Tag Archives: Joe Biden

Political Rants

Slow progress.

The election is less than sixty days away, and already I’m sick of thinking about it. More than likely, that’s the predictable result of a news media that is hyper-focused on elections to the point where they literally begin reporting on the next big race before the votes in the current one are even counted. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I think the press likes the horse race aspect of elections – it’s an easy story to report, there are opposing sides, melodrama, jockeying for position, etc. I haven’t done the analysis, but I’m confident that horse-race stories far outnumber more substantive reporting. Whatever the proportion may be, it’s a silly thing to report on, particularly when there are such titanic issues facing the nation and the world, issues that are on the ballot this fall, in some respects.

To be clear, I don’t think electing Joe Biden will be enough to, say, turn the tide back on climate change, or expand affordable health care to everyone, or stop COVID in its tracks. The project of making Joe Number One is more about avoiding bad things than promoting good ones. He still seems married to the concept of employer-provided health care, just as Nancy Pelosi is, and his campaign was positively ecstatic over its endorsement by former Michigan governor Rick Snyder, who condemned a generation of young people in Flint to the depredations of lead poisoning. So yes, we have a lot of hard fights ahead of us, even with a Biden victory. But I think it’s fairly easy to see the writing on the wall this time. Look at the skies over San Francisco. Look at the legions out of work and on the edge of eviction. Look at the kleptocratic travesty that is Wall Street, gorging itself on public dollars like almost never before. This obviously needs to stop, as Trump said, right here and right now.

Still, I feel like the two opposing sides are playing different board games. It kind of amazes me to hear the reporting around Trump’s comments to Bob Woodward, the shock of his admission that he downplayed the virus, etc. Is it shocking? Really? The man’s public statements since the beginning of the year tell you everything you need to know. Did we really need to hear his conversations with Woodward to surmise that he wasn’t taking COVID seriously, or that he wasn’t leveling with the American people? Did we really need that Atlantic article to imagine that Trump would hold uniform military, veterans, or any group of people in utter contempt? While our representatives in the mainstream media project shock and surprise, the Trumpists just continue along their merry way, deconstructing the administrative state stick by stick.

I know the institutional Democratic party wants to make this an election about manners and integrity. But this election, like all elections, is about policy, and we have to drive the distinctions home if we have any hope of getting this loser out of the White House.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

The loudest voice.

I haven’t been watching the Democratic National Convention in its entirety, just pieces here and there. It’s no surprise that this thing is unlike any political convention we’ve ever seen before. What’s kind of astonishing is the degree to which it looks like a long political ad, with some variations in production values. A lot of it is just a crap show, putting a spotlight on some never-Trump Republicans and various center-right figures. I keep expecting some kind of technicolor tribute to Ronald Reagan, or a cameo by George W. Bush. Stuff like that makes it a bit more like drinking urine than it should be, but then I am a leftist, which means I’m just supposed to suck it up and offer my unqualified support. Still, being asked to sit through Colin Powell is a bit beyond ridiculous, in my humble opinion.

I have talked about this on my podcast, Strange Sound, so I won’t go into great detail, but my decision to vote for the Democratic presidential ticket is rooted in the notion of harm reduction, some of the contours of which have been highlighted throughout the virtual DNC. The fate of undocumented immigrants, the so-called “dreamers”, as well as refugees from both state sponsored or tolerated violence and economic hardship, hangs in the balance – a second Trump term would spell disaster for them, and very likely for so-called legal immigrants as well. It would not surprise me to see a second-term Trump move to strip legal residents of their rights, then perhaps naturalized citizens, particularly if they are members of the communities he most despises. (I can picture an Ilhan Omar-focused executive action revoking citizenship from those who escaped Trump-dubbed “shit hole” countries.)

Then there are those who depend on their health insurance … like just about everybody at some point in their lives. A second Trump term would mean a death sentence for many of those people. Hell, the first Trump term was enough to dispatch more than 170,000 unnecessarily. Single-payer advocate Ady Barkan made this case quite eloquently at the DNC in one of the better speeches. For as little effort as is involved in casting a ballot, it seems to me that we should listen to the voices of people on the edge of disaster, for whom four more years of this might amount to a death sentence. As I said on Strange Sound, we don’t need to invest in the new administration – quite the opposite. We need to be ready to push them from day one. And they will need to be pushed. The lobbyists always have the loudest voice, but we have the numbers. We can flip the tables of the moneylenders if we all do it together, but we need to have an administration that will respond to pressure. Trump won’t. Biden will.

That’s my two cents. What’s yours? Leave a comment or a question. Excoriate me. Shake your cyber fist! Always glad to hear from you.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Muddle in the middle.

A snapshot from the day’s news – MSNBC is obsessing over Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s announcement that we’re withdrawing 12,000 troops from Germany. The various former Republicans that populate its talk show panels are lamenting Trump’s undermining of the NATO alliance. In real time, we are seeing the Biden foreign policy take shape. I won’t say it’s a more aggressive posture, as Trump is aggressively pursuing conflict with Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China, and others. There is, however, a somewhat nostalgic turn to the emerging centrist doctrine Biden will no doubt pursue. It appears we may be in for a slight return of the cold war model, the east-west divide, the Russian menace. If that’s the case, it would be a bitter trade in exchange for the crap show we’re living through now.

I am tentative about this observation because it’s hard to be certain what a Biden foreign policy will be when the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has consistently avoided posting any details about it on his campaign site. Since it’s likely to be formulated by committee, I’m guessing it will be bellicose, but measured; assertive, but mindful of precedent; proactive, but not necessarily the first to any party. Where will we bomb, drone, invade next under a President Biden? One can only guess. Likely he will re-deploy those 12,000 troops to Germany, whether or not they pony up the Euros for costs associated with the posting. Indeed, the only net positives might be a return to some type of arms control regime with Russia, Iran, and others, and perhaps a re-commitment to the tepid, voluntary goals of the Paris Accord on Climate. Not nearly enough for my taste, but there you have it.

I think the most compelling case for this muddle in the middle, from a foreign policy standpoint, derives from the very nature of the presidency and who holds that office. The U.S. president is too powerful. It is an office that wields force, both military and economic, in unlimited magnitude. No one should be THAT powerful, particularly not someone who is accountable to an electorate that makes up less than five percent of the world’s population. Placing Donald Trump in the cockpit of that titanic killing machine is not only irresponsible, it’s sheer madness. Regardless of any minor departures from the hard-line Republican orthodoxy on foreign relations and national security, Trump has proven his propensity to flub his way through any situation, with disastrous consequences. We’ve seen this in his response to the Coronavirus. Even as he seems inclined to curry favor with Putin, we’ve seen him tear up crucial arms agreements with the Russians, hurtling us back into a deadly arms race.

Plainly, Biden’s foreign policy will likely be as imperial and neoliberal as he can get away with. But every moment Trump sits behind that so-called Resolute Desk, we are in mortal danger. He simply has to go.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.