Also nobody else who is currently sitting on the Supreme Court who is directly and personally responsible for these particular loans directly not having been forgiven, with actions more recent than 40 years ago, that we might want to bring up also, while we’re calling balls and strikes.
For the record, I already acknowledged what he did as president in a response to another reply. Biden was quite a bit better as president than I thought he would be (for good historical reasons) and I give him full credit for that.
Joe Biden forgave half a trillion dollars worth of student loan debt, the Supreme Court told him he couldn’t, and he still managed to get a couple of hundred billion forgiven.
All this stuff Trump is now undoing is stuff that Biden did. All these people having their wages garnished, are suddenly having problems because of Biden’s people losing the election.
I don’t know what or when you’re talking about here although I assume it is roughly accurate. Biden did all kinds of fucked up stuff from supporting segregation to supporting Clinton’s neoliberalism to the Iraq War and all of it, sure. Israel too, even up to the present day. If you want to tell me we need to get rid of every one of those 1990s Democrats I will 100% agree with you because they are fucking everything up. Biden somehow turned himself into not one of them (except on Israel) even though he was the same age.
I think people are still attacking Biden just out of habit at this point, because what’s done is done. But if his party had won, this particular instance of bullshit (along with an incredible amount more) would not be happening. That’s what is most relevant here. If you want to look at a broader scale, then let’s say that if not for Reagan and for a generation of young people too cool to vote for Democrats because they thought it would help end the Vietnam War if they stopped voting, maybe we’d still be able to support a family on a single income and go to the doctor when we needed to.
Joe Biden forgave half a trillion dollars worth of student loan debt
President Joe Biden did. Senator Joe Biden was responsible from preventing that debt from being forgiven through bankruptcy. It’s absolutely true that Biden doesn’t get enough credit for his progress as President. It’s also true that certain supporters don’t want him held to account for what he did as a Senator.
All this stuff Trump is now undoing is stuff that Biden did.
Biden was a shitty Senator and a much better President. Trump is a demon from the pits of hell surrounded by much smarter demons than himself and committed to destroying everything good and beautiful in the world.
I think people are still attacking Biden just out of habit at this point.
I’m not attacking anyone, just calling balls and strikes. The rise of fascism today is a direct result of the neoliberalism of yesterday, and the reign of fascism will last until the Democratic party turns into something capable of defeating it. That, and a desire for truth to matter, are what motivates me to speak honestly about Democrats.
Yeah, I generally agree with all of this. It’s a little confusing to me because:
Biden was a shitty Senator and a much better President.
the reign of fascism will last until the Democratic party turns into something capable of defeating it
Is a weird juxtaposition. If someone in the Democratic party did turn himself on a personal level into something capable of going good things, why would you want to emphasize how shit he was 30 years ago? I mean, it is true, but also, these were some of the things that a lot of people used to attack him and pretend he wasn’t good now and help lay the electoral groundwork for the horrors we’ve got going on now.
I feel like if you’re motivated to speak honestly, but you’re only speaking about one side of the equation and the one that was less relevant and in fact actively misleading in the election, that’s dishonest. Maybe not. Maybe I am just sensitive about it because of the quantity and volume and variety of dishonest stuff that was levied at him. But that’s where I am coming from in it, at least.
If someone in the Democratic party did turn himself on a personal level into something capable of going good things, why would you want to emphasize how shit he was 30 years ago?
Much better than shit is still a far cry from being ready to deal with a rising fascist movement. I knew it would be a disaster the moment Biden won the 2020 primary. Still, he did surprise me in a whole lot of positive ways, and credit where credit is due.
Speaking only of winning elections and nothing else, the problem the Democrats have electorally is that there is no way to package and sell their neoliberalism. To a right minded policy wonk, Democrats are always the right choice, but most voters aren’t policy wonks.
Getting elected requires a strong narrative. The story Democrats offer is “history is over and it’s all minor improvements from here”. That works OK when things are good, but when people are struggling it comes across very differently. Hillary’s “America is already great!” is a perfect example, but she has a real nack for being out of touch. The only time Democrats have a narrative is when Republicans do something awful, which requires Republicans to be in power. This, we keep flipping parties.
Trump’s narrative in 2024 looked a whole lot more like the classic hero’s journey than I have seen in 50 years. Attacked relentlessly from all sides with his demise predicted constantly, he somehow kept moving forward. Meanwhile, I don’t know what the hell to make of Kamala’s story.
The usual split is a lot less dramatic but, Republicans always have a narrative with heroes and villains, and Democrats rarely do. People want to know why productivity goes up and up and life just keeps getting harder. The Republicans offer an answer, it’s the immigrants, or it’s trans people in the showers with your kid, or it’s DEI treating you unfairly. Democrats have a much better and truer answer, but they won’t articulate it because the oligarchs who fund them won’t like it. So, the answer from Democrats is a whimper.
