California’s housing crisis [is] pushing families already at the margins to the brink of homelessness.
A quarter of California households reported being unable to pay their utility bills in October, according to a Census survey, resulting in what Columbia University public health professor Diana Hernández and others call energy insecurity, or the “heat or eat dilemma.”
“It’s almost like a game of Russian roulette,” she said, describing the monthly juggle low-income families face. “Today’s unpaid energy bill is tomorrow’s eviction notice. And that cycle is a very real one.”
Biden and Co. can trumpet a booming economy all they want, but many can see that it’s doing more to make rich people richer than it is to help out poor people.
Telling perhaps the majority of the country that their pain isn’t real isn’t helping Joe “Hey, I’m a capitalist!” Biden in the polls, and when it comes to their material circumstances – which just keep getting worse as the rich just keep getting richer – they’re not being delusional.
The simple fact is wages are currently rising relative to inflation and unemployment is approaching zero. Talking about that fact is an important part of fighting off fascism and creating a Dem-majority political landscape that can allow real progress.
Again, attributing some kind of magical power to the president that Biden is somehow witholding is just as fractired from reality as the anti-science woo of the far right.
What would you like him to do to make regular Americans’ lives tangibly better that he already hasn’t done or isn’t currently doing? He can’t magically undo capitalism. He can’t magically undo inequality.
He could start by acknowledging and sympathizing with more honestly all the economic misery that’s still out there, instead of being more likely to say that he has no problem with billionaires. He could blast corporations more for things like price gouging and obscene profits and executive salaries and refusal to pay taxes (a la Elizabeth Warren).
What a president says and (at least verbally demands) does as much or more for his popularity than what he and his policies do.
I would like him to do even more, but when it comes to rhetoric about workers, he sounds like freakin’ Karl Marx:
The WH’s communications about “Bidenomics is probably a little more true to his approach - “building from the bottom up and the middle out” which is classic Dem economics of growing the middle class by supporting low-income communities and solidifying the security of those already there on the three pillars of home ownership, equal pay, and economic fairness regulation.
Billionaires - Biden has publicly called out the ridiculousness of billionaires paying less tax than”schoolteachers and firefighters” and has three times built minimum tax rates for billionaires of 20-25% into proposed legislation.
Corporate Price Gouging - “To any corporation that has not brought their prices back down — even as inflation has come down, even supply chains have been rebuilt — it’s time to stop the price gouging,” said Biden. “Give the American consumer a break.”
On Executive Pay - “No one is above the law,” Biden said in the statement, “and strengthening accountability is an important deterrent to prevent mismanagement in the future.”
The current law “limits the administration’s authority to hold executives responsible,” he said.
Don’t confuse what the public hears with what is being said. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mainstream press so complicit in supressing the messaging of a presidential administration in my lifetime - maybe in our history? (@anon61221983 maybe when Teddy Roosevelt enacted progressive reforms?) A lot of it is that simple competence is boring, but it goes beyond that. It’s the capture of media by corporate interests to actively support internecine conflict and corporatist agenda. Why buy into that narrative and inadvertently aid them?
Biden, who spoke in front of signs that read “America’s small business boom,” is trying to convince Americans of an economic rebound while polling shows hardened economic anxieties. Polls also suggest Biden’s support among Black and Latino voters in a hypothetical rematch against former President Donald Trump is lagging behind his performance in the 2020 election.
That language - as if he’s trying to promote something that isn’t objectively true - is a perfect example of why the mainstream media is complicit. Don’t get me started on their polls insinuating most of us are single-issue voters, so Democratic party candidates who don’t deliver perfect performance in every area won’t get enough votes to win an election. Meanwhile, Republican candidates for office aren’t even bothering to show up for work or getting anything meaningful accomplished, but I don’t see any polls or coverage in the mainstream media about that.
A different take on the same subject (with internal links about the administration’s “communications problem”) as covered by The Grio:
Given the fascist “Biden lets criminals run wild” propaganda, one would think this would make them stop and think. It will not. Facts are pretty much forbidden over there.
It returns to the question of whether or not who is president matters at all, given the power and reach of the American empire… if the empire is bi-partisan, does it matter who leads it?
Not sure I entirely agree, but certainly food for thought.
Maybe… I think that’s an argument to be made. But I do think that America going fully fascist would not help either.
I know the failure of Biden here, and how deep that is… but I don’t know if it’s helpful to think that Netanyahu and his right wing cronies are only just puppets of the American empire… I don’t think that stripping the Israeli government of agency is reflective of reality. It’s certainly true that the US has failed miserably to bring any change to the situation since Oslo, but how much of that was internal factors vs. external ones? As others have argued about the Cold War, it was something of a categorical error to just imagine that the great powers were the only ones making stuff happen, when people in the global south also shaped events, even if they did so from a less powerful position. The rise of the third world movement, however much it eventually failed the people supporting it, was an impactful event that shaped how the US and Soviets interacted with the global south. Just as much here, Netanyahu has been determined since the 90s to push his Greater Zionist agenda in Israel, and the Israel voting public is complicit in that (the failures of the Israel opposition didn’t help, either).
