EPTSo, how is Biden to blame?
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Velr
Switzerland10671 Posts
So, how is Biden to blame? | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44158 Posts
If we want to focus just on the past few years: I think BlackJack's sourced examples show that Biden deserves part of the blame, and we also all know that Trump coerced Congressional Republicans to let their own recent border bill die, meaning that Trump and Congressional Republicans also deserve part of the blame. I don't think it's possible to quantify how much each person is to blame, and there's certainly enough to go around. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24974 Posts
On March 19 2024 18:48 Liquid`Drone wrote: I think if there are scheduled debates happening in September and October and we're in late August and Trump goes 'I'm looking forward to these debates because the American people deserve to know where I and Biden stand on different issues and how mentally acute we are' and Biden goes 'I'm not going do debate this clown because he's a liar and it's pointless' then that's not a good look for Biden. Biden needs to participate in the debate because he needs to show that he's capable of being coherent in a debate setting. People who voted for him 4 years ago generally aren't going to sit out this one because they're unhappy about his policies or political choices (maybe some of the more left-leaning crowd over Israel but I question how many these really are). However, I have the impression that a lot of people - partially because of social media (and even entirely fake videos that circulate) - but also because of stuff like him mentioning Mitterand and Helmut Kohl, question whether they want to vote for him again because there's an impression that he's senile/turning senile. These are people that can easily be convinced that he's not that far gone, as long as he's able to give a good performance in a debate setting. Is there anyone in here even vaguely on the fence either way? I gather we’re hardly a fully representative sample mind. I’m sure this person does exist but it feels far more to me an election where turnout of folks firmly in red/blue camps is going to be the big factor, rather than unconvinced being swung either way. If Biden was running against a conventional polished Republican politician I can absolutely see a strong debate from Biden being a box he’d need to tick. As he’s running against Trump this feels much less pertinent as presumably if non-partisans do have this worry about Biden, they’ll likely have the same issues (perhaps slightly different) about Trump. Senility and general incompetence have different root causes but functionally they’re pretty similar. It is something that’s difficult to get an actual reflective gauge on. Be it hanging around in areas that largely have certain leanings, or social media threads tending to attract impassioned partisans. What the wavering centre actually looks like and values is something I find intensely difficult to put a finger on, because I honestly have very, very few interactions with them. To the degree if we were going off my personal anecdotal experience alone I’d say they basically don’t exist. Which is evidently not a great benchmark to go off. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28632 Posts
On March 19 2024 20:19 WombaT wrote: Is there anyone in here even vaguely on the fence either way? I gather we’re hardly a fully representative sample mind. I’m sure this person does exist but it feels far more to me an election where turnout of folks firmly in red/blue camps is going to be the big factor, rather than unconvinced being swung either way. If Biden was running against a conventional polished Republican politician I can absolutely see a strong debate from Biden being a box he’d need to tick. As he’s running against Trump this feels much less pertinent as presumably if non-partisans do have this worry about Biden, they’ll likely have the same issues (perhaps slightly different) about Trump. Senility and general incompetence have different root causes but functionally they’re pretty similar. It is something that’s difficult to get an actual reflective gauge on. Be it hanging around in areas that largely have certain leanings, or social media threads tending to attract impassioned partisans. What the wavering centre actually looks like and values is something I find intensely difficult to put a finger on, because I honestly have very, very few interactions with them. To the degree if we were going off my personal anecdotal experience alone I’d say they basically don’t exist. Which is evidently not a great benchmark to go off. Mostly just sharing my impression now - I don't have data, but I don't think there are that many 'I'll either vote Trump or Biden'-voters out there. Some of the ones that went for Haley in the primary can probably end up voting Biden, but I don't imagine this to be a particularly high number. A bigger number is probably the reluctant democrat, ones that are either staying home or voting Biden, but who won't touch trump either way. I don't think you really find representatives from either group here, though. We might have some 'I gave Trump a chance in 2016 but went biden in 2020'-voters, but if people went for Trump in 2020 I don't expect them to change in 2024, even with Jan 6 - although I imagine there might be republican-leaning voters who stay home or go libertarian instead. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24974 Posts