The only time Democrats have a narrative is when Republicans do something awful, which requires Republicans to be in power.
Biden’s narrative was that we need to have a big raise in corporate taxes, spend almost a trillion dollars finally doing something about climate change, bring domestic manufacturing back to the US and give people working-class jobs again. I sort of suspect that’s why the corporate press was so silent about the good things he did, and so aggressive and loud about the various attacks against him (like that inflation was all his fault, things like that that would resonate with the voters). It’s practically a built-in reflex to them at this point: They know the Republican will set the economy on fire, but they’ll be fine even if some other people won’t be, so by simply setting a line that if anyone crosses them, they will tank that person’s chances even if they’re otherwise doing some good things (and even if doing those things is really necessary for the US to keep functioning) (and even if the alternative is active widespread destruction), they keep teaching the lessons that people in power need to have taught to them. So they can keep control.
You’re not wrong in most of your analysis, I don’t think. But the Democrats didn’t get this way overnight or by accident. It happened on purpose, through natural selection and legalized bribery and threat. And, also, any time they do do something good, someone like you comes along and makes sure to shit all over it and “call balls and strikes” and try to “put it in context” and try to cancel it back out again.
There’s a whole other way to respond to blaming Reagan which is “yeah sure but we have a lot of momentum in people who are sick to death of the same bullshit, Bernie and AOC are drawing record crowds and there’s not even any kind of election going on that would motivate it, we actually probably have a chance at building a framework to do something about this whole broken system. Certainly Trump trying to gut the country for its fixtures and send everyone to ultra-prison will galvanize some opposition, let’s do something with it.”
But no. Instead it’s just this drumbeat of “whoa whoa whoa if you’re talking about Reagan let’s shit on Biden instead” “Democrats are shit” “let’s get discouraged” “it’s all his fault” “no wonder people aren’t excited” “neoliberalism” “doesn’t have a story” “get sad” “it’s all his fault” “remember when he betrayed you?” “most voters aren’t policy wonks” in big discouraging paragraphs.
There’s always something you can dig up, to do it with. And in the end, isn’t demotivating any kind of action or hope or credit for good things, the most important thing?
Biden’s narrative was that we need to have a big raise in corporate taxes, spend almost a trillion dollars finally doing something about climate change, bring domestic manufacturing back to the US and give people working-class jobs again.
That was his sales pitch, and one that I am totally behind, but those are promises, not a narrative. His “big raise” proposal wouldn’t even return rates to where they were before Trump slashed them. Policy promises sell to policy wonks, but most policy wonks are tired of two steps back, one step forward.
When I say narrative, think of a movie plot. Narratives require a hero and a villain. Had Biden framed multinational corporations as the villain, and set himself up as the hero that would take them on, then he would have had a narrative, but that’s not in his nature. (Which is part of what qualified him for establishment and corporate media backing in the 2020 primary.) Biden would have been a perfectly good Democrat back in the 90s when people were a lot more optimistic about their futures, but that was no longer sufficient. In the 2020 general the Republicans handed him a monster to slay in Trump’s complete failure to address the epidemic, but that story was old by the 2024 sequel.
like that inflation was all his fault
Yeah, that was unfortunate and complete bullshit. Whatever philosophical differences I have with Biden, we was certainly a competent manager of the economy. The inflation wasn’t even all that bad, only lasted a couple months, and America kept it lower than anyplace else in the western world. However, a more aggressive and energetic candidate, maybe even a younger Biden, could have gotten that message out. I don’t want to dwell on that too much though, because that’s too specific to the 2024 election. Anyways, there will always be something that goes wrong and hurts an incumbent.
But the Democrats didn’t get this way overnight or by accident. It happened on purpose, through natural selection and legalized bribery and threat.
Yes, a lot of it was externally driven, but it was also a strategy choice going back to right after Republicans embraced the southern strategy. A great easy read on the topic is “Listen Liberal” by Thomas Frank, author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”. Democrats made a conscious decision to abandon working class Americans in favor of urban professionals. It wasn’t a slow devolution, it was a pivot.
And, also, any time they do do something good, someone like you comes along and makes sure to shit all over it and “call balls and strikes” and try to “put it in context” and try to cancel it back out again.
I guarantee you that Republican voters aren’t listening to someone like me. Also, my language before a general election is quite a bit different than after. This is the time for Democrats to learn and refocus to doing better next time. I don’t compromise my principals before an election, but I spend a lot more time pointing out that whatever flaws the Democrats have, they are miles better than any Republican.
