Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

It’s important to wait for the one term President to be elected before exerting pressure.

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Wednesday, August 12, 2020 11:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i'm not sure just saying biden sucks over and over again counts as "exerting pressure"

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, August 12, 2020 11:40 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

OTM. By all means, exert pressure on the campaign now, until election day, and (God willing) afterwards! We're all in this together. When I say "Let's get Biden elected and take it from there," I mean that the election is the main priority. None of the rest will matter until he's in office.

Also, to be perfectly honest, all of the negative energy on this thread makes me nervous and uneasy. Not because I think ILX is representative of the electorate, but because I want and need to feel hope for the future, and right now, Biden is our best shot at it. He's by no means perfect, but he's the only path forward. Let's make him a tool of our desire for something better.

xp I'm sorry, Kate.

hey kate, wrong thread and I'm sure you know this already but on the off chance that a nudge from the outer world may help motivate: if you're having thoughts of self harm, please try to reach out to a friend or a local organization that can talk you through it?

yeah, again, not a cry for help or a threat. just, like, part of the systemic breakdown of US national norms and institutions over the course of my lifetime, and _particularly_ over the past four years, has been a dramatic diminishment in the amount of resources available to those suffering with acute mental health problems. anybody working in mental health, anybody who is _dealing_ with someone who has mental health issues, knows this. you're trying to help people you care about and you reach out an increasing amount of the time, you know, there's nothing. us mentally ill folks have relied on "mutual aid" for a long time, and everybody's resources are overstretched, everybody is trying to do too much with too little and just desperately trying to hold on, hold it together, in the hopes that things will somehow get better.

and when people tell me i'm supposed to place my trust and hope in biden/harris, honestly? i find that incredibly, deeply painful.

I'm sorry it's painful to you, but I don't know what our alternatives are. Where should we be putting our trust and hope?

You don't need to and shouldn't put your trust and hope in politicians. Save that for yourself and your loved ones.

People should vote for candidates that most closely align with them, campaign to get them elected, and hold them accountable to their campaign promises if they win.

And, to be clear, "putting your trust in" a politician is not the same thing as believing the empirical evidence that shows the vast majority of political candidates attempt to follow through on their campaign promises, even if the y end up unsuccessful.

That's probably good advice.

I'm sorry it's painful to you, but I don't know what our alternatives are. Where should we be putting our trust and hope?

― jaymc

Gonna be honest here, it seems kinda weird to me that you're asking for life advice from a woman who has just told you she is acutely suicidal. That seems like a kinda bizarre response.

kate i'm right there with you (to be clear i don't feel suicidal but i do feel like i'm in hell at times). i never expect to get the candidates i want but that doesn't make internet or irl conversation about this pair any less alienating. i'm resolving to stop reading this thread today.

I'm sorry, Kate. I'm not asking for life advice. I'm sorry you're hurting, and I wish you well.

Also planning to bow out of this thread for a while.

I think one reason this thread often comes across as tiresome is that there's no genuine counterweight to the most virulent anti-Biden stuff. There is no pro-Biden contingent on ILX. Afaik no one who regularly posts on this board even LIKES Joe Biden. I doubt any regular posters have ever voted for him in a primary. I don't see anyone saying they think he will be a particularly good president even by that very shitty standard. The absolute most complimentary thing it seems anyone is willing to say is that he's a thoroughly replacement-level Democrat who might be able to unfuck some of the things that have gotten fucked over the past four years, and the vast majority of that will no doubt come from a potential Dem-majority Senate and any actual competent people he more or less accidentally surrounds himself with (e.g. Liz Warren).

i have yet to personally meet anyone who is excited about joe biden as a person or as a candidate, merely that he is there. He is the Diet Mr. Pibb of politicians.

"He's by no means perfect"

as always, i wish people would stop saying this when "He's by no means the very worst" is what they mean.

what gives me hope is the rise and rise of popular protest movements. black lives matter particularly, but also the women's marches, extinction rebellion, the water protectors of standing rock, etc etc. yes joe biden is a shell of a man and only progressive if you squint hard, and maybe not even then, but popular protest stands a chance of filling this empty vessel with a sense of purpose. maybe the way popular protest steered lbj towards policies he didn't campaign on (disclaimer: i have never read a word of robert caro)

Caro's an analyst of concentrated power: its use and its dissipation. He has no interest in mass movements (not a knock against him, just noting this fact).

caro's central argument w/r/t lbj, as i understand it, is that lbj possessed purpose, and that obtaining power revealed that purpose. that lbj was, in many senses, an extraordinary man.

Yep -- a thesis he tested in The Power Broker.

(which I'm reading and loving the fuck out of)

yeah, not sure biden is an extraordinary man. but i do think popular protest has the potential to move his administration to do extraordinary things.