On March 19 2024 21:23 Liquid`Drone wrote: Mostly just sharing my impression now - I don't have data, but I don't think there are that many 'I'll either vote Trump or Biden'-voters out there. Some of the ones that went for Haley in the primary can probably end up voting Biden, but I don't imagine this to be a particularly high number. A bigger number is probably the reluctant democrat, ones that are either staying home or voting Biden, but who won't touch trump either way. I don't think you really find representatives from either group here, though. We might have some 'I gave Trump a chance in 2016 but went biden in 2020'-voters, but if people went for Trump in 2020 I don't expect them to change in 2024, even with Jan 6 - although I imagine there might be republican-leaning voters who stay home or go libertarian instead. Aye, most of that tracks and aligns with my intuition. I can see and have had the discussion with folks who went Trump 2016 thinking he was a potentially refreshing disruptor and attacks on him or what he might do were hyperbolic or hysterical overreactions. Most flipped to Biden based on what Trump actually did do in office, indeed as I’ve said before I had low expectations but he was actually even worse than I’d envisaged. It’s hard to imagine anyone who, if not strong in degree, doesn’t at least have their view on all things Trump somewhat set in stone after 8 years of him being a prominent public political figure. I imagine it’d be a pretty sizeable win in Biden’s favour if folks had a gun to their head and were made choose, however reluctantly, but thankfully that’s not how elections work. Enthusiasm, rather than preference I believe will probably be the deciding factor, people actually popping out and voting. Have the Dems threaded the needle during Biden’s tenure and not sufficiently dampened it on their left or right to depress turnout particularly? And how large is the constituency of conservatives who find Trump too unpalatable to vote for? Those feel the real ‘battlegrounds’ on which this election will be won or lost. In the current American context it feels like the ‘swing voter’ is effectively a unicorn at this point. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44158 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23140 Posts
On March 19 2024 23:00 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Great take. Vote Biden. https://youtu.be/VfVn9vE1HBQ?si=GFW5sbJyEC2LY0fq Still no. What I hear when Democrat voters talk about the threat Trump poses and accepting Biden's complicity in genocide is that they will follow whatever fascist laws/rules Trump puts in place no matter the consequences or how depraved they might be. Their 'fight against fascism' basically starts and ends at the ballot box (even if their vote doesn't really matter), nevermind they are 'voting against fascism' by voting for someone that's openly (and not so openly) aiding and abetting a genocide by an authoritarian apartheid regime. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2532 Posts
On March 19 2024 18:55 BlackJack wrote: I agree with this. There's plenty of good reasons to believe why Biden owns the border crisis based on his record. As soon as he was inaugurated he initiated a 100-day moratorium on deportations and ended Trump era immigration policies like Remain in Mexico www.npr.org He criticized Trump's policies as inhumane and instead invited asllyum seekers to "surge the border" insisting that America should be able to absorb anyone that comes here. www.cnn.com A lot of people see migrants as too ignorant or unsophisticated to pay attention but it's simply not true. They are not stupid, they are just poor and seeking a better life and they know what a Biden victory meant. It's not just random happenstance that massive caravans of people showed up at the southern border after Biden's win. Migrants on Mexican-US border celebrate Biden win. www.france24.com Biden win bolsters asylum seekers' hopes of policy shift. www.Reuters.com If you believe Trump's rhetoric is to blame for the spread of COVID you'd have to doubly believe that to be true for Biden's rhetoric on the border. Migrants actually possess the eyes and ears to hear the rhetoric. COVID surges were correlated with new variants, easing of restrictions, not with a politician asking it to surge because we can absorb 2 million new cases. Biden joins a long list of Democrat politicians that said "we welcome you to come here." and then said "ah.. shit" as soon as they came. It's par for the course for the brand of ideology where people's sense of compassion causes them to fail to see the obvious consequences of their actions. Yeh, from what Introvert provided this summary seems in line with what I was picking up. It does seem like a decent fuckup and justifies "The border is Biden's fault" a whole lot more than casual one-liners and pretending it's common knowledge. We can't simultaneously all accept the idea that the media cycles are a garbage means of informing everyone of the truth AND stand that some things should be common knowledge and readily accepted. It's an interesting situation (He says, safely, from a different country) and I'm curious what the overall impact will be, and what Dems might learn from their mistake. | ||
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Sermokala
United States13859 Posts
On the other issue you had republicans up and down saying to any media they could that the border was now open and all immigrants should come on by because joe bidens not going to do anything anymore. You have a governor thats publicly advertising how he is going to send you to the good parts of the country for free if you're able to actually get to texas. Now that everyone can agree immigration needs reform and the border needs protection who is the one that is actually working to that and who is the one who is working against that? | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2532 Posts