Despite your assumptions, I do a lot of posts defending Biden when he’s being treated unfairly. I also frequently comment about Trump and the Republicans, but not as much because the internet is absolutely flooded with comments like you describe. It just feels redundant to keep pointing out how shitty Trump is. For a while I was pointing out that he was going to be worse than many people expected, but I think the hive mind is pretty much caught up on that now. I also post differently on Lemmy than on other social media. Lemmy is mostly a left leaning space, so there is not as much reason to attack Trump here. On other platforms I spend a whole lot more time debunking Republican lies than anything else.
That was his sales pitch, and one that I am totally behind, but those are promises, not a narrative.
No, that was reality. That’s what happened. The promises were twice as big, but the reality was still enormous.
“Biden caused inflation to go up” was a narrative, and it sold like Nintendo Switch. “Biden caused wages to go up” is not an equally compelling narrative… why? That is what happened. I mean, I know why that one wasn’t a narrative, but the reason has absolutely nothing to do with either reality or the inherent nature of the narrative.
His “big raise” proposal wouldn’t even return rates to where they were before Trump slashed them.
Most working people made way more even after adjusting for inflation after Biden was done than before.
Democrats made a conscious decision to abandon working class Americans in favor of urban professionals. It wasn’t a slow devolution, it was a pivot.
True that. It is the source of most of their troubles today, not only because of the history and people’s pattern recognition, but because they’re still doing it. And yet, one singular Democrat broke with that, and here you are shitting on him.
No, that was reality. That’s what happened. The promises were twice as big, but the reality was still enormous.
Find me where Biden promised to raise the corporate tax rate back to where it was before Trump (35%) or higher and I’ll eat my words. I’m a little confused because the rate is still sitting where Trump put it (21%) and I thought we were talking about Biden’s promises for his 2024 administration. What do you mean by “happened”?
“Biden caused inflation to go up” was a narrative
Well yeah, but it was a narrative for Trump, not Biden. Also, the narratives I’m talking about are the ones going forward. I think you and I can be in perfect agreement that Biden did a lot that he could point to that should have made him more electable. I’m just saying that isn’t how most voters make their decisions. It absolutely should be, and if voters were that thoughtful then Democrats could probably win every election by pointing out that they are better than Republicans, even if it were only marginally. Campaigns need a dragon and a hero they believe can slay it. Corporate tax rates that are too low are never going to get the traction that “tranies” trying to shower with your kids will. The (perhaps theatrical) language of “taking on corporate criminals” might seem irrelevant, but it’s not.
Most working people made way more even after adjusting for inflation after Biden was done than before.
I really think we are failing to connect here. I absolutely agree that Biden was better than Trump in a myriad of ways. My issue of choice would be the NLRB and the great work they did in making it so much easier to start a union, and so much harder for corporations to union-bust. The problem isn’t what Biden did. I was always going to want him to go further than he did, but he far exceeded my predictions and in the world I want to live in he would have beaten Trump easily. (It’s a little late in the conversation to mention this, but I’m considering the Harris campaign to be a continuation of the Biden campaign to avoid getting lost in the weeds.)
one singular Democrat broke with that, and here you are shitting on him.
I disagree that this is what I’m doing. Also, as much of a positive surprise his presidency was, his rhetoric did not break with that. Even in policy, the flow of money from the bottom to the top was barely slowed.
That would be relevant if Biden were currently president, and it would have been somewhat less relevant had Biden even been the Democratic nominee for president in 2024.
But Biden wasn’t even on the ballot. It’s almost completely irrelevant.
When people talk like this, it just reminds me of how they talked about Hillary for Trump’s entire first term.
It just gives off the air of bad faith. We’re talking about things that are happening right now and are relevant to millions of people. Former politicians can’t be anything except a diversion.
I mean it is fine if someone wants to input some yelling about our distressing “left” party in power in the hopes that it will make it better. What makes it irritating to me is the dishonesty, with made-up attacks that have resonance and emotional weight but no real accuracy to them, and the total disconnection with any type of strategy that could help anything.
“Uncommitted” movement? Fine. Let’s put pressure on the Democrats to be better, in a way that’s organized and has some passable chance of saving some lives. Great stuff.
“Genocide Joe” and “I’m sitting out this election and you should too”? Great, you made things worse for the Palestinians. Joe Biden isn’t running, and Kamala’s opponent just wants to kill them all.
Jon Stewart interviewing AOC about all the horror and corruption in the Democratic party? Great stuff. She’s got some good insight and they both clearly care and are alarmed about the bullshit and trying to do something about it. Great stuff.
“Yeah but while we’re talking about Reagan, isn’t it really Senator Biden’s fault and mostly his along that things are bad in America right now?”
It’s just a bunch of shit. Always has been. And they never change their mind: The “Democrats are shit” theory is all they want to talk about, and if you discuss them into a corner, they’ll just fall back to some kind of generalized nihilism or change to some other assertion about bad things the Democrats did.