I don’t know… again, how would electing Trump again help? That seems to me that would just be throwing people under the bus (trans people, POC, women, etc) to stick it to white middle class Americans, who will not suffer nearly as much under a Trump presidency gone full fascist…
Yeah, for sure… of course we want to think we’re a force for good in the world… no one wants to feel like the bad guy… But that doesn’t help us to face facts.
I really don’t know what the answer is here… how do we fix shit without knowing what’s wrong (sticking our heads in the sand as to what American empire has been), but how do we fix shit when every answer is shot down as “not good enough - you should just suffer”?
I understand the anger the OP has. But if he really thinks a Trump administration is going to be the same as a Biden administration when it comes to Palestinian deaths, he’s deeply ignorant. Biden has not done well in stopping the killing. Trump would encourage it. He would use the power the US has to bolster Netanyahu and help make sure no Palestinians survived. He would also make life miserable for Palestinian Americans.
The OP seems to understand the US really has too much power and influence over the world. Disappointment and rage are not good reasons to pretty much invite the world to burn. The rest of the world is going to be much worse off if the US falls to fascism.
So while he has some good points about US power and how it gets used and not used, this guy can fuck right off.
ETA: he reads a lot like many Americans who are pissed off at Biden (often with very good reason!) And have decided to just forget about all the other harm Trump will cause. It’s very nihilistic.
One more thing, he’s absolutely right about the way the US abuses it’s power. But giving that power to Trump isn’t going to be equivalent to Biden retaining it.
Yeah, it feels really nihilistic to me? Which, I get… everything feels fucking bleak right now, not just with this assault on Gaza, but it feels like the forces of hate are winning here…
He already did, too. The abraham accords were certainly just cementing what was already a fact on the ground (no hope for a Palestinian state, etc), but given who Trump has backing him (violent theocrats who revel in the the death of anyone who is not them and who are actively seeking to destroy the world), he’ll actively back this genocide.
He’d do that by doing all he could to strip them of their citizenship, and send them to Gaza to be killed. They’ve already told us of their plans to make sure only the “right” people are American citizens and that sure doesn’t include Palestinians…
Agreed. And I can see how people are getting to that point.
And keep voting and fighting for the less bad. Over and over again. This is a mistake those on the left side have made. We need to keep pushing and have a long term plan.
I sincerely think the needle has moved with the Biden administration. Maybe it is misplaced hope? But I think progressives, real progressives, can make inroads in the more local areas and if we can get enough in the federal sphere, we can get the voting protections we need to halt this slide into fascism.
In the world sphere, we do need to push our leaders to use the power our country has responsibly, for the good of the world and not the US. I also think that with more progressive leaders maybe we can even give up some of that power, like our outsized control of the UN.
I dunno. The let-it-burn mentality is understandable but also infuriating to me. Things can get so much worse for everyone and the actual Earth. I don’t want to give up.
Edits: wow. I wonder what “progeasives” are and why my auto incorrect won’t catch it. Particularly slippery progressives?
I mean I guess if I believed the only way to improve my situation was to hasten the collapse of the US as quickly and painfully as possible in order to collapse its power and influence efficiently then I would want Trump in office.
So from his POV perhaps from his position of rather extreme privilege in Canada he doesn’t care because he doesn’t think he has to.
Why opinions like this are published at all I really don’t know. If your thesis is that this situation doesn’t matter to you then why the hell do I need to hear about it?
Yeah. It’s an angry, but incredibly myopic and foolish idea.
A second Biden administration would not try to pull US out of NATO or leave America’s allies hanging. It would not abandon Ukraine and curry favor with Putin, or flail brainlessly around without any coherent idea or competence when Iran, or China, or North Korea, or any other authoritarian nation caused trouble.
A Biden administration would not put climate change deniers in charge of climate policy, nor Covid truthers in charge of public health, nor far-right religious reactionaries in charge of family planning policy. It would listen to actual experts and scientists, even if it wouldn’t always follow their advice, and it would not stir the president’s followers up against people criticizing the administration.
And most importantly, when 2029 rolls around, Biden and his administration would not try to pull off a violent coup in order to cling to power.
So yeah. Even if we accept the idea that the American empire is bi-partisan, there would be a world of difference between one led by Biden and the Democrats, and one led by Trump and the GQP. The former is not ideal; the latter is unspeakably awful in every which way you might care about.
