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Biden presidency and 2024 election campaign

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watt price tully Scorpio



Joined: 15 May 2007


PostPosted: Fri Jan 22, 2021 7:31 pm
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doriswilgus wrote:
Well,I think Biden has got off to a good start already,overturning many of Trump’s most odious policies.The ban on Muslim travlellers,the stupid wall with Mexico,withdrawing from the Paris climate change accord,withdrawing from WHO.And that was only the first day!Soon there will be nothing left of Trump,except for he stench he left behind.


Yep and after 400,000 deaths actually doing something about CornaVirus especially not calling it a cold or a flu, not suggesting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment and not suggesting IV bleach as Dr Donny was suggesting.

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doriswilgus 



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Location: the great southern land

PostPosted: Fri Jan 22, 2021 8:39 pm
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Good point^.I forgot about Biden’s response to the Coronavirus.But that’s the most important change he has made so far,and one that needs to be addressed urgently.
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Lazza 



Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:35 am
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Biden is reuniting the mothers and children separated at the Border. As a retired Social worker, I found this to be a vile cruel act of bastardry even by Trumpian standards of gutter right wing policies perpetrated on the vulnerable and the poor. By geez Trump was truly an Arsehole🤬 Good bloody riddance to the biggest wanker of all time😡
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PyreneesPie Pisces

PyreneesPie


Joined: 22 Aug 2014


PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2021 1:39 pm
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Lazza wrote:
Biden is reuniting the mothers and children separated at the Border. As a retired Social worker, I found this to be a vile cruel act of bastardry even by Trumpian standards of gutter right wing policies perpetrated on the vulnerable and the poor. By geez Trump was truly an Arsehole🤬 Good bloody riddance to the biggest wanker of all time😡


Right on Lazza. What a total, narcissistic prick of the highest order!

It was simply so uplifting to see a man with true courage, moral substance and strong character take on the leadership of a world power. Geez, there might be hope for humanity yet. Smile
To be accompanied by a black, female deputy was delicious icing on the cake!!!
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2021 8:33 pm
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When has Biden ever showed courage? Serious question.

I have no problem with people liking him and being relieved that Trump is gone, but seeing such superlatives being thrown at a lifelong right-wing politician, tormenter of the disadvantaged and dedicated servant of big money interests is a little bewildering. He’s not Trump, sure, but beyond that...

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Pies4shaw Leo

pies4shaw


Joined: 08 Oct 2007


PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2021 9:12 pm
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^ He's not Trump.
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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 12:36 am
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David wrote:
When has Biden ever showed courage? Serious question.

The very question shows how narrowly you're approaching the matter. This is a bloke who has nearly lost an entire family to tragedy. His young wife and daughter in one, suddenly. One of his sons in another very different type of tragedy, gradually, and still relatively young. That for a start would finish most of us, you included, let alone deter us from making a third presidential bid.

Meanwhile, his other son, Hunter, lost his mother, sister and later his brother while very young himself. His struggles are hardly surprising, the conflict of interest problem notwithstanding.

Compare that sort of courage to its fraudulent counterpart, Trump's pathological dissociative form of 'never admitting you're wrong', 'never admitting defeat' and 'never giving up'. The latter's disease is rooted in a complete inability to introspect honestly; in a permanent Big Lie to self and others.

Whatever else Biden might be, and agree with him or not, he is clearly empathetic and strikes a good balance between vision and realism, toughness and sensitivity. That's why Sanders is able to be central to his government and why he remains close to the eminently sane and decent Obama, a one-time opponent who beat him in 2008. Neither Sanders nor Obama would be allowed near an administration led by a self-glorying narcissist like a Clinton or a Blair, let alone a vicious malignant narcissist like Trump, no matter how much they have to offer.

