The Presidency of the Joes, part II: lol documents

OK, Maggie.

https://twitter.com/cnnpolitics/status/1551920534601990150?s=21&t=nXSs-T39d6whZTzxqzu-_w

He tried so hard and got so far.

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Maybe he about to do it?

https://twitter.com/noliewithbtc/status/1551968261977346049?s=21&t=I7WH90Nct5ruYV4uZOQr_Q

I feel like weā€™ve done this about a half dozen times over the past couple years. Itā€™s not happening and if it does it will be a somewhat meaningless amount in the grand scheme.

My money is on another pause through the midterms

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yeah my buddy has been pretty steadfast in his opinion that the pause will be until jan. 2023 and then weā€™ll get the total of 10k forgiveness across the board and restart payments as ā€œBIDEN BROUGHT BUSINESS BACK TO USUAL 2023ā€ slogan pushā€¦

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The easiest play in the world is just: ā€œI think Congress needs to do this, not sure of my ability to do so unilaterally, so Iā€m just going to keep pausing payments until Congress does something.ā€
Then when 2024 rolls around itā€™s him running against a republican whoā€™s going to restart payments. Also the longer he can keep payments paused the closer he gets to back door loan forgiveness anyway since that shit still counts for income based loan forgiveness purposes.

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My sense of Biden is that he spent so much time in Congress that his instinct is that the executive should defer to the legislative branch more than Republicans seem to think, so thereā€™s a reluctance on his part to exercise presidential power in any way that he feels is unprecedented.

I also believe he thinks that Congress should be doing the heavy lifting on student loan forgiveness.

My guess is something like this as well. A key play eDems love is large dollar amounts without proper context. Students loans are a huge issue, like $1.8T, so thereā€™s lots of big numbers below that. If forgiving $10K/person ends up being $300B or whatever in total forgiveness expect to hear that number over and over and over. Theyā€™ll want to make it out that the progressive wing just won the lottery and should pipe down for a bit. ANY loan forgiveness is going to be met with the same whining about unfairness and inflation by the right, so just swing for the fences Joe (lol, LMAO, LOL)

https://twitter.com/adamwollner/status/1552047745250230281?s=21&t=C5sVVGJABuU8mh5AQoovqg

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Maybe 75% of voters should have voted for someone other than Joe Biden when there were like 10 candidates to choose from. Itā€™s not like heā€™s different now than he promised to be campaigning.

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The important question is how many of them would vote for a Republican against Biden.

I mean, he did get smoked in Iowa and NH and Nevada.

Or, like me, wonā€™t vote at all.

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Some might sit out and some might vote R.

The ones that are candidates to vote R are the affluent Dem base of professionals and technocrats. They hate stupid Republicans but they can be tempted by tax cuts. If Biden and team canā€™t get anything done with the executive and Congress, some doctors and lawyers that have progressive instincts are going to wonder what is the point of supporting Dems that wonā€™t help the disadvantaged and refuse to tax billionaires.

Dems are going to bet on that being symmetrical to the number of Republicans who will sit out or vote D if Trump is nominated.

That seems like a bad bet, Rs are better at going along with people they hate as long as they get what they want. Trump can easily win over reluctant R voters with a tax cut. Reluctant D voters are not as easily convinced.

Dems arenā€™t good gamblers.

Tax cuts didnā€™t do the Rs any good in 2018 or 2020. It was the only major bill they passed.

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Yeah but R turnout in 2020 was just fine, Dems won because a bunch of people thought electing Biden and a Dem congress would yield policy wins. Thatā€™s, uh, not the case anymore.