POLITICS SCHMALITICS

[Motown Bombers]

6 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Harris was the cipher of a vice president that every modern VP outside of Cheney has been. Even J.D. Couch****er is a big zero as far as that goes, no matter how loud he becomes or how many news cycles he hijacks. There is almost nothing in their vice presidency a candidate can point to and say that makes them qualified to be president, and Harris was no exception.

 Biden was the reason Obamacare got passed. Biden is the sole reason for Obama’s crowning achievement. 

[chasfh]

2 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

 Biden was the reason Obamacare got passed. Biden is the sole reason for Obama’s crowning achievement. 

Granted.

[Tiger337]

Biden should have been President and Obama VP from 2008-2016.  Then Obama should have run in 2016.  Obama is very smart, but may not have been ready for the presidency.  Biden was unimpressive intellectually, but knew how to work with Congress.  Biden was too old and senile at the end and a more experienced Obama would have been a better choice at that time.   

[Motown Bombers]

Biden should have ran in 2016 but Obama backstabbed him to clear the deck for Clinton. 

[CMRivdogs]

Anyone remember when the Grand Old Pedo Party championed “Family Values”

 

[romad1]

3 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Anyone remember when the Grand Old Pedo Party championed “Family Values”

 

But the cowboy hat!

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

Biden should have been President and Obama VP from 2008-2016.  Then Obama should have run in 2016.  Obama is very smart, but may not have been ready for the presidency.  Biden was unimpressive intellectually, but knew how to work with Congress.  Biden was too old and senile at the end and a more experienced Obama would have been a better choice at that time.   

FEIW, I don’t think Biden was clinically senile at the end. 

[Tiger337]

Just now, chasfh said:

FEIW, I don’t think Biden was clinically senile at the end. 

Not clinically, but he was very much in decline from his peak.  I don't know how far he fell between the end of his presidency and that debate, but that debate was uncomfortably embarrassing.  Trump was embarrassing too but being embarrassing is his baseline and his followers don't care anyway.   

[CMRivdogs]

Biden with only half a mind would still be better than Trump’s “genius” brains

[oblong]

He slowed down physically, and visually in terms of performance, but I am not convinced he couldn't do the job.  The mind is what matters and I wasn't there and I don't trust the media or staff members to give us an honest account.

But politically that stuff does matter and difficult conversations should have been had earlier.

[gehringer_2]

4 hours ago, Motown Bombers said:

 Biden was the reason Obamacare got passed. Biden is the sole reason for Obama’s crowning achievement. 

I would say that by the std of what a hopeless role it is, Biden and Gore both had pretty successful vice-presidencies - Biden didn't run, Gore lost his White House bid.  GHWB did win a Presidency from the VP but he had a really long resume prior, was well known pre-VP -- maybe even better than Biden was.

You can blame the press for some of Harris' problem - no doubt the MSM had their head up their butts through most of the Biden presidency, but whose fault it was is pretty much beside the point, it justs add to the premise that from 2020 t0 2024 Harris was not able to do much to build/burnish a public profile sufficient to help put her on a path to a win.

Edited 3 hours ago by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, Motown Bombers said:

Biden should have ran in 2016 but Obama backstabbed him to clear the deck for Clinton. 

Obama seems like a great guy, is a good campaigner and better orator, but his judgement as a political operative, party manager/leader was never in the same league with this other skills. 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Long before Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders came onto the scene, there were options to stop Donald Trump or a guy like him from taking control of the White House. The best way to have avoided Trump would have been to reelect Jimmy Carter in 1980. We likely don't get Trump if we didn't have the failed presidency of Reagan and the era of deregulation and union-busting that came about as a result. The next best way to have not gotten Trump was to elect Walter Mondale and stop/reverse much of what Reagan did. After that, it would have been to have had a progressive President like Jesse Jackson to reverse what Reagan did and bring back the New Deal era of the Democratic Party, minus the segregation and discrimination of course. After that, the next best time to have stopped Trump would have been to nominate someone like Paul Tsongas as the Democratic nominee for President in 1992 instead of the Diet Cola Republican that was Bill Clinton.

We got Trump as President not because of any one person, though Reagan and Clinton aided in him becoming President. We got Trump largely because of bad economic policies built around failed economic theory. Trickledown Economics and an era of deregulation gave us Trump. Not supporting the material conditions of working and retired Americans gave us Trump. This failed economic theory of putting the wealthy on top and assuming wealth would trickle down the pyramid was deeply flawed and always doomed to fail. It gave us an exploding wealth gap and stagnant wages. They gave us an economy where people's economic means were not keeping up with their cost of living. We got Trump because bad trade deals like NAFTA/CATFA/PNTR with China, guided by failed economic theory, crippled blue collar jobs and hollowed us industrial states. We got Trump because economic theory and big business told us that it is better to have employer-based, market-priced health insurance that leaves many uninsured, many more underinsured, and millions bankrupt due to costs they incurred after getting sick.

We didn't get a demagogue like Trump after FDR. Even though FDR had to deal with the worst economic crisis in our countries history, he and the Democrats gained strength through his Presidency. We got 4 terms of FDR because he was so beloved by Americans. And he was so beloved because he helped improved the economic well being of the average American and guided us through a World War, nearly to victory before dying. They buffered the economy with regulations like Glass-Stegall and prevented economic shocks like the Great Depression from routinely occurring. They improved the lot of the ordinary (white) American with Social Security, the Public Works Administration, federal jobs programs, National Industrial Recovery Act, Electric Home and Farm Authority, and more. These programs provided financial security and jobs for people so thy wouldn't fall into despair and become susceptible to demagogues like Trump. And they paid for it all and created financial stability with progressive income taxation on the wealthy and big business.

We can complain about who should have run when to stop Trump. While that has some relevancy, the real debate should be centered around policy. Bad policies, built around a failed economic theory of Trickledown Economics, being implemented are what lead to the material conditions of working and middle class Americans getting worse. The Presidents and Congresses who pushed them are certainly to blame.

Edited 2 hours ago by Mr.TaterSalad

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

The best way to have avoided Trump would have been to reelect Jimmy Carter in 1980. We likely don't get Trump if we didn't have the failed presidency of Reagan and the era of deregulation and union-busting that came about as a result

The problem is the economy might not have survived 4 more years of JC. We were headed for hyperinflation and Carter - and much of the traditional central banking community, had no idea what to do about it. Looking back I find it weird because the one thing Carter was, was a smart guy. If he have been willing to sit down with a Paul Volker or Milton Friedman or maybe even James Baker he certainly had the intellect to understand why it was critical that the 'new' monetarist paradigm had to be put in place at the Federal Reserve. But for whatever reason he never got there, and for all the talk about the Rose Garden and Iran, it was inflation that doomed his presidency. His fecklessness on Iran was just icing on the cake of a failed economic situation. I really wanted him to succeed, but at that point in his life he (and his team) were too sure of themselves to see when they needed to go get some better advice.

Edited 58 minutes ago by gehringer_2