Amusing to see the radikiddies-but-still-electoralists tantruming that Biden even negotiated the debt ceiling well rather than Green Lanterning through. Kind of hope they try to make a thing of it so they can get smacked down in the ensuing fight; Biden himself is reassuringly continuity-establishmentarian but he hasn’t really done anything to purge his party or render it safe ex-him

(ignoring the Covid maximalists to renter the world is a good start to reining in the trend starting with Bill Clinton feeling our pain that government’s just gotta do something to pacify people who cry out loudly and agonizingly enough by imposing costs on everyone else, but their approach of just not engaging won’t leave clear lessons for the rest of the party)

And what’s their leverage here? I occasionally see foot-stomping that Biden depended on their votes for election and will for reelection, but like, if they tried to sabotage his reelection and fail they could just be totally dismissed, and if they succeed… was Kerry ‘04 more solicitous of Naderites after Gore '00? I don’t see it.

transgenderer:

transgenderer:

Joe Biden is kinda moe through helplessness. Cuz of the senility

@apricops said:

now, now listen Jack, it’s it’s it’s not like I like you or anything

Starting to suspect the best historical analogue for Joe Biden might be Dwight Eisenhower, as a moderate establishmentarian president that got in after a sharp realignment by the other party, served to provide steady leadership and rehabilitate his own party going forward, checking further radicalism, but disappointed his party’s ultras by not rolling things back to status quo ante or supporting harder-edged pushback like McCarthy

m00nxtal:

karagin22:

Its like he’s right here in the room with me.

kontextmaschine:

At this point I would be satisfied with either a Biden or DeSantis win in 2024 as a positive consequence of the subplot that began in 2015

@centrally-unplanned said: While i don’t view DeSantis as a disaster or anything I find it hard to think what he would improve over Biden, curios what positives you think he has?

I think he would complete the culture war project Trump started, putting the 2010s to bed without supper.

Trump connected with that popular impulse but didn’t really implement it with any consequence while being shit at placeholder stuff, so “more of this but harder” was an easy nah, DeSantis has proven baseline competence to run a government, and to leverage the actual powers of office to put that government to service of particular ends

Biden represents a steady hand on government operations, with a Democratic instinct to rebalance the socioeconomy back towards something like the industrial unionism Golden Age if you squint, a spell of that is appealing right now. He seems quite unlikely to take up with wild-eyed factions or give them free reign, but doesn’t seem positioned to do a 90s Clinton-style purging of paraparty culture that would render the Democrats safe going forward in his absence.

It’s not clear what course yields what outcome. If DeSantis wins pitching “anti-wokeness” does that give Dem centrists a Mondale-like mandate to purge the party, or does it renew efforts to tie together a pussy-hatted #Resistance in opposition?

Of course, a DeSantis administration crackdown would have real costs! It might go too far! It might hurt people!

Yes, these things concern me. I am also concerned that a lame-duck Biden administration might not go far enough with calling an end to silly season out of concern for the sensibilities of Democratic stakeholders.

But as with DeSantis, I do not expect he would err so far as to be uncorrectable under future administrations. I would be satisfied with either.

Biden administration leaning into Dark Brandon memes a symptom of 4chan’s ultimate victory over Something Awful

I mean how do you rate Joe Biden on this?

“Joe Biden is adrift and useless” – nah, he’s a pretty reasonable caretaker, which was key to his appeal in the first place.

“He hasn’t resolved COVID to my satisfaction!” nah, he resolved COVID and part of it was downshifting the party from your satisfaction. Which was key to his appeal in the first place.

“He hasn’t moved bills through Congress!” Yeah, fair, his bringing Senatorial experience into the Oval Office is kinda the opposite of LBJ’s, in that his understanding of its ways leads him to accept it as an autonomous equal other, I think there’s a case to be made the post-FDR presidential supremacy was one of America’s long-term problems but I’m not sure this’ll resolve it in a useful way.

“He isn’t doing anything to cancel out the coming-to-maturity of the 90-year conservative scheme to acquire power and change the form and priorities of the government!” Well, yes, matching a 90-year plan is kind of beyond the scope of an octogenarian limited to two 4-year terms. I mean unless he threw out anything resembling regular order and attempted to establish a new order ex novo, which he’s not going to do, which was key to his appeal in the first place.

residentevil-4:

thespongebobsquarepantsmovie:

this country is a joke

I really do suspect something about Biden is, likely as a legacy of his Senate background, he deeply conceives of the President as the head of the Executive branch and not the federal government entire, so when i.e. senators are negotiating over BBB or the Supreme Court is executing a major constitutional turn, he fundamentally sees those processes as out of his hands, his job being to work with what those branches give him

“Who is Biden winning with this stuff?”

Like, literal Trump-Biden voter me? “The Democrats: competent administration, won’t let our radicals run away with things. Remember the ‘90s?” was his pitch, it was quite appealing, and the fact that he’s delivering is something I’m noticing for '24.

I think the knife-edge Senate does a lot of the work in shaping the experience, after '22 we’ll likely see how he goes with a Republican Senate, in evaluating his re-election we should keep in mind that we haven’t seen him manage a comfortable Democratic majority and even if that looks unlikely things might change by '26.

Impressed that Joe Biden is blowing off all the human-wise, nation-foolish epidemiologists on Twitter who want him to cancel Christmas (our cultural shorthand for evil villainy). Like, “God, what we’ve got to do is all stay inside for two months straight, repeated indefinitely forever, and then find the time, labor, and money to refit the bones of every school in the country, ::squawk:: COVIDisAirborne ::squawk::!”

I mean, if we try to maintain the state of exception as-is he gets blown the fuck out in 2022 and 2024 and we definitely open up then. If this turns out bad it’ll refill the political capital account for restrictions.

Admittedly, my judgement is colored by the fact that I’m apparently one of the only people for whom “long COVID” was a net positive, and the year and a half it took me out of was like if there were any you had the option to miss over my life it would be those

It was clear from how he approached legislation Joe Biden was a Senator’s president, and the Afghanistan stuff makes clear he’s not in the executive model of Dem presidents since Clinton, he’s like “oh these people who represent no actual constituency are gonna try and bend me by whining up an emotional narrative? Get that malarkey out of here”

Well, Joe Biden at least realizes he’s competing in the Don’t Make Them Want to Rub Your Face In It Again Challenge

Honestly it’s some “It’s Toasted!” shit to pitch “people close to him have died” as the distinguishing narrative of a 77-year-old born two and a half decades before Vietnam

The Republicans with Bob Dole ‘96, nominating the most senior figure of an obsolete generation kinda made sense – his Senate experience bridged the pre-Reagan, Reagan, and post-Reagan periods, no one was better positioned to appreciate what the Republican Revolution of '94 meant going forwards. Most importantly, who else was there, so they didn’t run.

(If she could peel her own fundraisers – this was the pre-McCain-Feingold “hard money/soft money” era where Dole’s party establishmentarian record counted for a lot – Christine Todd Whitman might’ve had a shot but she held off for more seasoning not appreciating it was last call for her kinda Republican)

But seeing Joe Biden putting effort into reaching for that same tarnished brass ring, knocking actual competitors off along the way – well if I was invested in some Biden “up from the tragic wreckage” narrative it might be inspiring to see him finally win a state in his third primary run, but as is it’s just a little farcical