Facts and “truth” are different things. A fact is something that is or isn’t, but people construct their own reality, their own “truth”, and facts don’t always matter. People are more likely to construct their own truth when they feel threatened as a group, which white conservatives do now. They realize that their socioeconomic and cultural dominance is being challenged by demography, and they’re not just going to sit around and accept this powershift as an inevitability. They’re going to fight to defend their dominance.
Beyond the group of tribal zealots, you have a lot of other people who don’t necessarily identify with the tribe, but they want Biden to stop fucking around and fix shit. I actually liked today’s speech - it’s overdue. I like the fact that he pissed off some people in the FDA and CDC and overrode their desires to adhere to their usual procedures when it’s clear we’re dealing with an ever-evolving threat that demands a real-time response. I wish he’d bring some of his Generals into he Oval Office, and invite Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema and tell them that they can’t fucking leave the room until they agree to the stimulus package and tax increases for corporations and billionaires. He needs to be a strongman. FDR knew that he needed to be a strongman, and he was one. We need Biden to be a strongman now.
I think Biden is too afraid of losing the support of moderates. He will lose their support, and the support of progressives, but trying to govern by consensus. He needs to read the air. This is a time for a strongman. I don’t know if Biden has it in him because he’s an institutionalist, but institutions are dying. We need an aggressive left wing authoritarian populist.
And that is fine - if they are Republicans in Democrats clothing, then let’s expose that. But I also think that the right kind of Democrat could find out what the working class people that Democrats used to carry really want and need, and then go after it. Timidity, fear of losing the center, will be the end of democracy in this country. Biden has to be an aggressive, in-your-face, unapologetic progressive. That is it. Full stop. He will look weak trying to lasso in these different coalitions. We need a Huey Long, an FDR. Not a centrist. The days of centrism are over.
Biden needs to dominate the opposition. I don’t know if he has it in him.
I haven’t seen much evidence of this, he’s governed pretty far left, he’s implementing an OSHA based vaccine mandate as of today etc. If anything progressive should be salivating at how far left Biden has actually governed.
As I said, today was a welcome development – I like that. I hope that he can follow through on the major stimulus provided that he can find ways to tax the billionaire class. And that is going to be the tricky part, because the billionaire class gets rich off the stock market, and guess what - so do a lot of 50-60 somethings who are approaching retirement. Obviously they don’t get Jeff Bezos rich, but they have Roth IRAs and 401Ks they can draw from. Over the long term, though, we’re better off as a whole society not relying on investment markets and instead ensuring that the labor class has livable wages, benefits, etc.
There was a definite turning point with this. For probably a century, the standard mainstream “news” media standard was that if a politician lied, the story would say:
“Mr Politician says X. This credible source and that credible source say Y”
and leave it at that. I remember to the moment the first time things got so bad a news story simply said “President Trump said X, which is false”. Then the floodgates opened.
I think this is a big part of it. At least from the Gingrich era on.
The Republicans have been the good ol’ boys whose approach to problems has been “hold ma beer and watch this” and their supporters think their efforts are simple, brave, and admirable, and just laugh when they make a worse mess.
The Democrats are the earnest college grads who have announce they have studied the problem carefully and come up with a clever solution. All the simple folks just love to point out when something goes wrong and the college grads aren’t so smart after all.
FDR was nothing like Huey. FDR’s aversion to peacetime deficits would have greatly frustrated you.
But, if you really want an authoritarian populist, Long is a model there.
There was an issue at Long’s failed Louisiana impeachment where a woman, frequently described as a hula dancer, accused him of what she then called being frisky, and perhaps would today call assault. If you want an authoritarian, you’re going to have to take the good with the bad.
With the caveat that before LBJ, “Democrat” and “Republican” didn’t necessarily have the same respective alignment to a “center-right pov” that they do now.
We see the same phenomenon from the candidates and voters. Democratic candidates offer comprehensive plans and a legislative agenda (see Elizabeth Warren), Republicans just offer vapid slogans (Make America Great Again). The voters expect Democratic candidates to spell out what their agendas are, the last Republican platform said basically “we support whatever DJT wants to do”.
