TownieDeac
words are futile devices
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
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In an effort to engage with this seriously instead of my normal shitposting scumbag left approach, I'll say I genuinely think Biden's brain has deteriorated quite a bit, so the right age to refer to Biden changing with the times was probably during the Obama administration, when he tried to get Obama to stick with the public option and the ACA when Obama and Rahm wanted him to abandon it altogether, or when he championed gay rights during the same period. Those are examples of positive growth, if delayed. I'll mostly skip over the parts where you're agreeing or understanding me and focus on the part where I won't give him credit for the things he did right.
I think the key plaudits Biden deserved were typically served in a bad wrapper. The Violence Against Women Act is one of his best pieces of legislation, but he hid it within the Crime Bill and forced Senators who wanted to support it to also support the bad Crime Bill.
On the crime bill, both parties wanted to look tough on crime in the 90s. It was the prevailing sentiment of public opinion at the time. He had support even from the Congressional Black Caucus leadership at the time to get it passed. My issue isn't even about it when it was passed, it's about not atoning for it in the decades he's been in a position of influence since. Crime rates have plummeted, but incarceration rates have risen, and people have stayed in prison longer for less violent crimes. None of it has addressed the flow of drugs into America, none of it has improved relationships between police and citizens in America, and he hasn't shown his personal growth in that area over a matter of decades as the rest of the country and world have shifted their cultural norms around incarceration.
On Iraq, he played a major, major role in escalation towards war. He stifled anti-war voices in his committee role appointing people to speak at hearings, and he championed the war in the press for years after it started, including on the ground in country very much cheerleading its ongoing efforts. He only became critical of tactics when things started to go very bad, and he's not at all made any mention over decades about the million dead Iraqis who died in an illegal war. He wasn't one of the neocon grifters trying to make a buck off a Halliburton contract, but how he sleeps at night knowing how many Americans, Iraqis, and other people in the region have died or had their lives utterly destroyed because of the war is beyond my capacity for understanding.
As to the content of his character, to put the bar at the level of Donald Trump is not a fair bar for judging a person. Trump embodies what's wrong with 21st century neoliberal American values, and his character is essentially on par with someone like Jeffrey Epstein, a narcissist, a sexual predator and borderline sociopath. But Biden is emblematic of the Democratic party's opposition to that, which is to say, a normative opposition rather than one really rooted in progressive policies. Biden was essentially to Anita Hill what the right was to Christine Ford. He continues to be the Democratic answer to the left about what can be accomplished in American politics, which is to say, not be a Republican rather than standing for something and for his constituents.
