Originally published at: Selfless elder statesman again begs people to pay attention - Boing Boing
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Something else to hate Trump for destroying: our chance to have this guy for another four years.
ETA: I know that Kamala / Walz will be amazing and probably even more progressive than Biden once they take office. And I’d hate to lose that possible timeline. But damn, giving up his seat because of the threat of the orange shitgibbon to the country is such a noble move.
He’s definitely the hero we needed, even if he’s not the hero we deserve.
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I’m 10 years younger than Biden. He has been, quite probably, the best President in my lifetime. I would say he is also the best man who has ever been President in my lifetime, but it is a tie with Jimmy Carter.
I hope and pray this country stays together, so that his legacy of achievement and decency will go down in history.
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I don’t know that I would put him ahead of Johnson. Sure, Johnson had Vietnam, but Biden can be fairly criticized for not doing enough to stop what’s going on in Gaza. Neither is perfect. I will say, Biden may eventually be regarded as the greatest one term President we’ve ever had. That’s a low bar, but still…he’s cleared it by a mile, in my opinion.
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I can agree on Johnson. His big problem was that the base split twice under his administration. He lost the south with the Civil Rights Act, which was a really good thing. He lost the left with Vietnam. I’m not sure I can blame him too much. If RFK senior hadn’t been killed he might have been able to eke out enough votes to keep the Democrats in power.
I do say Biden is the best President we have had because he did so much with such a small majority. Johnson had the numbers in both the Senate and the House, so he had more ability to push things through. I wish we could have seen Biden with a Super Majority in the Senate and a Majority in the House. That would have been something. I guess what I should say was the Pelosi/Biden combination has been the most impressive in my lifetime.
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I wish Biden had pushed to end the Senate filibuster. But I’ll join in with the assessment that he’s been the best President in my (Gen Xer) lifetime.
One of the biggest reasons (of many) I’m so excited about Walz is that he was ready, like Whitmer has also, to take a narrow majority and ram a ton of stuff through.
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I do agree!
And to be honest, I think that withdrawing, whether or not it was a fair situation, will cement his legacy as a great more than anything else could have. If he stayed in and won, he would still face the same criticism for another 4 years and have all the pressures (and critique) of the presidency, and if he had lost, well… that would have been really bad for him (and us!) and would be the only thing most people remembered. Withdrawing now and leaving such a jubilant atmosphere in his wake means that Kamala gets to go out and crow about the great things he’s done for four years while everyone is thrilled to hear it. I get misty when I see them together now knowing his sacrifice and selflessness will leave us in good hands. I can’t imagine I’m the only one.
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I wish we had ended it as well, but Sinema and Manchin were never going to budge and the Democrats just didn’t have the votes. Even with Harris as a tie breaker, some Senators were afraid that losing the filibuster would come back to bite them if/when the Republicans got back into power. I’m hoping if we hold the Senate this time, the will finally realize that the Republicans are SO bad that they have to make filibuster changes to save democracy.
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It’s worth watching the recent PBS Frontline documentary on Biden to get a good perspective on his life, his severe childhood stutter, and personal tragedies (losing his first wife and daughter in a car accident and later his beloved older son to cancer) to understand the type of person he his.
Also relevant to see how his lifelong ambition to become President was thwarted multiple times and how he made the political calculus to take a backseat at times to larger forces at play other times in his career.
I do think he’s been a good President but let’s be honest; he’s still a lifelong politician with almost 50 years in Washington. He’s one of the original good 'ole boy institutionalists and is to some degree responsible for why the Senate has become totally dysfunctional. Not to mention he is also partially responsible for that clown Thomas being on SCOTUS by botching the Anita Hill testimony.
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I was disappointed (I know that word’s rep on this site) with that Frontline piece. The Afghanistan withdrawal part looks like it was produced by Fox News. And the rest of it only seemed to look at Biden’s worst moments … the part about Beau is somewhat sympathetic. It ends abruptly, without any analysis or reflection on the dadgum title of the doc! “He decided to step down after a bad debate” is about as deep as that part got. I wasn’t looking for hagiography, but for a network accused of being shills for the left, it wasn’t exactly a glowing, or even terribly balanced, look at Biden, IMO.
I agree with perceysowner and others above who believe Biden to be one of the greats, and that his presidency will be viewed very kindly by historians – if only for his decision to echo Cincinnatus. That’s assuming such historians aren’t all languishing in a gulag after a Trump victory in November. Don’t forget to register, vote, and encourage others to vote, please.
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No one is so poor that they can’t afford to pay attention.
Even if you support Chrump’s policy on something (although I’m not sure why, everything he promotes and supports is reprehensible), he’s trying to undermine democracy, and that makes everything else he does moot.
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Except for all those elections that went Democratic up to the 90s…Like Carter and Clinton.
And of course, the past couple of elections…
The VRA and CRA opened up a whole new constituency for the democrats, and not all whites were on board with segregation and racism, of course… the solid south wasn’t nearly as solid as people believe and it never was. I really wish we’d stop dismissing how diverse the south is, and stop centering white racists as the “true” southerners who get to dictate to the rest of us what it means to be “southern”.
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Later on with Clinton and Carter yes, but for the Presidency in 1968, having both sides of the equation shaky helped Nixon to win. I was in High School during those years and we had mock elections. One of the students played George Wallace, who did win electoral votes 46 to be exact. It wasn’t enough to close the gap, but that is still a substantial amount. It was more of a perfect storm, The South was angry about desegregation, liberals were angry about Vietnam, RFK, who could have convinced the liberals that he WOULD get us out of Vietnam was killed, the Democratic Convention was a clusterf**k with a police riot outside that the delegates were unaware of and that turned people away from the Democrats. Once Nixon got in, he started shaping the narrative to “law and order” and finding ways to jail the people who opposed him by ramping up laws against drugs, which were then enforced to his benefit. It was a perfect Tsunami and a horrible mess.
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Explain to me how Trump is
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Anyone who looks at the opposing team’s candidate and thinks describing Biden as an egomaniac is a convincing argument- that guy looks foolish.
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Sure - because Trump will stop military aid to Israel?
Nonsense.
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You will not find many, if any, on this site who will defend the clusterfuck that is Gaza. But, if you have been reading the various election threads, you know how this goes. We have measurable accomplishments that put the Biden years as incredibly successful, progressive in a way that I would never have thought he would be, economically doing very well. Not perfect, no, but damn, far better than anyone in my memory has done. And would there be any possible argument that it would be better had Il Douche won in 2020, or will be should he win in 2024? I think not. History will remember Biden very kindly, IMHO.
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But … but … there are the Greens. And RFK Jr. And Bernie could still win the Dem nomination with a strong write-in effort at the convention. /s
Sure, but some are more pure and virtuous in that position, dontchaknow.
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