Little Nemo’s point about the 100% black and white is well taken. The red tribe is 100% loyal to the tribe, Republicans (and DJT in particular) are as incapable of error as Jesus was of sinning. In the red tribe, you MUST oppose each and every thing that any Democrat does, even if it goes against your economic interest or even your health. That’s just the way politics works these days, and this is the way it will work as long as the Republican Party exists in its current form.
I think it’s important to appreciate that the unusual thing is Trump’s treatment in the media, not Biden’s.
Most of Western media, most of the time, is critical of its leaders. Even if they’re doing a generally good job, there’s always areas that need improvement and “areas of improvement” have big ramifications when you’re a world leader.
Two things happened in the US.
First is the right-wing bubble, which has snowballed since the Murdoch empire, and which started to see their role as defending Republicans, and attacking Democrats no matter what. I know that some will make the claim that left-wing media does the same, but that just isn’t true, and we’ve been reminded of that in the coverage of the Afghan pullout.
The second thing is Trumpism, which pretty much no-one anticipated.
Supporters of Trump very much enjoy that he says things that “rattle the libs” or whatever. At first, when Trump was just one of many Republican candidates, all the media, left and right, would report his words as being nuts and for sure his nomination prospects were over. But when his support proved resilient, they had to scramble to adjust to the new reality.
In the end, we *did* have 4 years of the MSM delivering “Trump just said / did this crazy thing!” but they couldn’t make a big deal about any particular scandal because there’d be another one tomorrow, and his supporters were loyal enough that there’d never be enough pressure on Republicans to do anything.
And of course the right-wing media decided to follow him down the rabbit hole to the point where there’s little difference now between FOX and Infowars.
I disagree. I think if Biden goes too far to the left, and he may already have, he risks alienating the (IMO very large) contingent of people who voted AGAINST Trump, not necessarily FOR Biden, including a lot of people who otherwise would and have voted Republican. If he pushes too hard, then people start thinking that maybe Trump 2024 isn’t so bad by comparison.
THAT is what he needs to be most concerned about, not actually trying to get progressive stuff done. I think the Democrats will do far better if they can line up 8 years of relatively calm and dignified presidencies, rather than trying to ram through years of pent-up progressive policies in the two years they have control of everything.
I don’t disagree, but what sort of bone are you going to throw to this contingent? What policy will excite this group, that Biden may be able to get thru?
This is exactly the kind of double-standard being alluded to in the OP. When repubs have power, and even when they don’t, they have a free hand and can push as hard as they can to the right. When it’s dems, they’re supposed to find middle ground, and target independents, yadda yadda.
The fact is, as much as people like Sanders and AOC get painted as extremists, even on MSM, a lot of things they advocate for have majority support across the country. I don’t think Biden should try to push it all, but at least some of it, sure, and not in a watered down form.
All he’s got to do is not be Trump and not get too extreme, and he should be good from what I can tell.
But mistaking his victory for a mandate is going to get him into trouble in a shorter time frame than that would. It’s not like we can attribute Biden’s victory to higher turnout among Democrats alone; there was high turnout across the board- highest in the 21st century, and higher than all but four twentieth century elections. It was the mix of voters that did the trick, and I’m of the opinion that a large number of them were voting against Trump more than for Biden.
Which means the last thing you want to do is make them consider whether Trump may have been better than what Biden’s bringing to the table.
And as for the Democrats pushing to the left like the Republicans push to the right… that would work if the Democrats had a single coherent hymnal that all of them sing from. But there isn’t one. AOC wants some things, Biden wants others, Bernie a third set, and Sinema wants other stuff. And they criticize the shit out of each other, which doesn’t make for a good unified front. If they could all get together, agree on a minimal set of agreed upon things, and push in a unified way with coherent and unified messaging, they might get somewhere. But right now? I think they’re as likely to alienate a lot of people who weren’t fully on board with the Democratic party in the first place, and who only voted that way because they were put out with Trump.