There is a theory that it’s proper to block these people, to reduce the blood pressure of your Lemmy experience, but in my opinion it is better to call them out on it when they start up with it.
No you don’t. This place is filled with articles and tens of thousands of comments criticizing the shit that Republicans are doing and Democrats are helping them achieve a lot of their goals, so why shouldn’t we throw these people under the bus too? Quit treating politics like a team sport and wake up to the fact that they’re working together to fuck us all over.
It’s taken for granted that “Republicans are bad” is the default here. So what I only ever see here are leftists complaining about how bad the Democrats are.
My point was that the relevance of Reagan and Biden go hand in hand. If one is relevant then they both are. We either examine the past and learn from it, or we continue to repeat the mistakes.
There is one type of person who looks at a fucked up situation in the world, and things “Who can I talk about who is responsible?” They often pick the biggest, or most recent or relevant target.
There’s another type of person who looks at a fucked up situation in the world, and thinks “Can I connect this to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris in some way?”
It really looks a lot to me here like you are doing the second of those things. You’re allowed to, sure, just like we’re allowed to tell you that it’s a weird thing to do.
If you need more proof, they said Biden was most responsible, but he wasn’t. He didn’t propose the bill. He only tried to improve the bill, knowing that it would pass no matter what he did, and the things he changed did not do what they were talking about. That’s assuming they’re talking about the 2005 bill.
I have no particular personal animosity towards Biden or Harris, except perhaps their handling of the 2024 campaign - and I put that way more on Biden than Harris. I do, however, think that Democrats need to accept that they lost to Trump twice now and start grappling with the question of how they failed so spectacularly. It’s easy to blame MAGA and voter apathy, but how does that lead to better outcomes in the future? What led to the sociological problems that gave rise to the far right in the first place? How did a populace that voted in the first black president suddenly become so racist and bigoted again? Maybe we can blame Republican disinformation, but I don’t see that going away any time soon. The question we have to ask is, what did Democrats do, or not do, that contributed or made things easier for the Republicans? That’s the important question, because it’s the one thing Democrats can actually do something about.
According to logicbomb, you’re misrepresenting Biden’s involvement with the student loan bill you’re talking about. Was the 2005 bill the one you were talking about? What was in it that you didn’t like and how was Biden responsible for that part of it?
Yes, it was the 2005 bill, and Biden was one of the few Democratic Senators to support and ultimately vote for the bill. He also was also one of the most powerful members of the Senate, not a follower being pulled along.
“Biden was one of the most powerful people who could have said no, who could have changed this. Instead he used his leadership role to limit the ability of other Democrats who had concerns and who wanted the bill softened,” said Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill specializing in bankruptcy.
Biden did make claims that it was a Republican bill that he tried to soften, but nothing in the story of the bill’s authorship or passage supported that. In fact, he was a champion of it’s passage from the start, and had been so twice before when it had been previously proposed. He also helped write a failed bill way back in 1978 that specifically disallowed bankruptcy for student loans.
Biden also received more campaign donations from the credit industry than any other Senator at the time, and his son Hunter was employed as a $100k/year “consultant” at MBNA.
Dude… I think you are literally just making this up (or repeating it from someone who made it up.)
I looked into the 2005 bankruptcy bill which they are arguing about in this clip. I couldn’t even find anything in it about student loans. I searched the text, and followed the links to read the article Mother Jones wrote about the issue. Nothing about student loans. The Wikipedia page does have a single sentence claiming that it impacted student loan formulas in some way, with a “citation needed.” Where in the text does it do that?
I have found some pages (one, two) that claim that the 2005 bankruptcy reform included making private student loan debt non-dischargeable. So maybe there is something to this argument? Like I said, I couldn’t find it in the actual text.
As far as I can tell, deciding whether student loans are dischargeable mostly roots back to a 1987 court case and has to do with having to prove certain elements in bankruptcy court. I don’t really know. But regardless, this whole bankruptcy bill had a huge impact on a wide variety of stuff, Biden didn’t create it or sponsor it. It does look like he went to bat for it, which was probably bad, but the student loan stuff was a tiny part if it even existed in the bill at all. (Which, maybe it did, I reached my limit for wanting to look into this.) And saying that he was “the Senator” who was most responsible for this thing is just weird, even if he supported it. Presumably, a lot of people supported it, including the authors of the legislation.
Also, micro-focusing on just whether student loan debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy, and saying that is the issue that is competitive with the issue of forgiving loans for the vast majority of people who are paying them who are not bankrupt, is super weird.
Also, you know what Biden is responsible for? In 2022, the DOJ released new guidance indicating that they would not oppose in bankruptcy court anyone who wanted it discharged and could prove that it would be a hardship otherwise.
I have reached a firm conclusion that you are twisting facts around to bad-mouth Biden on this issue.
