politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
I mean, almost half the members of his own party disagree with him, not the nation as a whole. If this doesn’t go away, it is not good news.
The old adage come to mind that, “The left fall in love, and the right fall in line.” The right will more reliably vote for “their guy”, but I’ve seen so many losses on the left because of disenchantment.
That's part of the problem, though: the left never fell in love with him. He got elected by a small margin in a few key states similar to that of Trump 2016 mainly due to not being Trump rather than any merit of his own.
It might not work a second time since voters have ridiculously short memories and "not the other one" tactics are much less effective for incumbents.
I agree. It was an anti-Trump vote, not a pro-Biden vote.
The amazing thing is that the anti-Trump ticket should be much stronger now than it was then. Why the fuck is it not? After all, the previous time USA voted, Trump hadn't yet tried to overturn a presidential vote.
Voters are shortsighted. I still think Biden has an edge in 24, but people have quickly forgotten exactly what a disaster Trump was and have started saying "at least he did something".
All because the press finds most of Biden's successful-but-moderate presidency to be too boring to headline. Trump was in the headlines 5 days a week during his presidency. And for some people no press is bad press.
Well he promised a lot and hasn't delivered on it. For example, he hasn't even mentioned a public option since the election. His handling of the student loan debt thing seems like he's purposely dragging his feet, and the latest report I heard about that makes it sound like he's trying to cut back even further.
He hasn't been as bad as I thought he would be, he's definitely the most pro-union person of my lifetime at least, but that doesn't take away that some of the key campaign promises that he made he either hasn't delivered on, hasn't seemed to try to deliver on, or actively seems like he doesn't want to.
Dragging his feet on student loans? I feel like that’s the only campaign promise he’s been making a consistent effort on. He literally got shot down by the Supreme Court and has kept trying different strategies. The only times he’s reduced the scope of the proposed relief is once he’s been blocked at every turn.
Even as someone with student loans, I’ve almost been frustrated that he’s been putting as much effort as he has into student loan relief while bigger issues see no action.
Not to mention some key progressive campaign promises have not materialized or were straight up broken.
Which ones? The ones I followed, he invested more political capital in than I ever expected.
EDIT: My own research, looks like the big one is healthcare. He's constantly talking about it and constantly "doing something behind closed doors" about it, but nothing has manifested yet. I wonder if it's because it would never pass the current congress, or if there's bigger (or more dishonest) reasons.
At this point, there's not many things that more than half of Democrats agree on. We're the entire political spectrum of "everything that isn't fascist".
Yeah there’s more intellectual diversity on the democratic side. When I meet a right winger, it feels like I know what 90% of their opinions are going to be. Whereas Dems have everyone from pro-corporate neo-liberals to European style lefties.
That said, I doubt there’s “not many things that more than half of Democrats agree on.” Abortion rights, Trump being guilty, taxing the rich, universal healthcare, climate change, protecting voting rights, etc. enjoy overwhelming agreement. As in 70-90%.
There’s disagreement too of course: defunding the police, trans rights, reparations… but even these have 60-70%+ support amongst Dems.
I honestly can’t think of any other topic that Democrats disagree with each other as strongly about.
Fair enough. Perhaps my take was slightly hyperbolic.
Gun control is a great example of something Democrats can't agree on. We have gun-grabbers, background-checkers, and even a few NRA-hawks. Details on Healthcare. Reparations are a 50/50, too. The thing in all of those, I think, is that we're willing to compromise.
Actually, looking at some of your bullet points, I see them as party compromise points. Prior to Dobbs, there was a LARGE percent of Democrats who supported what they called "reasonable restrictions" on Abortion, and many still do if tapered by seeing how slippery the slope really was. And going back 10-15 years made it even more of a mixed bag. Pew couldn't get more than 63% of Democrats to agree abortion should be legal "in most cases". Back when Roe was precedent. The thing was, we could all compromise on which cases, and agree that "in no cases" should never be the law of the land. The more anti-choice Democrats were willing to compromise on some propaganda, parental shame forms for underage, etc.
Ditto with healthcare. It's a sad truth, but most Democrats didn't want to see a Public Option in the ACA. It looks like the trend of "Public Option" being fringe flipped in 2020. Probably not a coincidence. I can't find party-split polls pre-2020 right now, but a 2019 poll showed fewer than 25% of Americans wanted a Public option. Even if it was mostly Democrat-leaning voters that said that, we're still looking at less than half. Now, admittedly, we're approaching 70% of all voters who want some sort of public option.
FPTP Voting, details of abortion rights/restrictions, details of how to handle healthcare. Lots of Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech disagreements that just don't rise to the level of "headliner issue". I'd say any copyright/dmca question is "it's complicated" to Democrats who are informed enough to even speak of it. I can't find numbers on the wealth tax, but they seemed mixed back when Warren was pushing it. Topical to the above discussions, military isolationism vs "world police" attitudes. These are all fairly contentious issues within the United States. Biden seems to represent the plurality view on most of them, which I give him credit for despite my having very different opinions.
EDIT: To clarify, it's a bigger gap for a bigger reason. Almost exactly half of Democrats are neoliberals. And our progressive caucus, almost as big as the neoliberal wing, is diversified between capitalist-progressives, socialists, and other incompatible but good-faith groups. On the big issues, we're either all in compromise or in agreement on a few large bullet points. But on the less-highlit issues, there are fundamental foundational differences of theory of government within our party. The biggest families of issues on that are:
The list goes on. For object example, I'm a passively-anti-union progressive. I think Unions are band-aids. I think they should have all the rights and protections they have, but they are a sign of capitalism remaining dominant with regards to worker laws, and our goal should be to make them useless by making them unnecessary. There's a lot of Democrats that would vote anti-union, but despite my position, I'd vote pro-union as a compromise for my real wants. However, given the option between writing a union protection or a worker protection into a bill, I would fight tooth-and-nail for the worker protection. Many Democrats would fight for the union protection instead.
I mean, what does Means-testing look like WRT welfare in the Democratic party? We're all over the place. People like me say it should be available to everyone regardless of means, where some Labor-friendly neoliberals are happy to leave in "employed" clauses, but want to loosen the income restrictions so that hard-working Americans get the greater benefit. Obviously I am sympathetic to that position as much as I disagree with it.