Sure, after so many years in politics he's, well, a politician, but he has important strengths, and was the right person at the right moment. There's still plenty of time for him to disappoint and deserve our wrath, confirming your assumptions. But if you can't see that his empathy is intrinsic, even if played up, and stands in stark and welcome relief to Trump's malignant narcissism, then you're no longer even trying to challenge your own assumptions.

One should never get too excited about any human, let alone a politician, but it's okay to accept strengths where they genuinely exist. He certainly lacks the obvious psychiatric flaws of a mental case like Trump, so his strengths have a chance of nudging things in a better direction beyond simply cleaning up the chaos Trump left behind, which itself will be difficult.

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think positive Libra

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Joined: 30 Jun 2005
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:21 am
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Well said PTID, not to mention spending his twilight years in a very high pressure job knowing full well his life is now fair game to everyone.

Hopefully the numbers of virus victims takes a steep turn.

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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 9:21 am
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pietillidie wrote:
That for a start would finish most of us, you included, let alone deter us from making a third presidential bid.


You can’t possibly know that, though. Personal tragedy affects people differently and unexpectedly, and I don’t think we ought to give particular credit to those who respond by continuing to ruthlessly pursue personal achievement compared with someone in a similar situation who chooses to retire to care for surviving family members, to radically change their careers or even to drop out of public life altogether to look after themselves in peace. Do those paths take any less courage?

I have never accepted simplistic (particularly beloved of Americans) narratives about personal adversity and success because doing what Biden did can just as much be a narrative of suppression as catharsis. Particularly as what he did with his life afterwards was not noble and fearless but so often mean, dishonest and opportunistic. As a politician, he has never, to my knowledge, done anything that, say, risked his career or electability on a matter of principle, which is ordinarily what we think of when we talk about "courageous" politicians, and why I posed the question I did to Doris. The word "courage" actually means something, and I wouldn’t use it lightly, even for people I like and admire.

As for his much-vaunted empathy, I can appreciate that he comes across as kindly and caring in personal interactions. But that empathy seems to drop away pretty quickly when it comes to his political decisions, such as when he voted to authorise the Iraq War, or campaigned for impoverished people with drug problems to have their lives ruined, or spoke out against black students being integrated into white schools. When I think of Biden the senator, clips like this come to mind:

https://youtu.be/mAYSuiQBSyQ

Can this footage be at all reconciled with the Biden that you’re presenting to us? Or is it possible you’ve been a little too seduced by the massive PR campaign around his latest presidential bid, which is based on the (again, quintessentially American) notion that the person one votes for must not only be competent at their job but also personally admirable and praiseworthy – and that if there’s no conceivable reason for a candidate to be the subject of a cult of personality, we’ll invent one anyway?
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Pies4shaw Leo

pies4shaw


Joined: 08 Oct 2007


PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:22 am
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Hopefully, he's a proper career-politician and will just play to his new constituency. If he does, he'll do the right thing because his advice will be markedly different in this present role. He doesn't have to be "courageous", "smart" or even "awake" - he just has to sign what sensible advisers tell him to sign.
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:27 am
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^ I don't disagree at all with that, P4S. It's possible that, on balance, he might turn out to be quite a good president. I'm certainly no purist and am ultimately far more interested in outcomes – however and by whomever they're achieved – than in personal virtues. It's just some of the excessive adulation being flung around right now that I find hard to stomach. I totally understand and to some extent myself feel the relief at Trump's replacement with a normal, functional administration ... but, I mean, "the new enlightenment"!?!? FMD Laughing
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Pies4shaw Leo

pies4shaw


Joined: 08 Oct 2007


PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 10:59 am
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Yes, he's scarcely Voltaire. I was hoping, rather, for Danton on a good day.
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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:04 am
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David wrote:
pietillidie wrote:
That for a start would finish most of us, you included, let alone deter us from making a third presidential bid.

You can’t possibly know that, though.

I think most of us know a heck of a lot about this. In case you haven't noticed, much less than that weighs incredibly heavy on most people's lives. You're surely experienced enough in life to conclude that unless Biden is a psychopath (and we've ruled that out already), such events will have weighed on him enormously.