I couldn’t even find anything in it about student loans.
See “Sec. 220. Nondischargeability of certain educational benefits and loans.” Also, the following is from the Wikipedia entry on BAPCPA.
BAPCPA amended § 523(a)(8) to broaden the types of educational (“student”) loans that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy absent proof of “undue hardship.” The nature of the lender is no longer relevant. Thus, even loans from “for-profit” or “non-governmental” entities are not dischargeable.
Also, you know what Biden is responsible for?
Yes I do, and I spoke to it in another thread. President Biden was a huge improvement over Senator Biden, and I give him full credit for that.
Joe Biden was the Senator most responsible for making those loans undismissible. There is plenty of blame to go around.
And that was the last thing he ever did regarding student loans. 40 years ago. Nothing since. The end. 🙄
Also nobody else who is currently sitting on the Supreme Court who is directly and personally responsible for these particular loans directly not having been forgiven, with actions more recent than 40 years ago, that we might want to bring up also, while we’re calling balls and strikes.
For the record, I already acknowledged what he did as president in a response to another reply. Biden was quite a bit better as president than I thought he would be (for good historical reasons) and I give him full credit for that.
Joe Biden forgave half a trillion dollars worth of student loan debt, the Supreme Court told him he couldn’t, and he still managed to get a couple of hundred billion forgiven.
All this stuff Trump is now undoing is stuff that Biden did. All these people having their wages garnished, are suddenly having problems because of Biden’s people losing the election.
I don’t know what or when you’re talking about here although I assume it is roughly accurate. Biden did all kinds of fucked up stuff from supporting segregation to supporting Clinton’s neoliberalism to the Iraq War and all of it, sure. Israel too, even up to the present day. If you want to tell me we need to get rid of every one of those 1990s Democrats I will 100% agree with you because they are fucking everything up. Biden somehow turned himself into not one of them (except on Israel) even though he was the same age.
I think people are still attacking Biden just out of habit at this point, because what’s done is done. But if his party had won, this particular instance of bullshit (along with an incredible amount more) would not be happening. That’s what is most relevant here. If you want to look at a broader scale, then let’s say that if not for Reagan and for a generation of young people too cool to vote for Democrats because they thought it would help end the Vietnam War if they stopped voting, maybe we’d still be able to support a family on a single income and go to the doctor when we needed to.
President Joe Biden did. Senator Joe Biden was responsible from preventing that debt from being forgiven through bankruptcy. It’s absolutely true that Biden doesn’t get enough credit for his progress as President. It’s also true that certain supporters don’t want him held to account for what he did as a Senator.
Biden was a shitty Senator and a much better President. Trump is a demon from the pits of hell surrounded by much smarter demons than himself and committed to destroying everything good and beautiful in the world.
I’m not attacking anyone, just calling balls and strikes. The rise of fascism today is a direct result of the neoliberalism of yesterday, and the reign of fascism will last until the Democratic party turns into something capable of defeating it. That, and a desire for truth to matter, are what motivates me to speak honestly about Democrats.
Yeah, I generally agree with all of this. It’s a little confusing to me because:
Is a weird juxtaposition. If someone in the Democratic party did turn himself on a personal level into something capable of going good things, why would you want to emphasize how shit he was 30 years ago? I mean, it is true, but also, these were some of the things that a lot of people used to attack him and pretend he wasn’t good now and help lay the electoral groundwork for the horrors we’ve got going on now.
I feel like if you’re motivated to speak honestly, but you’re only speaking about one side of the equation and the one that was less relevant and in fact actively misleading in the election, that’s dishonest. Maybe not. Maybe I am just sensitive about it because of the quantity and volume and variety of dishonest stuff that was levied at him. But that’s where I am coming from in it, at least.
Much better than shit is still a far cry from being ready to deal with a rising fascist movement. I knew it would be a disaster the moment Biden won the 2020 primary. Still, he did surprise me in a whole lot of positive ways, and credit where credit is due.
Speaking only of winning elections and nothing else, the problem the Democrats have electorally is that there is no way to package and sell their neoliberalism. To a right minded policy wonk, Democrats are always the right choice, but most voters aren’t policy wonks.
Getting elected requires a strong narrative. The story Democrats offer is “history is over and it’s all minor improvements from here”. That works OK when things are good, but when people are struggling it comes across very differently. Hillary’s “America is already great!” is a perfect example, but she has a real nack for being out of touch. The only time Democrats have a narrative is when Republicans do something awful, which requires Republicans to be in power. This, we keep flipping parties.
Trump’s narrative in 2024 looked a whole lot more like the classic hero’s journey than I have seen in 50 years. Attacked relentlessly from all sides with his demise predicted constantly, he somehow kept moving forward. Meanwhile, I don’t know what the hell to make of Kamala’s story.
