I feel like the main political divide on this website is between “Joe Biden is terrible and old and I hate him” and “Joe Biden is terrible and old and I will crawl over broken glass to vote for a rancid ham sandwich against Donald Trump”
very few people are actually huge fans of the guy
maybe Obama was better? maybe? hard to mark it against very different legislative backdrops.
my main beef with Biden two years in was his administration’s immigration policy, and post-COVID they have basically been very good about getting more people into the country
Gaza is bad but there was no scenario that starts with “Hamas comes over the border, murders a thousand people, and takes hundreds of hostages” that wasn’t going to be very bad.
Gaza is bad but there was no scenario that starts with “Hamas comes over the border, murders a thousand people, and takes hundreds of hostages” that wasn’t going to be very bad.
I think anything Biden does with regards to Gaza that is morally correct would ultimately make no difference on the ground and be politically disastrous domestically. It's a no win scenario for him.
Agreed and I'd add the foreign policy dimension: Israel isn't a great ally at this point, but for better and worse they're still our anchor in the region for intelligence and force projection, and our withdrawal would produce a vacuum that quickly would be filled.
It's a no-win scenario for the US.
I think his Israel/Palestine policy before 10/7 was a serious miscalculation that blew up in his face, but the alternative was a costly, tiresome fight with Netanyahu that would do little to prevent something like 10/7 from happening, & would have made him look like a jerk for antagonizing Israel
Also I think there's a real lack of understanding of what Biden is trying to do, where it is working and where it is failing, and what the failure mode of a more aggressively anti-Israeli stance would look like. It's all reduced to a childish Manichean analysis- either antisemitism, or Genocide Joe.
Biden and Israel both get more scrutiny/criticism than their factional rivals in part for the same reasons the NYT prints editorials asking Biden to step down but not Trump
Because the Times thinks it has more sway with Biden & Israel than with Trump?
I don't see the downside of condemning Trump as a dangerous unstable fascist racist violent crook. It might not change any minds but at least it would be said.
I kind of feel like people who blame Gaza on Biden underestimate the int'l arms market. Ie Biden could control Bibi by withholding arms. I think it's the opposite; Biden's only hope at mitigating Bibi's insanity is to not completely cut him off and make him buy bombs from China.
Serbia did its genocide in Bosnia with outdated Soviet crap in the face of a full arms embargo. People definitely overestimate just how much leverage we have over Netanyahu on that front.
1. Bibi's made it clear he's going to continue his war until either he or Hamas is out of power (he'll go first). 2. Bibi wants, but does not need US arms to continue the war. 3. If Biden just says "Sorry, too many dead Palestinian kids, we're cancelling your contracts," he loses any influence he...
has over *how* Israel wages the war. They may need to produce more weapons at home at a higher cost, or buy less precise weapons from India and China. None of those options have the pressure to minimimze civlian casualties that buying from the US has.
This is nonsense. The thing that makes the weapons precise are the semi-guidance kits that Israel produces themselves. If they could get billions of dollars on free munitions from China or India, they would already be doing so.
I think this is in part simply because Ds don't have the House and ultimately, all his options for dealing with Israel/Gaza/Ukraine involve the support of Mike Johnson.
Like he still wouldn't be good, but he could be much more targeted in stopping some of the excesses of Israel.
He handled the ignominious Afghanistan surrender that Trump left him very well, too.
On Israel he is dealing with the consequences of decades of bad policy as well as strong domestic support for Israel. He has at least avoided the dissolution of the whole region into war and an Iran war.
I don't *like* that the US has supported Israel pretty much unconditionally due far too long, but when I hear people talk about Biden as if he is uniquely terrible re Gaza, I always want to know "compared to who? Who has been or would be much better, AND could plausibly take the WH?"
Also Covid. I saw this more among disabled people than the general public, but even before Gaza there were those saying that his abandonment of vulnerable people made them not want to vote for him.
I've said many times: Biden was - at best - my fifth choice in the 2020 primary and he has exceeded all my expectations. I am happy to vote for him again.
Yep, that's about where I am. I would have voted for a moldy potato rather than Trump, and I didn't think voting for Biden was as bad as voting for a moldy potato, but I wasn't excited, just relieved. I am pleased with my choice and am fine with reelecting him.
I totally am a fan of the guy and I think there are a lot of us actually? Do any of us agree with him on everything? No. Do probably all of us wish he was younger?? Obviously
My main issues with him are all foreign policy and I guess immigration but I also have never even won a game of Risk, I’m not exactly confident I know best here
I mean, *he* probably wishes he were younger, right? But Josh Hawley is 41 and I don't want *him* as president. I feel like people think everyone over 75 is incapable of doing anything more vigorous than walking to the mailbox. My grandmother was leading aerobics classes when she was 90!
I don’t really even think it’s wrong to worry about his age, Biden’s age exacerbates certain risks. That’s true. But people have to be reasonable here about the degree to which they’re worried about this factor (suspect they’re just dumping all their anxiety into this bucket in many cases)
I think the sudden hysteria about his age is ridiculous, especially on the basis of a single sub-par debate perfomance. He didn’t just “get old” all of a sudden. Ppl nursing grudges are using age & his stutter as an excuse to bludgeon him cuz they want a do-over and it is gross as well as stupid.
He wasn’t in my top FIVE in the Dem field in 2019-20
I have one major complaint now (Gaza), but I’m not sure how much better my preferred candidates would have been on that
He’s done much better than I expected
I’m in solid agreement with the majority of the commenters in this thread - anyone who considers themselves a Democrat/progressive should be pleased with Biden’s record & accomplishments. In many ways he is MORE progressive than Obama.
It seems to be that Biden has lost most or maybe all of the "cool grandpa" energy that he had as vice-president; his *personal* appeal has diminished. But other than Gaza and immigration, on both of which he has both limited control and few realistic options, his administration has been very good.
Biden has really surprised me across a ton of issues. He's gotten more major legislation passed than I thought possible, his DoJ has been really aggressive, his executive branch has been smart and targeted with its use of its power.
