to sell weapons to Israel. The Palestine genocide is horrible, and it’s disgusting that he’s not doing everything he can to put a stop to it.
Side note: I know. The U.S. is morally contorting itself to replenish Israel’s weapons stocks because the U.S. needs Israel to be a regional bully to keep Iran and its proxies/the major oil suppliers in check while the U.S. and its European allies decarbonize their economies to a point where U.S. oil can supply them without causing domestic oil prices to spike. The U.S. doesn’t want Russia supplying them, so supporting a genocidal regime is the only palatable option - and Israel knows this, so they’re forcing the U.S. to be complicit.
But Biden leads the state dept, no? Why are their diplomats blocking the U.N. from stepping in as a peacekeeping force? He has other options than to be a pawn.
Anyway.
My real problem is the Democratic Party. Polling shows that the average voter supports way more liberal policies than political parties do. But politicians tend to vote with economic elites, rather than the average person. And in this cherry-picked example, you can see voter turnout massively increased when people think their values are being represented (2018: Marijuana legalization, 2022: Abortion Rights.)
Democrats had a majority in 2021/2022. They had the trifecta. They controlled the legislative and the executive.
They could have strengthened the VRA. They could have fixed campaign finance. They could have expanded the Supreme Court. They could have tried to do something about gerrymandering. (I know, states rights. Blech.) They could have rebalanced the House of Representatives. They could have made the temporary tax cuts for low earners under TCJA permanent, and’s made the permanent tax cuts for high earners temporary. They could have codified abortion rights. They could have amended the ACA to make it better. They could have forgiven student loans before it became a political mess.
Nah. They whined about Manchin and Sinema – candidates their national and local parties supported. Said that’s why they couldn’t get anything meaningful done. Then they lost the house and now it’s just clown shoes all over again.
It’s not all the Democrats fault. Under the current system, it’s significantly easier to court a few monied interests – corporations that can chuck unlimited donations, or wealthy patrons that can spin up a PAC and launder their personal funds to you. It is easier. More money means they can devote more effort to court voters, spin narratives of good vs evil and how this election is the most important one. ‘It may be the last if we don’t vote blue no matter who!’
They didn’t fully create this system, but they are benefiting from it. They cater to the wealthy, make excuses to the voters for why they don’t do anything, and try just hard enough that they don’t lose elections. It’s why they chase the thin margins in “the middle” rather than disaffected liberal voters. So they can preserve a decaying status quo, rather than change it.
Biden is the most prominent Democrat right now. All things being equal, he owns the Democratic Party’s failure to lead. And that includes their lack of action in 2021/2022 His successes are marred by the party’s failures. A referendum on him is as much a referendum on the Democratic Party as it is anything else. At least in my opinion.
I assume most others, regardless of whether or not they blame Biden or the party, feel the same. It might be a bit hasty to assume civic illiteracy if someone doesn’t take the time to name the individual sources of their frustration.
Same with Marijauna, one of the first things he did was call for rescheduling by the DEA who have been too busy masturbating in corners. He did, however, pardon a ton of people over weed offences.
Drug schedules are set by the FDA. The FDA is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department of Health and Human Services is part of the executive branch of the US government. The executive branch is headed by Biden. Short of just waving his hand and magicking the drug classification away, there is still a lot he could do to make it legal.
If you cant hold him accountable for not getting minimum wage increase because he can't do it unilaterally why give him credit for things he cant do unilaterally, like the infrastructure bill? Clearly he didn't do that unilaterally either so why should he get credit? You can't have it both ways.
The President can't reschedule marijuana?
edit:
The Congressional Research Service seems to think he could:
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10655
It's not enabling genocide, so he can make up procedural nonsense to avoid doing it.
It's astonishing to me the supposed number of "informed" people with their moral purity on Lemmy don't know basic US civics. But hey trendy nicknames worked for the low intelligence maga voters no reason it doesn't work on them. Maybe they'll realize it when Trump takes power again.
Proceedings to add, delete, or change the schedule of a drug or other substance may be initiated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), or by petition from any interested party, including:
The manufacturer of a drug
A medical society or association
A pharmacy association
A public interest group concerned with drug abuse
A state or local government agency
An individual citizen
Not quite unilateral, but seems like he could lean a bit on Becerra and get the re/de-scheduling started. Congress handed that authority to the executive branch years ago.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahsinclair/2024/01/18/dea-considers-rescheduling-cannabis-what-this-means-for-us-and-global-reform/?sh=1ee5279b743f
That is happening, maybe slower than any of us want ( and honestly probably time a bit to help in the election), but the rescheduling process had begun.
Yes, they've said they're looking into it like 3 times now.
The Railroad Union was all him. He can raise the minimum wage of federal workers, contractors, and sub contractors. He could have ended the Remain in Mexico program. He could have set the DOJ to monopoly breaking. He could have stopped supplying Israel. He could direct HUD to begin buying housing for direct rental programs...
The list goes on.
Can’t he just sign executive action after executive action and ignore the court like Jackson did?
Don't forget railroad buster Biden and Israel apologist Biden.
Still better than "million American deaths due to incompetence and pushing psuedo-science" trump though, don't get me wrong.
The executive can't make laws. Only congress can do that. And right now that means for those things to happen, Democrats have to control the House and 60+% of the Senate.
Or they have to be willing to use a simple majority to get rid of the filibuster.
All those things have to be done through Congress. If he had the majority to do it and didn't do it, that would be a good reason to hold it against him.
If we want Congress to act we need to make sure he has the House and the Senate, and best to do it is to vote in upcoming election and make your friends and family to do the same
We had a majority in congress. But that majority was Democrats, so they found the no votes to maintain the status quo.
They didn't really, they had a majority in the House, and not in the Senate, in 2022 things reversed.
They had a majority in both chambers.
I get that no Democratic majority ever acts like one so it's hard to tell.
None of those things are the responsibility of the President.
I was really really really hoping Gerrymandering would be a key issue for his administration.
He set Harris on that issue early on, which is basically code for "it's not a priority, will probably fail, and I don't want to be associated with failure". Which was kind of self fulfilling, because the VP just doesn't have the stature to strongarm anyone into a reform.
I don't "like" him at all, but I can acknowledge that he's done a great job.
Then vote Democrat across the board. He needs a majority in both the House and Senate for some of those, and a super majority to go against the Supreme Court afaik.
Voting matters. If you want results, Biden needs the numbers.