The usual split is a lot less dramatic but, Republicans always have a narrative with heroes and villains, and Democrats rarely do. People want to know why productivity goes up and up and life just keeps getting harder. The Republicans offer an answer, it’s the immigrants, or it’s trans people in the showers with your kid, or it’s DEI treating you unfairly. Democrats have a much better and truer answer, but they won’t articulate it because the oligarchs who fund them won’t like it. So, the answer from Democrats is a whimper.
Biden’s narrative was that we need to have a big raise in corporate taxes, spend almost a trillion dollars finally doing something about climate change, bring domestic manufacturing back to the US and give people working-class jobs again. I sort of suspect that’s why the corporate press was so silent about the good things he did, and so aggressive and loud about the various attacks against him (like that inflation was all his fault, things like that that would resonate with the voters). It’s practically a built-in reflex to them at this point: They know the Republican will set the economy on fire, but they’ll be fine even if some other people won’t be, so by simply setting a line that if anyone crosses them, they will tank that person’s chances even if they’re otherwise doing some good things (and even if doing those things is really necessary for the US to keep functioning) (and even if the alternative is active widespread destruction), they keep teaching the lessons that people in power need to have taught to them. So they can keep control.
You’re not wrong in most of your analysis, I don’t think. But the Democrats didn’t get this way overnight or by accident. It happened on purpose, through natural selection and legalized bribery and threat. And, also, any time they do do something good, someone like you comes along and makes sure to shit all over it and “call balls and strikes” and try to “put it in context” and try to cancel it back out again.
There’s a whole other way to respond to blaming Reagan which is “yeah sure but we have a lot of momentum in people who are sick to death of the same bullshit, Bernie and AOC are drawing record crowds and there’s not even any kind of election going on that would motivate it, we actually probably have a chance at building a framework to do something about this whole broken system. Certainly Trump trying to gut the country for its fixtures and send everyone to ultra-prison will galvanize some opposition, let’s do something with it.”
But no. Instead it’s just this drumbeat of “whoa whoa whoa if you’re talking about Reagan let’s shit on Biden instead” “Democrats are shit” “let’s get discouraged” “it’s all his fault” “no wonder people aren’t excited” “neoliberalism” “doesn’t have a story” “get sad” “it’s all his fault” “remember when he betrayed you?” “most voters aren’t policy wonks” in big discouraging paragraphs.
There’s always something you can dig up, to do it with. And in the end, isn’t demotivating any kind of action or hope or credit for good things, the most important thing?
That was his sales pitch, and one that I am totally behind, but those are promises, not a narrative. His “big raise” proposal wouldn’t even return rates to where they were before Trump slashed them. Policy promises sell to policy wonks, but most policy wonks are tired of two steps back, one step forward.
When I say narrative, think of a movie plot. Narratives require a hero and a villain. Had Biden framed multinational corporations as the villain, and set himself up as the hero that would take them on, then he would have had a narrative, but that’s not in his nature. (Which is part of what qualified him for establishment and corporate media backing in the 2020 primary.) Biden would have been a perfectly good Democrat back in the 90s when people were a lot more optimistic about their futures, but that was no longer sufficient. In the 2020 general the Republicans handed him a monster to slay in Trump’s complete failure to address the epidemic, but that story was old by the 2024 sequel.
Yeah, that was unfortunate and complete bullshit. Whatever philosophical differences I have with Biden, we was certainly a competent manager of the economy. The inflation wasn’t even all that bad, only lasted a couple months, and America kept it lower than anyplace else in the western world. However, a more aggressive and energetic candidate, maybe even a younger Biden, could have gotten that message out. I don’t want to dwell on that too much though, because that’s too specific to the 2024 election. Anyways, there will always be something that goes wrong and hurts an incumbent.
Yes, a lot of it was externally driven, but it was also a strategy choice going back to right after Republicans embraced the southern strategy. A great easy read on the topic is “Listen Liberal” by Thomas Frank, author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”. Democrats made a conscious decision to abandon working class Americans in favor of urban professionals. It wasn’t a slow devolution, it was a pivot.
I guarantee you that Republican voters aren’t listening to someone like me. Also, my language before a general election is quite a bit different than after. This is the time for Democrats to learn and refocus to doing better next time. I don’t compromise my principals before an election, but I spend a lot more time pointing out that whatever flaws the Democrats have, they are miles better than any Republican.
Despite your assumptions, I do a lot of posts defending Biden when he’s being treated unfairly. I also frequently comment about Trump and the Republicans, but not as much because the internet is absolutely flooded with comments like you describe. It just feels redundant to keep pointing out how shitty Trump is. For a while I was pointing out that he was going to be worse than many people expected, but I think the hive mind is pretty much caught up on that now. I also post differently on Lemmy than on other social media. Lemmy is mostly a left leaning space, so there is not as much reason to attack Trump here. On other platforms I spend a whole lot more time debunking Republican lies than anything else.