I read somewhere between half and 2/3 of The Power Broker and I loved a lot of it too but ultimately it kind of wore me down, as Moses became more powerful it just felt like the story was page after page of him being a colossal asshole and fucking people over, ad nauseum.

the power broker was one of the best books i've ever read

i read it during a city planning course, actually. warning, city planner 101 students: do NOT be like robert moses!

Well, Caro's alert to dialectics: NYC needed an asshole this monstrous to build those beautiful parks, swimming pools, beaches, and to devastate affordable housing for the poor.

(sorry, do not read unless you accidentally read the last two posts)

just to be clear, i read the power broker in a separate seminar class, while also taking a city planning class. so i felt like i was learning about the most evil of city planners while also these innocent simcity fans were in the dark

Reminds me I need to get The Power Broker off my shelf and actually read it one of these days ...

Marshall Berman, mostly writing about Modernism, reserved more vitriol for Robert Moses than pretty much anyone else.

popular protest stands a chance of filling this empty vessel

This I think is the most interesting thing about the Biden candidacy. The empty-suit metaphor has been used about lots of politicians and presidential candidates, but I can't think of another one where it was sort of the selling point, the best thing that can be said. Nobody talks or even seems to care about what Biden might actually think about anything. The assumption is just that since he's an empty vessel, there will be opportunities to fill him with other people's interests and priorities.

Like, if Trump is a human skin full of scuttling Void Crabs (per Chuck Tingle), then Biden can be our own human skin full of flowers and healthcare. (Or at least as much flowers and healthcare as can fit around all the Citibank receipts.)

yeah exactly. kate makes a good point that lbj's not really comparable. i think that's true, so sorry for the derail. i guess i'm thinking: biden's no progressive, but truly progressive things happen because of popular pressure, not because a saviour executive rides to the rescue. and biden - by my lights - seems like somebody who could be bent to a particular purpose if enough pressure is applied.

The last time I'll quote David Goddamn French:

These things are all true:

1. A mainstream Democrat chose a mainstream Democrat for Veep.

2. The mainstream of the Democratic party is left of where it was in 2016 and 2012.

3. If 2018 is any indication, many previously-red suburbs are left of where they were in 2016.

— David French (@DavidAFrench) August 12, 2020

But he already took healthcare off the table!

and the table is the

these people love using "left of Obama" and/or Clinton as the gold standard

Which people are you talking about?

David French?

overton window just big enough now for mass defenestration

I mean, if "less willing to vote for a congenital idiot and the party he represents" = "left of Obama", I'm on board

I kind of don't care where people end up wrt Obama's place on the political spectrum seeing as he isn't on the ballot

All the Power Broker/Robert Moses talk upthread made this mandatory. You're welcome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0Dyxp3GjI

This I think is the most interesting thing about the Biden candidacy. The empty-suit metaphor has been used about lots of politicians and presidential candidates, but I can't think of another one where it was sort of the selling point, the best thing that can be said. Nobody talks or even seems to care about what Biden might actually think about anything. The assumption is just that since he's an empty vessel, there will be opportunities to fill him with other people's interests and priorities.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

and it is this, ultimately, that so emblematizes the horrors of capitalist democracy - that a man like biden is not just portrayed but genuinely _believed_ by those who endorse him to be a man whose life is of zero significance, whose past behavior is to be ignored. this, i think might motivate where the lbj comparisons come from - lbj, who was an exceptional man, did things as president that surprised people, that defied their preconceptions. this is the best hope - nay, the _only_ hope - biden supporters have: "maybe he will surprise us!"

tbh I say that about every president

xxp: thank you for that, unperson.

per late capitalism the donor class will only allow for surprises in one direction. 👉

And they'll scream 'yas kween' when Harris launches her green prisons initiative.

There's political education work that has to consistently be done explaining how 'just vote' and 'lesser evil' compromises are what got us to Trump in the first place. Things can still get worse.

— William C. (@williamcson) August 13, 2020

As far as Kamala takes go, I think this one is pretty good:

There is a conversation to be had about Kamala’s role as AG and how that positions her as a candidate, but that’s a conversation for the Black community to have. The white community needs to have a different conversation: a conversation about how you set the goal posts unreachably high and then when we finally score a goal, you have the audacity to question the rules that put us in scoring position in the first place. This country doesn’t have a Black female prosecutor problem; we have a white supremacy problem. And criticizing Senator Harris and charging her with crimes against Black people is an act of willful hubris and cognitive dissonance when it comes from white folks.

it's very bad actually

Why so?

also seems to presume that her role as AG didn't affect non-black people? maybe it affected the members of the largest visible minority in California, which is hispanic people? maybe they're allowed an opinion?

or what about trans women (black or otherwise)?