David wrote:
I have never accepted simplistic (particularly beloved of Americans) narratives about personal adversity and success because doing what Biden did can just as much be a narrative of suppression as catharsis. Particularly as what he did with his life afterwards was not noble and fearless but so often mean, dishonest and opportunistic.

I also don't disagree with P4S, but you're the one who asked about 'courage'. If you mean 'the neurochemistry which motivates action', the realm of pure science rather than embedded human behaviour, then say it and we can discuss the pure science. By your subsequent definition there is no such thing as courage, empathy, goodwill, or selflessness, and every single act can be reduced to catharsis or the self-serving. Every single last act, indeed, including your concern with fairness, expressions of empathy, support of the underdog, scepticism of power, etc. All that goes with it, if that's what you're really arguing.

Honestly, you're getting dragged into the leftist abyss of wanting to be purer than the rest of humanity. So much so that you can't, after the severest personal tragedy imaginable, after two failed attempts at something incredibly stressful, in old age, concede to common culture and agree that most people including yourself are unlikely to push through that to lead a government in a dire predicament. Jeebus me.

You don't need to buy Hollywood storylines to accept it's fortuitous and indeed optimistic that this character Biden is about at this time. He's not perfect. He won't give you everything you want (although he's already elevated Sanders beyond his likely standing otherwise). But we do need better global leadership to deal with critical problems from the death and destruction of the pandemic to climate change, and fast.

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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:45 am
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pietillidie wrote:
David wrote:
pietillidie wrote:
That for a start would finish most of us, you included, let alone deter us from making a third presidential bid.

You can’t possibly know that, though.

I think most of us know a heck of a lot about this. In case you haven't noticed, much less than that weighs incredibly heavy on most people's lives. You're surely experienced enough in life to conclude that unless Biden is a psychopath (and we've ruled that out already), such events will have weighed on him enormously.


Why are you shifting the goalposts? Of course it weighs heavily; how could it not? Many of us have experienced personal tragedy in one form or another and actually have some inkling of what it's like to try to get on with our lives, relationships and careers afterwards; to try to conflate that experience with an act of courage of the kind that was being discussed is at best Oprah talk show discourse – and, frankly, kind of insulting.

I don't see myself as purer than anything or anyone, and have no idea where you're getting that from. You're the one who's indulging the near-veneration of a pretty questionable political figure with a pretty sordid track record, and seemingly getting annoyed at a critical response to it.

We could armchair psychologise each other all day, but I just fundamentally disagree with you here: I very much don't think Biden is the right man at the right time, and in fact am quite sure the Democratic Party couldn't have picked anyone worse from the available contenders (excepting the monstrous Bloomberg and perhaps a couple of the more right-leaning no-hopers who were never in serious contention). As P4S says, perhaps none of that will matter and the mood of the time plus the people he surrounds himself with will, paradoxically, lead to this being a sensible and relatively progressive administration, and if so, good: that's all we ultimately need to care about, not whether Biden is a nice guy or not. But that doesn't mean that we should entertain or tolerate characterisations that paint this president as something he is not, nor attempts to use such adulation to quash urgently necessary criticism.

(Why do you keep saying Biden elevated Sanders to some key appointment, by the way? Sanders has been the ranking member of the budget committee on the Democratic side since 2015, when he was appointed to the position by Harry Reid. He's only in the position of power he's in now because the Democratic Party has regained control of the Senate for the first time in six years. Nothing to do with Biden. See here: https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/politics/2014/12/12/sanders-budget-committee-ranking-member/20330113/)

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 12:58 pm
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David wrote:
pietillidie wrote:
David wrote:
pietillidie wrote:
That for a start would finish most of us, you included, let alone deter us from making a third presidential bid.

You can’t possibly know that, though.

