The Presidency of the Joes: more like INFRASTRUCTURE WEAK

So you think Biden is actively blocking Bernie and other congressional members’ attempts to get a M4A bill together and so Bernie has just given up? Or you think they all have just given up without even trying because Joe Biden is such a ruthless operator behind the scenes that they wouldn’t dare try?

My point is that Bernie and company pivoting to shittier versions of their original bills isn’t because the shittier bills are better or somehow right. That’s what was literally being argued. That somehow makes Pete “right”.

I totally agree Bernie as president would have faced the same roadblocks from the same culprits by the way.

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Biden has openly said he isn’t doing M4A. He has openly said he isn’t doing free college for all. I’m not sure what you are going on about. Bernie introducing those bills would be a waste of time and he knows it.

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I think your reasoning is wrong and you are making a couple big, unjustified leaps to conclude that Bernie et al are just rolling over now and giving up on M4A because of a statement Biden made during the election. As you and others regularly point out, he has gone back on several campaign promises already, so why would this one thing be the thing he is steadfast on? It’s certainly at least worth trying? If not, I don’t see how you can really get that mad at other Dem politicians who came to essentially the same conclusion but sooner than Bernie did.

Yes he has rolled over on most campaign promises to the right. I’m not sure how that means he is persuadable on M4A.

I’m also not saying Bernie and Co should give up.

I’m simply saying them caving on means testing this doesn’t make Pete “right”. That’s what was being argued. I also bet if you asked Bernie in private if it should be means tested he would say no (yes i don’t know this 100%).

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Literally yes he is on the record.

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Are you talking about him making a public statement that he would veto the bill or something more?

Ok, this makes sense, but I think I disagree with your thinking that just because he has only shifted to the right in a handful of instances recently we can conclude that he won’t shift left on somethjng else. Biden is famously malleable, and I think over the course of his political career he has shifted way further left than right, which I think is the biggest reason why I disagree with you.

But how many club championships has Biden won??

It’s sort of amazing on a forum with this level of political sophistication people still vastly overestimate the power of the president. It’s some really weird American thing

lol

https://twitter.com/equalityalec/status/1385222123598274564?s=21

https://twitter.com/equalityalec/status/1385222124554571777?s=21

https://twitter.com/equalityalec/status/1385222125540233217?s=21

https://twitter.com/equalityalec/status/1385222126542655495?s=21

https://twitter.com/equalityalec/status/1385222128602165249?s=21

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It’s more that they have quite a bit of control over their respective political party. (Cite: Trump, Donald)

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Crafting legislation is one of the areas Presidents can be truly powerful, especially someone like Biden who’s intimately familiar with how the Senate works. eDems in Congress aren’t going to undermine him by proposing legislation he’s said he’s against and if they do he knows which levers to use to get them back in line.

The most similar President to Biden is LBJ who was able to pass a shitload of popular legislation by bullying Congress into doing what he told them to since he supposedly didn’t even want to pass the Civil Rights Act, he just knew he had to fulfill Kennedy’s promises.

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DC Statehood bill passes the House, goes on to get blown out of the water by the Senate.

https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1385263800077651976?s=20

There is no record anyone actually gives a fuck about. Biden aspires to be as close to the ideological center of the Democratic party as possible.

Politicians aren’t trying to be honest with their public statements lol.

What have we been talking about with Manchin and Cinema? Dems should start huge and then let them both chip away at it for a PR win and get it to where it should be. That’s the obvious strategy dems should be taking and it’s the strategy the president should be taking.

You don’t start at the compromise position just for them to chip away at it anyways to show they’re more conservative than everyone else and you end up with a watered down bill.

Starting at the compromise position is just political malpractice.

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On this topic, the Jimmy Dore types infuriate me. They’ve created a big following attacking AOC and company for not forcing the M4A vote. They’re also now on the infrastructure bill and want the squad to hold it up for some dumb fucking shit.

These people are so fucking dumb and their strategy so fucking stupid and it really sucks they’re getting so much support and fracturing the left when we’re already a small minority in the party and need to unite.

If I was some evil shitlib billionaire I would be funding people exactly like Jimmy Fucking Dore.

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:ok_hand:

Yup, something happened to Jimmy when the YouTube algorithms started fucking with his show & then the turn kicked in around 6 months later, I stopped watching in 2016 when the Russia gate shit kicked off, kept some eyes on him but he’s been got imo.

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In one sense, nothing much different than is getting passed now, which is an illustration of the sad state of the US political system.

But the biggest difference is that Bernie’s PR team would surely be doing a great job of selling the more progressive policies that we all know are actually popular policies. So in that other sense, a President Bernie, with a good team helping him skillfully wield the bully pulpit, could do tons to eventually shift the landscape enough to get better legislation passed.

Nah we would start with like 3.5 trillion covid package and they would take it down to like 3 trillion.

If we have 48 AOC/Bernies it would be a much different country and the pressure would be on Manchin/Cinema. They aren’t set in a specific spot, their spot is just to the right of the average democrat. If the average democrat was Bernie/AOC, we would be getting really progressive shit done.

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