No, that was reality. That’s what happened. The promises were twice as big, but the reality was still enormous.
“Biden caused inflation to go up” was a narrative, and it sold like Nintendo Switch. “Biden caused wages to go up” is not an equally compelling narrative… why? That is what happened. I mean, I know why that one wasn’t a narrative, but the reason has absolutely nothing to do with either reality or the inherent nature of the narrative.
Most working people made way more even after adjusting for inflation after Biden was done than before.
True that. It is the source of most of their troubles today, not only because of the history and people’s pattern recognition, but because they’re still doing it. And yet, one singular Democrat broke with that, and here you are shitting on him.
Why?
Find me where Biden promised to raise the corporate tax rate back to where it was before Trump (35%) or higher and I’ll eat my words. I’m a little confused because the rate is still sitting where Trump put it (21%) and I thought we were talking about Biden’s promises for his 2024 administration. What do you mean by “happened”?
Well yeah, but it was a narrative for Trump, not Biden. Also, the narratives I’m talking about are the ones going forward. I think you and I can be in perfect agreement that Biden did a lot that he could point to that should have made him more electable. I’m just saying that isn’t how most voters make their decisions. It absolutely should be, and if voters were that thoughtful then Democrats could probably win every election by pointing out that they are better than Republicans, even if it were only marginally. Campaigns need a dragon and a hero they believe can slay it. Corporate tax rates that are too low are never going to get the traction that “tranies” trying to shower with your kids will. The (perhaps theatrical) language of “taking on corporate criminals” might seem irrelevant, but it’s not.
I really think we are failing to connect here. I absolutely agree that Biden was better than Trump in a myriad of ways. My issue of choice would be the NLRB and the great work they did in making it so much easier to start a union, and so much harder for corporations to union-bust. The problem isn’t what Biden did. I was always going to want him to go further than he did, but he far exceeded my predictions and in the world I want to live in he would have beaten Trump easily. (It’s a little late in the conversation to mention this, but I’m considering the Harris campaign to be a continuation of the Biden campaign to avoid getting lost in the weeds.)
I disagree that this is what I’m doing. Also, as much of a positive surprise his presidency was, his rhetoric did not break with that. Even in policy, the flow of money from the bottom to the top was barely slowed.
That would be relevant if Biden were currently president, and it would have been somewhat less relevant had Biden even been the Democratic nominee for president in 2024.
But Biden wasn’t even on the ballot. It’s almost completely irrelevant.
When people talk like this, it just reminds me of how they talked about Hillary for Trump’s entire first term.
It just gives off the air of bad faith. We’re talking about things that are happening right now and are relevant to millions of people. Former politicians can’t be anything except a diversion.
They are a known both sideser
God forbid the Democrats ever get criticized for anything. 🙄
I see more criticism of Democrats than Republicans on this website.
Just my personal experience.
I mean it is fine if someone wants to input some yelling about our distressing “left” party in power in the hopes that it will make it better. What makes it irritating to me is the dishonesty, with made-up attacks that have resonance and emotional weight but no real accuracy to them, and the total disconnection with any type of strategy that could help anything.
“Uncommitted” movement? Fine. Let’s put pressure on the Democrats to be better, in a way that’s organized and has some passable chance of saving some lives. Great stuff.
“Genocide Joe” and “I’m sitting out this election and you should too”? Great, you made things worse for the Palestinians. Joe Biden isn’t running, and Kamala’s opponent just wants to kill them all.
Jon Stewart interviewing AOC about all the horror and corruption in the Democratic party? Great stuff. She’s got some good insight and they both clearly care and are alarmed about the bullshit and trying to do something about it. Great stuff.
“Yeah but while we’re talking about Reagan, isn’t it really Senator Biden’s fault and mostly his along that things are bad in America right now?”
It’s just a bunch of shit. Always has been. And they never change their mind: The “Democrats are shit” theory is all they want to talk about, and if you discuss them into a corner, they’ll just fall back to some kind of generalized nihilism or change to some other assertion about bad things the Democrats did.
There is a theory that it’s proper to block these people, to reduce the blood pressure of your Lemmy experience, but in my opinion it is better to call them out on it when they start up with it.
No you don’t. This place is filled with articles and tens of thousands of comments criticizing the shit that Republicans are doing and Democrats are helping them achieve a lot of their goals, so why shouldn’t we throw these people under the bus too? Quit treating politics like a team sport and wake up to the fact that they’re working together to fuck us all over.
It’s taken for granted that “Republicans are bad” is the default here. So what I only ever see here are leftists complaining about how bad the Democrats are.
