# Is there anything about Biden that you actually admire? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 11, 2020, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047 "2020-07-11T19:41:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/242 "2020-08-13T23:17:29Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > Mispronouncing unfamiliar words is not evidence of cognitive decline, either. If it isn’t cognitive decline, it’s evidence of an ongoing low level of cognitive function. Most people know how to pronounce words like Thailand and Yosemite. They’re not that uncommon. But even if somebody didn’t know how to pronounce these words, they would learn how to pronounce them if they were appearing in the text of a speech they were delivering. That’s just basic preparation; it’s the kind of thing that’s expected of high school students. Trump either isn’t capable of learning simple words or he doesn’t feel like he needs to bother learning simple things. Either one of these disqualifies him from being President. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/243 "2020-08-14T01:07:44Z")
I distrust Biden because he’s a die-hard centrist, but he strikes me as intelligent, compassionate, and definitely not senile, and not batshit insane and sociopathic like Trump. There’s not even a comparison there. In general we should move away from super old white men as presidents, sure, but Biden is way more “there” than Trump ever was or could be. As for Sanders, eh, let’s leave him out of this, maybe? This thread is convoluted enough as it is… More relevant might be Kamala. If she does become president midterm, any idea what her platform is likely to be? Similar to Biden’s? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/244 "2020-08-14T01:17:05Z")
You’re free to assert whatever beliefs you like, but I’m quite certain that you have to be a mentally decaying idiot not to know how to say Yosemite. Plus, as pointed out, what kind of retarded idiot goes on stage and reads something he never read before cold? Some aspiring soul should put “Eye emm aystoo pidcry minal” in the teleprompter and see if he notices. Even odds, he wouldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/245 "2020-08-14T02:07:18Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > You’re free to assert whatever beliefs you like, but I’m quite certain that you have to be a mentally decaying idiot not to know how to say Yosemite. Not sure I agree with you, but yeah it is a bit [culturally ingrained how to pronounce Yosemite.](https://youtu.be/RAwu30MWHH8?t=12) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/246 "2020-08-14T04:22:58Z")
Those cartoons taught me a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/247 "2020-08-14T04:33:14Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Some aspiring soul should put “Eye emm aystoo pidcry minal” in the teleprompter and see if he notices. Even odds, he wouldn’t. Or maybe something like “Eye Ear Bye Ree Zine Has Press Indent Uvda You Knighted Stay Sah Vah Mare Ika”. You know, just some random legally binding nonsense words. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_was\_in\_Saudi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b77776/32.png) [@Paul\_was\_in\_Saudi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_was_in_Saudi)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/248 "2020-08-14T10:45:09Z")
He raised good children under difficult circumstances. He is loyal to his family. ---
**Author:** ![Folacin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/folacin/32/3195_2.png) [@Folacin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folacin)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/249 "2020-08-14T20:13:30Z")
Putting aside if the first brood are good people or not, what difficult circumstances? Bankruptcies and cheating on their mother? Being raised by someone who can at least pretend to be a billionaire hardly seems difficult. Unless I missed, tag, in which case “excuuuuuuse meeee”. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/250 "2020-08-14T21:57:38Z")
I believe he’s referring to Biden not Trump. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/251 "2020-08-14T22:17:44Z")
I don’t agree that incrementalism caused the problems we face. It’s the opposite: the rejection of the concept by a portion of the electorate meant that we didn’t have enough votes to keep doing it. Remember, young people generally don’t vote, and they are the ones targeted with this “the perfect is the enemy of the good” rhetoric, as they are the only ones naive enough to fall for it. Not a slight on them–they just lack experience and tend to be idealists, which makes them ripe picking for this dumb logic. I’d’ve fallen for it too, if I’d been a progressive in my college years. Their refusal to vote is what keeps a country that is further left still pulling to the right of its people. The whole accelerationism argument has always been bad because it ignores that the cost. It ignores that part of accelerating the problems is making it harder to pull us back. Once you become a dictatorship, pulling back democracy is hard. Look at Russia, China, etc. There’s a reason democracy involved the peaceful turnover of power and was seen as the better solution. And those are the two options: accelerationism or incrementalism. Democracy involves compromise, meaning there will always be a counterweight to those pushing forward. That’s part of why you push further forward than you actually would be satisfied with, just like in any negotiation. But so is the other side, and the last thing you ant to do is just give into them. We’re this close to full on dictatorship. Trump is trying to prevent elections. Once that happens, the United States is over. We lose. We’re in a dictatorship. So you either oppose Trump, and have him lose “big league,” or even if we claw back from the edge now, the next guy will see his tactics are effective and try them again. Hence why there’s nothing wrong with running a candidate who is more likely to appeal to everyone. Not perfectly, as that’s not possible. But there is something in Biden for everyone. And that tends to make for what we label a “moderate liberal” candidate. The most important thing right now for America is that dictatorship/fascism/whatever you want to call it LOSES. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_was\_in\_Saudi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b77776/32.png) [@Paul\_was\_in\_Saudi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_was_in_Saudi)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2020, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/252 "2020-08-15T01:27:19Z")