On March 20 2024 04:49 Sermokala wrote: Blame for the start of a crisis and blame for the continuance of said crisis are distinctly different things. Trump failed at managing covid for any time at all he was president. From the start of when he was informed at how bad it was going to be he kept messaging that it wasn't a problem and would go away any day of the week. This message was constantly spread at the same time critical time was being wasted to prepare for covid. Trump got rid of the department that was suppose to manage and prepare for Covid. By the Time Rudy gobert gets sick and the nation finally starts receiving the trauma of just how bad the plague was going to be there was no leader from the oval office preparing the nation for the trial to come. Even as things were undeniably bad and the medical system was showing signs about to collapse we have Trumps kids playing games with critical supplies. Trump was constantly belittling and was jealous all the time about the one guy in his administration that knew what they were doing. He follows the simplest American directive of "throw money at the problem" to get the vaccine updated and cleared in record time then refuses to convince the people to get it. The one good thing he does his entire presidency that actually benefited people and he is so shitty of a person he can't bring himself to save peoples lives. On the other issue you had republicans up and down saying to any media they could that the border was now open and all immigrants should come on by because joe bidens not going to do anything anymore. You have a governor thats publicly advertising how he is going to send you to the good parts of the country for free if you're able to actually get to texas. Now that everyone can agree immigration needs reform and the border needs protection who is the one that is actually working to that and who is the one who is working against that? I think 'The US is in need of border reform, and this was the Dem approach to enact border reform. It didn't work perfectly, or great, but isn't unsalvageable' is kinda where I'm at currently. I don't like the turnaround whataboutist "But Trump is a moron!". I don't see it as helpful, and I'd hope for a US gov't free of having to compare what it does to what Trump might have, or has, done. If you were to, free of Trump considerations, assess the current border issues under Biden, where do you end up? Trump is a fucking disaster human. We should still be able to criticize dems despite that. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10421 Posts
On March 20 2024 04:49 Sermokala wrote: Blame for the start of a crisis and blame for the continuance of said crisis are distinctly different things. Trump failed at managing covid for any time at all he was president. From the start of when he was informed at how bad it was going to be he kept messaging that it wasn't a problem and would go away any day of the week. This message was constantly spread at the same time critical time was being wasted to prepare for covid. Trump got rid of the department that was suppose to manage and prepare for Covid. By the Time Rudy gobert gets sick and the nation finally starts receiving the trauma of just how bad the plague was going to be there was no leader from the oval office preparing the nation for the trial to come. Even as things were undeniably bad and the medical system was showing signs about to collapse we have Trumps kids playing games with critical supplies. Trump was constantly belittling and was jealous all the time about the one guy in his administration that knew what they were doing. He follows the simplest American directive of "throw money at the problem" to get the vaccine updated and cleared in record time then refuses to convince the people to get it. The one good thing he does his entire presidency that actually benefited people and he is so shitty of a person he can't bring himself to save peoples lives. On the other issue you had republicans up and down saying to any media they could that the border was now open and all immigrants should come on by because joe bidens not going to do anything anymore. You have a governor thats publicly advertising how he is going to send you to the good parts of the country for free if you're able to actually get to texas. Now that everyone can agree immigration needs reform and the border needs protection who is the one that is actually working to that and who is the one who is working against that? The medical system being "about to collapse" is a pretty big claim which, as expected, you've provided no evidence to back up. In fact, as I've frequently posted on this website hospitals during the early months of the pandemic were becoming ghost towns from lack of patients. Emergency rooms were seeing a fraction of the patient's they normally see The COVID-19 pandemic led to significant changes in emergency care seeking behavior, with weekly volume of overall emergency department (ED) visits dropping by 42% in spring 2020 compared to spring 2019, and only slightly rebounding in adults by summer 2020 But BJ, that was just during the first few months when we had lockdowns. It changed soon after that. Wrong. This article from the American College of Emergency Physicians in April of 2021, a full year later, shows ED volumes were still 15-20% below pre-pandemic levels. (CDC data). Trump is not even President by this time. ACEP also has received some more recent data from the CDC, and ED volumes for February and March 2021 are still around 15 to 20 percent lower than they were before the pandemic. In fact 1.4 million healthcare workers were laid off early into the pandemic because there was no work for them. www.npr.org Those emergency field hospitals we spent potentially billions on were constructed, went unused or barely used, and then torn down. apnews.com I know I'm wasting my time here because these facts I'm offering will not get in the way of anyone's beliefs, as evidenced by the last few years I've spent talking to a wall. If you want to believe the healthcare system was on the brink of collapse while Trump was in office, go ahead. If brink of collapse is where 1.4 million healthcare workers are sitting at home for being laid off then maybe you are right. | ||
KwarK
United States42508 Posts
On March 20 2024 02:32 GreenHorizons wrote: Still no. What I hear when Democrat voters talk about the threat Trump poses and accepting Biden's complicity in genocide is that they will follow whatever fascist laws/rules Trump puts in place no matter the consequences or how depraved they might be. Their 'fight against fascism' basically starts and ends at the ballot box (even if their vote doesn't really matter), nevermind they are 'voting against fascism' by voting for someone that's openly (and not so openly) aiding and abetting a genocide by an authoritarian apartheid regime. You’re still somehow placing blame for Gaza on Biden, despite the very public conflict between Biden and Netanyahu. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23140 Posts
