4 Likes
Good overview, though I’d alter his 3rd point. My summary:
Biden is complicit in the deaths of 35,000 Palestinians, nearly 15,000 of whom are children, and the displacement of over 1 million Palestinians. “How much of that blood is on our President’s and by extension on our hands?”
Whatever Biden does from now on is too little too late. He’s irreparably damaged his reputation with his own base, and he’s too trusting of flawed institutions and weakly unwilling to challenge those flaws.
We need to vote for Biden anyway. Tromp would be worse [duh].
I guess I’m lucky that I don’t “need” to vote for him, since like some others, I live in a solidly blue state. Cornel West will get my vote, whether he’s on the ballot or as a write-in.
I also dislike his overall implication that the only power we have is our vote. Protesting in various ways works too, so I’m glad to hear him at least add a footnote at the end acknowledging that.
5 Likes
Agree with all except the conclusion of “solidly blue state.” Recall 2016 and the reliably blue “Blue Wall” crumbling. I am not one to tell anybody how to vote (other than not for the orange turd) but I feel the risk of another ■■■■■ term is too great to take that chance. What has happened in Gaza, and the way-too-long delayed, fairly anemic response is not a selling point at all, of course. But the potential global disaster Il Douche and his cronies are openly planning would be so much worse.
10 Likes
6 Likes
After reading HCR’s coverage of all the changes made by the Biden administration, it’s pretty clear who is promoting that bs “brand.”
6 Likes
This. And for those of us in solidly Dem or GOP districts, it’s often our only meaningful power, as you imply. I’m voting undecided in the primary, for example.
I somewhat disagree with his 2nd point, too. For one thing, we don’t know what the administration has been doing in the background. We will likely not learn what’s really been going on, for good or for bad, for months or years yet. Treating the Biden admin as if they control the Israeli government is problematic on all kinds of levels. For another, one of Biden’s strengths during his first term has been listening. He’s responded to the undecided primary vote protest by changing policy. It’s gotten through to him. I would like it if he’d listen more to the student protests, but there is still time.
Liberals who fail to allow government to listen and learn need to get used to bad government. There are people who still complain about the Biden admin’s actions in the railroad workers’ strike, even after the administration worked for months to help the unions get what they needed.
5 Likes
This, this, this. You should vote for Biden no matter where you are.
2 Likes
When it comes to voting, USians can be pretty individualistic and private about that (ironically enough, perhaps). You’re not the boss of me, and I’ll vote for who I want to vote for, thanks all the same.
6 Likes
As I said in my comment, I am not going to tell anyone how to vote. (See @milliefink’s reply to see why.) However, I don’t have any problem with making (what I consider to be) a logical argument for what I think is the right thing to do. Issuing commands is a very RWNJ way to approach this thing, IMHO. I will be voting for Biden, even though I disagree with some of what he has done. Hell, if a rancid pile of dingo kidneys was the Dem nominee, I would campaign for that over Il Douche. Just a thought.
5 Likes
4 Likes
I think the world depends on Trump losing, but the hell at this point I feel like I could just declare to say a Palestinian-American that they need to grow up and vote for someone who’s been enabling the slaughter of thousands of people like them.
8 Likes
Yeah, that would be… Very not good. Asbestos underwear level not good.
5 Likes
I understand that!
The shittiest thing, perhaps, is that the other option would not just enable such slaughter, but gleefully encourage it.
2 Likes
In a strategy Axios describes as “trying to trump Trump” on issues with which the former president has an advantage with voters, the Biden administration is reportedly poised not just to keep many of the tariffs that Trump raised on Chinese goods, but also to add on new ones targeting electric vehicles and solar panels. Biden is also reportedly considering issuing new restrictions on immigration at the southern border, limiting the number of people who can claim asylum once they’ve crossed into the U.S.
7 Likes
Wow, TIL Axios is overflowing with Biden-bashing articles. 
6 Likes
Things are looking bad for Biden’s chances in the fall, and his handling of both the Gaza crisis and the related campus protest movement across the United States are both playing a major role. This is not a good thing. If Trump gets back to the White House, and I cannot repeat this enough, there is no reason to be confident that democratic institutions will survive, nor that he will ever willingly leave office again.
…
The problem is — and I will keep banging this drum as long as I have to — Biden’s incoherence on Israel and Palestine is both morally unforgivable and bad political strategy. He is bleeding support not only from young people, Arab-Americans, and others incensed with his continued support for a genocidal war machine, but also from pro-Israel moderates and Never Trump conservatives who are enraged at his furtive and contradictory efforts to ever-so-slightly rein that war machine in. I’ll give more details about that incoherence below. For now, I’ll just say that by trying to make everyone a little happy, he is making no one happy, as the pile of Palestinian corpses grows at his feet.
But that’s the narrow part of the question in the context of American politics. The bigger issue for me is why Biden’s management of the human catastrophe in Gaza is so salient. My answer is that it points to the larger and even more consequential failures of liberal politics over the last four to eight years.
Biden famously came out of semi-retirement to run for president because of the 2017 Nazi riot in Charlottesville — a riot whose white-nationalist participants Trump very clearly supported at the time. He declared in his 2020 election victory speech that “in this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed.” In other words, he ran on was in large part an antifascist platform, and won.
Four years later, his rhetoric and examples are almost exactly the same. At that White House event last month to which I was inexplicably invited, Biden again invoked Charlottesville. And again he warned of Trump’s uniquely authoritarian impulses. The only sign that time had passed were new references to liberal internationalism, mostly about helping Ukraine “fight off Putin.” The juxtaposition was telling. Biden’s vision of antifascism seems to be twofold: 1) Keep electing Democrats, and him in particular. 2) Arm America’s allies to the teeth and use them to defeat anything that smacks of the emerging Russian-Chinese-Iranian “axis.” That seems to be it. There is no step three.
That isn’t an antifascist politics in any sense worthy of the term. The fact that Trump is still the undisputed leader of a major political party — not only running in his third straight election but showing good odds of winning his first-ever national popular majority — is proof enough that the approach has failed. You can blame the kids and those “so vehemently opposed to Israel” as much as you want. But by monomaniacally focusing on electoral outcomes and a battle of personalities against Trump, Biden and those who unreflexively support him don’t just ignore the real causes of the rising wave of right-wing authoritarianism. They far too often concede the false premises on which that wave feeds itself.
7 Likes
[ETA]
In case you’re interested in seeing the whole speech he gave…
6 Likes
Make up your mind, Joe. Do their voices matter? Why aren’t you listening?
4 Likes