I am sorry if I was unclear. I was offering some thoughts of the admirable traits of Vice President Biden. ---
**Author:** ![Folacin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/folacin/32/3195_2.png) [@Folacin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folacin)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2020, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/253 "2020-08-15T01:45:43Z")
And if I had assumed you were responding to the actual topic of the thread, I probably could have figured that out. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2020, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/254 "2020-08-16T23:33:49Z")
This kinda sums it up for most people it seems: > **[Poll: 58% of Biden voters say vote is more "against" Trump than "for" Biden](https://www.axios.com/2020/08/16/biden-trump-poll-against)** > > But Biden still has a 50%-41% lead nationally. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2020, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/255 "2020-08-16T23:53:16Z")
It would be hard for that not to be the case. Biden would have to be the second coming of Jesus for the magnitude of his positive qualities to exceed the magnitude of Trump’s negative qualities. It’s unreasonable for any candidate to not have “not Trump” as their primary positive. Frankly, I’m a little worried about the 42% that seem to think Trump isn’t that bad, but they just like Biden better. ---
**Author:** ![Nonsuch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonsuch/32/2922_2.png) [@Nonsuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nonsuch)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/256 "2020-08-17T00:08:35Z")
That percentage might be lower if the nominee were, say, Bernie Sanders – but there’d be a hell of a lot fewer voters answering the question. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/257 "2020-08-17T00:38:50Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > It’s unreasonable for any candidate to not have “not Trump” as their primary positive. Agreed. Trump talks like a dictator. He is trying to throw the results of the coming election, by suppressing a large group of votes likely to go against him – postal votes – as would a shakey new dictator. And I don’t want to live in a dictatorship (although family ties mean that I may have to). So, if I could name the exact person, who I most admire, to get the Democratic nomination, my vote would still be more against Trump. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/258 "2020-08-17T15:07:44Z")
Inevitably someone will retort that you’re engaging in dictator hyperbole, and that you’re off your chain for making that suggestion. Let’s suppose that this is true and that we’re nowhere close to becoming a fascist dictatorship - fine. Let’s just settle on the already apparent fact that Republicans have successfully obstructed politics for at least a decade and will continue to do so as long as they have anything close to a majority, even if they don’t actually have the majority outright. Let’s also acknowledge that they have successfully stacked the judiciary with right wing judges, including an alarming number of whom are barely or not-at-all ABA qualified. I also found a very interesting article on Politico over the weekend, and it’s worth taking time to read as it contrasts Biden and Obama. If the article is accurate, most people who are familiar with Biden would acknowledge that he’s probably not on the same level as Obama or Clinton in terms of intellect, but Biden compensates for it by being a good deal-maker and seems to read people and rooms a lot better than some of his wonkier counterparts, and that whether we think it should or shouldn’t matter, more often than not, that actually does matter in Washington. > **[‘The President Was Not Encouraging’: What Obama Really Thought About Biden](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/14/obama-biden-relationship-393570)** > > Behind the friendship was a more complicated relationship, which now drives the former vice president to prove his partner wrong. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/259 "2020-08-17T15:09:26Z")
Which is not surprising - this is typical when an incumbent is up for reelection. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/260 "2020-08-17T15:14:51Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > More relevant might be Kamala. If she does become president midterm, any idea what her platform is likely to be? Similar to Biden’s? Maybe, but what’s more likely is that any platform will be determined by what voters aggressively push for. Whether it’s Biden or Harris, it’s hard to just push your own ideas through congress without broad support. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047/261 "2020-08-17T15:35:16Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > …I also found a very interesting article on Politico over the weekend, and it’s worth taking time to read as it contrasts Biden and Obama. If the article is accurate, most people who are familiar with Biden would acknowledge that he’s probably not on the same level as Obama or Clinton in terms of intellect, but Biden compensates for it by being a good deal-maker and seems to read > people and rooms a lot better than some of his wonkier counterparts, and that whether we think it should or shouldn’t matter, more often than not, that actually does matter in Washington. > > [‘The President Was Not Encouraging’: What Obama Really Thought About Biden - POLITICO](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/14/obama-biden-relationship-393570) Good article - thanks, **asahi**! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-about-biden-that-you-actually-admire/915047.md?page=14)