I used ‘dirty pool’ with reference to the attempt to use ‘legislate according to the wishes of constituents’ as proof of bad character. And, yes, I would draw a distinction between pleasing constituents by supporting industries that employ many of them, and pleasing constituents by rubber-stamping everything a lawless President does. In the latter case, it would be fair to bring up such legislative activity as ‘proof of bad character’. In the former, you have a tougher case for fairness.
I partially agree with you on that one. The ‘please the corporations while making gains in social justice’ strategy has resulted in some actual gains in social justice. I applaud those. It’s quite possible they could not have been achieved by a fire-breathing leftist approach.
But, yes, the quest to please the upper 0.01% went too far in the Clinton and Obama years.
If you want to make the case that “that’s who he is,” then you need to explain why Biden didn’t spend the eight years as Vice President working full-tilt to grind down the financially-struggling.
A Vice President may not have the powers to issue Executive Orders or to introduce legislation, but he or she does have the power conferred by a very prominent soap box. Namely, a VP can give speeches, call for commissions and hearings, and generally communicate any platform he or she finds to be important.
Did Biden spend those years trying to convince the nation that those with financial problems shouldn’t have the option of bankruptcy? Did he spend any part of those years doing so?
If not, why not?
Is it possible that your attempt to smear him in this way—by putting forth the idea that screwing over struggling people was a passion project for Biden—is simply unjust and unjustified?
You know, a quick Google reminds me that over 200 000 children under the age of 5 died from malaria in 2017. Maybe there is a funnier billionaire indulgence to joke about in your next free money happy dance.
He supports congressional term limits and wants to repeal Citizens United to stop big money influence in DC. All democrats support the latter but I think he’s on his own for term limits.
Thanks! I somehow missed all of that, even having looked around the website. To me, his policies look like a scaled down version of the other candidates. His wealth tax is not as high as Elizabeth Warren. His school loan forgiveness is not as expansive as anyone’s. Even his ACA policy is not as expansive as Biden’s. He doesn’t specify any amount to his earned income tax credit, so it’s hard to know how expansive that would be.
Presumably this was aimed at me. If my remark seemed to disparage Bill Gates, it was through poor word choice. I have applauded Gates’ efforts right here on this Board.
I don’t have the mental aggravation of deciding how best to use my billions to benefit the world! It must be a real challenge to guess what charitable works will have the leverage to benefit humanity the most. But it’s no exaggeration to say the value of removing Trump from the White House can be measured in the Trillions of dollars. With a T. For starters, the lives lost a few days ago in a plane-shootdown should be attributed to the oaf who stirred up the hornet’s-nest. (Of course, even at a million dollars per soul, that shoot-down is a pittance toward a Trillions-dollar total. Start a new thread if you think my figure is too high. Or just Google “cost of climate change.”)
Will Bloomberg’s humanitarian effort affect the outcome in November 2020? Probably not. But if there’s even a 1% chance it will, it will be one of the most splendid and profitable charitable donations ever.
Most of the time, you can help your constituents in ways where the worst pain that others’ non-rich constituents might feel is slightly higher taxes. Biden helped them in ways that ruined many thousands of people’s lives, and continues to do so.
Big difference.
And the Reagan and Bush I and II and Trump years. IOW, it’s been going too far for the past 40 years, and has resulted in the massive and destructive gap in income and wealth inequality, and resulting political inequality, that we’re experiencing now.
The shell game that’s going on in terms of centrism is that Dems supposedly need to be centrist to win over those blue-collar workers in Wisconsin. But the actual Dem centrism is all about going easy on the rich.
And I don’t know how much gains it’s gotten us in the way of social justice. We’ve moved a long way towards equality for gays, but it sure looks like the huge disparities in wealth have helped enable the abuses that went largely unresponded to until the ‘me too’ movement of the past couple of years. And the wealthy were been largely oblivious for decades to the reality that our society was far from colorblind. So Dem centrism has been good for gays, not so good for women, and kinda useless for blacks.
He’d already racked up that big W. His work there was done.
Oh, come on. Of course there was more grinding-down-of-the-financially-struggling that Biden could have promoted during his VP years—if that truly is “who he is.” He could, for example, have worked to eliminate bankruptcy as an option altogether.
‘He’d already done it’ is weak. The attempt to smear Biden on this front is fatally damaged by his lack of ‘stick it to the struggling’ efforts during those eight years. It’s a smear that is struck down by basic logic.
I cannot think of anybody in the race or who has dropped out who I would not prefer over Biden. I guess I would pick Biden over Williamson. But for the rest I would pick them over Biden easily. Even that guy from Florida whose name I can’t remember.
Eliminating it entirely would require a Constitutional amendment. That’s a rather stiff challenge.
Oh, gimme a break. There really is a limit to how much money you can squeeze out of people who are already in desperate financial straits. The 2005 Bankruptcy Act is pretty damn close to that limit. There really wasn’t much more money to be made that way. He’d already all but maxed it out. Fight finished, and all that.
Where candidates stand on the issues may not matter much. Even in the unlikely event that the D’s hold 50 Senate seats, will they have the gumption to revoke the filibuster rule? No. Will they have the gumption to pack the Supreme Court? No. Will they be able to push an agenda opposed by Moscow Mitch and/or Brett Kavanaugh? No.
The major difference between a Biden Presidency and a Warren Presidency is that the latter would attract shrill hatred, impact business confidence, and probably increase the R’s electoral chances in 2022 and 2024.
I don’t particularly disagree with any of this. But what in heck is “that big W”?