LOL, is Reagan currently President? Read what I replied to before telling me if my comment is relevant.
“Yeah that makes sense, he was the 2nd worst Republican.”
“Why are you bringing up someone who’s no longer president? Why do you hate the guy who didn’t try hard enough to fix his mistakes?”
Weird how calling someone out from a while for their actions works, but not calling someone out for their actions.
My point was that the relevance of Reagan and Biden go hand in hand. If one is relevant then they both are. We either examine the past and learn from it, or we continue to repeat the mistakes.
There is one type of person who looks at a fucked up situation in the world, and things “Who can I talk about who is responsible?” They often pick the biggest, or most recent or relevant target.
There’s another type of person who looks at a fucked up situation in the world, and thinks “Can I connect this to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris in some way?”
It really looks a lot to me here like you are doing the second of those things. You’re allowed to, sure, just like we’re allowed to tell you that it’s a weird thing to do.
If you need more proof, they said Biden was most responsible, but he wasn’t. He didn’t propose the bill. He only tried to improve the bill, knowing that it would pass no matter what he did, and the things he changed did not do what they were talking about. That’s assuming they’re talking about the 2005 bill.
This does not surprise me in the slightest to hear.
Have I said anything that’s not true?
I have no particular personal animosity towards Biden or Harris, except perhaps their handling of the 2024 campaign - and I put that way more on Biden than Harris. I do, however, think that Democrats need to accept that they lost to Trump twice now and start grappling with the question of how they failed so spectacularly. It’s easy to blame MAGA and voter apathy, but how does that lead to better outcomes in the future? What led to the sociological problems that gave rise to the far right in the first place? How did a populace that voted in the first black president suddenly become so racist and bigoted again? Maybe we can blame Republican disinformation, but I don’t see that going away any time soon. The question we have to ask is, what did Democrats do, or not do, that contributed or made things easier for the Republicans? That’s the important question, because it’s the one thing Democrats can actually do something about.
According to logicbomb, you’re misrepresenting Biden’s involvement with the student loan bill you’re talking about. Was the 2005 bill the one you were talking about? What was in it that you didn’t like and how was Biden responsible for that part of it?
Yes, it was the 2005 bill, and Biden was one of the few Democratic Senators to support and ultimately vote for the bill. He also was also one of the most powerful members of the Senate, not a follower being pulled along.
Biden did make claims that it was a Republican bill that he tried to soften, but nothing in the story of the bill’s authorship or passage supported that. In fact, he was a champion of it’s passage from the start, and had been so twice before when it had been previously proposed. He also helped write a failed bill way back in 1978 that specifically disallowed bankruptcy for student loans.
Biden and Warren debating 2005 bill
Biden also received more campaign donations from the credit industry than any other Senator at the time, and his son Hunter was employed as a $100k/year “consultant” at MBNA.
Dude… I think you are literally just making this up (or repeating it from someone who made it up.)
I looked into the 2005 bankruptcy bill which they are arguing about in this clip. I couldn’t even find anything in it about student loans. I searched the text, and followed the links to read the article Mother Jones wrote about the issue. Nothing about student loans. The Wikipedia page does have a single sentence claiming that it impacted student loan formulas in some way, with a “citation needed.” Where in the text does it do that?
I have found some pages (one, two) that claim that the 2005 bankruptcy reform included making private student loan debt non-dischargeable. So maybe there is something to this argument? Like I said, I couldn’t find it in the actual text.
As far as I can tell, deciding whether student loans are dischargeable mostly roots back to a 1987 court case and has to do with having to prove certain elements in bankruptcy court. I don’t really know. But regardless, this whole bankruptcy bill had a huge impact on a wide variety of stuff, Biden didn’t create it or sponsor it. It does look like he went to bat for it, which was probably bad, but the student loan stuff was a tiny part if it even existed in the bill at all. (Which, maybe it did, I reached my limit for wanting to look into this.) And saying that he was “the Senator” who was most responsible for this thing is just weird, even if he supported it. Presumably, a lot of people supported it, including the authors of the legislation.
Also, micro-focusing on just whether student loan debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy, and saying that is the issue that is competitive with the issue of forgiving loans for the vast majority of people who are paying them who are not bankrupt, is super weird.
Also, you know what Biden is responsible for? In 2022, the DOJ released new guidance indicating that they would not oppose in bankruptcy court anyone who wanted it discharged and could prove that it would be a hardship otherwise.
I have reached a firm conclusion that you are twisting facts around to bad-mouth Biden on this issue.
See “Sec. 220. Nondischargeability of certain educational benefits and loans.” Also, the following is from the Wikipedia entry on BAPCPA.
Yes I do, and I spoke to it in another thread. President Biden was a huge improvement over Senator Biden, and I give him full credit for that.