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this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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yes. he likes to take sole credit for their victories, he can also take some credit for their failings, too. Shoulda kept Manchin on a shorter leash.
Not that I imagine biden tried all that hard on it. I mean, he once voted to overturn it. in 1982... he still says that he's personally opposed. I just imagine it's not on his list of things he really gives a damn about, but somebody in his camp managed to convince him he at least needs to shut up about.
That's probably the gist of it right there in fairness - he could have tried harder. Then again, he knows what's what, and like (a) the mess he inherited from the previous occupant of the job took an enormous amount of effort to deal with, like basically ALL of the efforts, really, that were to spare (and things like the border crisis, huge spike in homelessness, greedflation, etc. continue onwards even now), and so (b) to have fought the good fight would have come at the cost of enormous political capital that would have prevented other things from happening. Thought experiment: what would Dems be willing to give up, in order to have made a useless (I mean purely in the sense of doomed to failure in the short term, though ultimately such things may need a coordinated effort over many years) attempt to appear to try to codify Roe v. Wade? Would we have been willing to sacrifice funding for Ukraine? Passing a budget for the year at all? College loan remittance? Political capital has limits, so in order to work towards that goal, something else must be sacrificed, that's just reality.
Also, unpopular opinion alert - or rather, adjacent to one, in the service of a deeper understanding - women are not prevented from having abortions, at least on the federal level. If a state such as Florida or Texas etc. prevents such a thing, then don't live in those states? There are MANY things going on in those states - book burnings, teacher shortages, also libraries, also doctors/nurses, also basic infrastructure, the list just goes on forever - and Biden is merely one old man, so what is he being asked to do, replace Jesus in those states? There is only so much that he or any one person could do. e.g., when a Supreme Court seat opens up, that's when he can do a lot to work towards his goal, but I cannot say this loudly enough, even as a President he cannot pass laws. He can be part of a solution but he cannot be the entirety of one. Nor should he be.
He could stop sending weapons to Israel. That would be a nice start.
Okay, a fair point, but... we were talking about abortion:-D. (also, can we stop, or is it a stipulation somewhere in the contract that we must send? perhaps any time they are "attacked" we must automatically send a certain amount? there may be more there than the for-profit news media is willing to tell us, thinking that we are too dumbp to undermastand so they instead just focus on emotional one-liners that generate more clicks...)
They bypassed congressional oversight to sell Israel tank shells.
https://www.dsca.mil/press-media/major-arms-sales/israel-m830a1-120mm-tank-cartridges
My bad, I got lost in the comment chain
No biggie! :-)
Enormous? I don't think Manchin was all that expensive of lay.
Abortion is the most prominent example of how Biden's positions diverge from most his base... because most his base have sex. sorry to be so blunt. It's not healthcare to his mindset because it's not something he and his partner are likely to need any time soon. and likely the same for... every friend his age. To young twenty-somethings looking to establish themselves and not get burdened with the obscene costs of having a child... it's far more than "just" healthcare.
There's other issues that his age puts him on the wrong side of- or could be conceived as such. the housing crisis, for example. in the short term (next decade,) the housing bubble is benefiting retirees resolving it means the prices come down.. and houses represent a large (quite possibly the largest) chunk of their net worth. There's also climate change, which... just isn't an issue for him. he will not live to see the consequences of failing.
and he is failing. Is he failing less badly than republicans? certainly. But if we don't get our shit together in the next few years... the world is fucked. no that's not right. The world is already fucked. we don't get our shit together, the world is fucked to death. climate change is an existential crisis. Not in the "humanity will cease to exist" existential crisis. But in the "Society will fundamentally reshape itself" sort.
I should have admitted in my previous response that I might be biased, trying to find a shred of hope where none exists. But also I aim not to be either an optimist nor a pessimist, but a realist. I do not claim to actually know what that means here though:-).
That said, what I said earlier still seems true to me: if you live in a state that allows - maybe even enshrines? - abortion as a right, then its being banned in other states affects you none to little (unless you actively visit those states, perhaps even traveling through them on the way to other states?), while if you live in a state that bans abortions, you have MANY problems, of which that is merely one of them (a big one to be sure). So it is one issue - perhaps the biggest of our time - and yet all of that said... what are we going to ACTUALLY DO about it? Congress needs to pass a law to make a decision one way or the other. Or else individual states need to do that. So far, Congress is more divided than it has ever been (during the Civil War, the South did not send their representatives anymore, so bills actually got passed!:-P), and we are looking towards another constitutional crisis happening as soon as the very next election, possibly spilling out into actual bloodshed. I don't, but listen to the rhetoric on the side most likely to fire the first shot, and tell me that has no chance of happening, sometime in the next ten years? So yeah, I believe Biden when he says that it would be a difficult ask to get such a thing through Congress right now... that's not about what's right or what's wrong, it's about what's possible at the current time.
Also look at democracy globally - like UK with Boris Johnson, Brazil with Bolsonaro, uh... right now is not a good time for democracy it seems. I am not speaking out against it, just echoing your thoughts that we are already fucked, in so many more ways than one, since it seems that our particular brand of it (meaning: coupled with low levels of edumacashion), seems to be vulnerable to certain outside parties who may have interests in interfering with our electoral processes? :-(
And in the midst of ALL of that, what the Dems offer is... Biden. Yeah, I know, but it's not about what's ideal, it's about what is possible.