I think most of us know a heck of a lot about this. In case you haven't noticed, much less than that weighs incredibly heavy on most people's lives. You're surely experienced enough in life to conclude that unless Biden is a psychopath (and we've ruled that out already), such events will have weighed on him enormously.


Why are you shifting the goalposts? Of course it weighs heavily; how could it not? Many of us have experienced personal tragedy in one form or another and actually have some inkling of what it's like to try to get on with our lives, relationships and careers afterwards; to try to conflate that experience with an act of courage of the kind that was being discussed is at best Oprah talk show discourse – and, frankly, kind of insulting.

...

(Why do you keep saying Biden elevated Sanders to some key appointment, by the way? Sanders has been the ranking member of the budget committee on the Democratic side since 2015, when he was appointed to the position by Harry Reid. He's only in the position of power he's in now because the Democratic Party has regained control of the Senate for the first time in six years. Nothing to do with Biden. See here: https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/politics/2014/12/12/sanders-budget-committee-ranking-member/20330113/)

Shifting what goal posts? Have I missed a post on courage and Oprah Winfrey somewhere? Nevertheless, I doubt it changes anything because if you don't think bearing that level of personal tragedy and simply getting out of bed to go to work every morning is not courage, you're being wilfully absurd.

Of course Biden was/is the right man. Contrary your imaginary winning candidate, he actually beat Trump and sent him packing after a single term and has given the US a fighting chance of dealing with the pandemic and beyond to things like climate change. Fortunately, Bernie Sanders agrees with me, not you, if this history means anything:

July 2020 wrote:
In a statement, Mr. Biden commended the task forces’ work and expressed gratitude toward Mr. Sanders “for working together to unite our party, and deliver real, lasting change for generations to come.”

Mr. Sanders, for his part, acknowledged the progress his supporters had made — but also nodded to some lasting disappointment.

“Though the end result is not what I or my supporters would have written alone, the task forces have created a good policy blueprint that will move this country in a much-needed progressive direction and substantially improve the lives of working families throughout our country,” he said.

The extensive recommendations concluded nearly two months of sometimes tense deliberations by the task forces, which Mr. Biden formed as part of his effort to bridge the division between the Democratic establishment and progressives who are unenthusiastic about his candidacy and his longtime message of incremental change.

The task forces included core Biden supporters like former Secretary of State John Kerry and Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general under President Barack Obama, as well as top Sanders allies like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/politics/biden-bernie-sanders.amp.html

August 2020 wrote:
When Joe Biden clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in April, one of his first tasks was to broker a truce with rival candidate Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

As the Democratic party’s mostly virtual convention kicked off this week, the Biden-Sanders peace deal appeared to be intact. It follows a careful campaign by Mr Biden, who has tried to court the support of the Sanders camp while excluding some of their cherished progressive policies from his party’s platform.

Hillary Clinton’s failure to build bridges with Mr Sanders and the leftwing of the party after she beat him in the acrimonious 2016 primaries was one factor in her eventual defeat. Many of his supporters either voted for another candidate or stayed at home on election day.

More recently:

Quote:
In sign of how far their alliance has come, however, Mr. Biden said last week that he nearly tapped Mr. Sanders to be his labor secretary, though he decided against it because it would have risked losing Mr. Sanders’s seat — and Senate control — in a special election.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/bernie-sanders-budget-committee.amp.html

Quote:
President-elect Joe Biden said on Friday that he strongly considered Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to be his labor secretary, but both men decided against the move after the dual Georgia runoff election wins gave Democrats control of the upper chamber.
"I did give serious consideration on nominating my friend Bernie Sanders to this position," Biden said. "I'm confident he could have done a fantastic job. I can think of no more passionate, devoted ally to working people in this country."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/biden-considered-bernie-sanders-labor-secretary-senate-control-2021-1%3famp

The massive irony is that Bernie Sanders was smart enough to recognise the urgent need to get behind Biden, but you're still off on the fringes somewhere miles to the outskirts of Sanders. Thank mercy Sanders is more sensible than that.

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