On March 20 2024 05:47 KwarK wrote: You’re still somehow placing blame for Gaza on Biden, despite the very public conflict between Biden and Netanyahu. I'm placing blame on Biden for aiding and abetting an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign because he is aiding and abetting an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign. Biden getting upset that Netanyahu doesn't care about how his ethnic cleansing campaign being so overt affects Biden's reelection campaign, despite him sending Netanyahu over 100 weapon packages since October, relentlessly protecting Israel from international diplomatic pressure, being an avowed zionist, etc, doesn't change that. | ||
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Sadist
United States7217 Posts
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micronesia
United States24663 Posts
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maybenexttime
Poland5536 Posts
On March 20 2024 06:17 GreenHorizons wrote: I'm placing blame on Biden for aiding and abetting an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign because he is aiding and abetting an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign. Biden getting upset that Netanyahu doesn't care about how his ethnic cleansing campaign being so overt affects Biden's reelection campaign, despite him sending Netanyahu over 100 weapon packages since October, relentlessly protecting Israel from international diplomatic pressure, being an avowed zionist, etc, doesn't change that. So you will help elect someone with an even worse position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and who's planning to help a fascist dictator commit genocide in Ukraine, gotcha!  | ||
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Dan HH
Romania9112 Posts
On March 20 2024 02:32 GreenHorizons wrote: Still no. What I hear when Democrat voters talk about the threat Trump poses and accepting Biden's complicity in genocide is that they will follow whatever fascist laws/rules Trump puts in place no matter the consequences or how depraved they might be. Their 'fight against fascism' basically starts and ends at the ballot box (even if their vote doesn't really matter), nevermind they are 'voting against fascism' by voting for someone that's openly (and not so openly) aiding and abetting a genocide by an authoritarian apartheid regime. Let's approach this from a game theory perspective with the goal of minimizing suffering in Gaza. This isn't meant specifically for you, you've mentioned before that you're in a state where your vote doesn't matter. There's 3 options in regards to influencing future US policy towards Israel and Gaza: A. Vote Trump B. Vote Biden C. Attempt to overthrow the system The flaw I see in your view of electoralism is that you treat all 3 of these as options as mutually exclusive, when in practice only A and B are mutually exclusive. Voting for Trump or Biden does not in any way preclude you from doing C as well. Now leaving all other considerations aside, it's perfectly clear that option C has the highest benefit potential for our goal. However unlikely, it's the only option that opens the possibility for immediately cutting military aid to Israel, sanctioning Israel, or stopping the US from vetoing UN resolutions against Israel. But even if option C had the same or higher likelihood of becoming reality than Trump or Biden becoming president, it would still be suboptimal to do just that. As long as there's any chance that the system survives your attempt, the optimal move is to determine which of A or B is better for our goal and do that in addition to C, as it has zero influence on your ability to do C. Given Trump's policies towards Israel during his presidency and his current opinions on the war, making that determination is very easy. I can't imagine anyone here is willing to argue that Trump would have offered Israel less support than the current administration or that he would have given a shit to get aid into Gaza the way Biden does. I understand if you can't in good conscience vote for someone approving sending weapons to Israel, that's perfectly fine. Though I also know that if Oct 7 never happened, we'd just be having the exact same conversation with the same pre-baked conclusion but about student debt or security theatre in the subway or whatever is next on your list of grievances. Minimizing the difference between Biden and Trump on any given topic is neither truthful nor necessary for your goals. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23140 Posts
On March 20 2024 06:23 micronesia wrote: How did Biden send those weapon packages to Israel? I’m honestly not clear on the approval process. Clearly, Biden did not personally drop them in the mail. Are the packages released solely on the President’s authority? Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the start of conflict: $106 million worth of tank ammunition and $147.5 million of components needed to make 155 mm shells. Those sales invited public scrutiny because the Biden administration bypassed Congress to approve the packages by invoking an emergency authority. But in the case of the 100 other transactions, known in government-speak as Foreign Military Sales or FMS, the weapons transfers were processed without any public debate because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to individually notify Congress, according to U.S. officials and lawmakers who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter. | ||
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Gahlo
United States35130 Posts
On March 20 2024 06:38 maybenexttime wrote: So you will help elect someone with an even worse position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and who's planning to help a fascist dictator commit genocide in Ukraine, gotcha! GH has the privilege of living in a safely blue state where he can vote, or not vote, with his heart in general elections. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10421 Posts
On March 20 2024 06:19 Sadist wrote: Youll never vote for him anyway. Goalposts will just move. Not relevant. Yep, and people still get baited every time. Rinse & Repeat | ||
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