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

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)?

Sort of missing the point there.

It also makes the utterly bizarre leap that people who are critical of Harris for being a cop are in any way "setting the goal posts" of achievement such as "being a prosecutor." Got my doubts that the 1312 crew is fond of any prosecutors.

Sort of missing the point there.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, August 13, 2020 10:55 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

the point is liberal identity politics nonsense in denfense of the status quo

Careful.

"identity politics nonsense"

Sometimes literally cannot tell the Marxists from the MAGAs.

im not a marxist

liberal identity politics is broadly the weaponizing of structures of oppression and bastardized cribbing from academia in order to advance an agenda that has nothing to do with countering any oppression

Uh-huh.

so it's a morally and intellectually bankrupt exercise that no-one should take part in.

like at least be shakey and write fan fiction in your head about why she's good

The real point is, that she didn’t do anything white prosecutors across the country haven’t done

Do you think "Kamala is a cop" people think any white prosecutors should be President or Vice President?