Tom Clancy’s US Politics Thread

Pence also had the dubious fortune of being attached to the tRump presidency though. From what little I paid attention to US politics before him, he seems like the exception.

I don’t think Harris was particularly popular with progressives to begin with, largely because her past career as state prosecutor in California and being perceived on the wrong side of policy numerous times.

“ In 2015, Sacramento Assemblyman Kevin McCarty authored a bill to require the attorney general to take away investigations of police shootings from local DAs, who, he says, have an inherent conflict of interest. Harris opposed the bill, and it died. She also declined to support another bill requiring police officers to wear body cameras. That didn't sit well with the Black caucus in the legislature. They saw her as on the wrong side of the fight.”

www.npr.org/2020/09/01/908456807/a-look-at-kamala-harris-as-a-prosecutor

By metrics of impactful legislation signed, meaningful shits in policy towards a more progressive future, having the most successful economy during the global inflation response to Covid as well as being comfortable acting as an actual human fucking being, Biden is the most successful president since Johnson

Achieving what he has with razor thin majorities in Congress speaks to his personal skill as a politician and the benefit of having leaders who, while maybe not appealing to the ‘younger, faster, more energetic’ clamoring of the media and those not old enough to know better, has decades of experience in their job.

I’ll happily vote for him next year.

Interesting, because if you asked me to name something Biden has achieved, I don't think I could name one thing. 

If you asked me to name the main thing I associate with Biden's presidency, it'd be the absolute clusterfuck of the Afghanistan withdrawal. 

I also got the impression that the economy wasn't doing that great (though as you say better than many other countries) and issues like immigration haven't improved at all. 
Finally, it feels like in terms of things like healthcare, abortion, etc.. things have been going backwards. 

Now that's not to say you aren't correct, and probably a lot of those things aren't correct, or aren't down to him, or are out of his control. But as someone (not in the US) who hasn't been following him closely, that's the impression I have. 

So if he's really been that successful he probably needs to promote the heck out it if. 

Fun fact: the disasterous Afghanistan withdrawal was actually started by the Trump administration and walking sack of shit Mike Pompeo, Trump's then secretary of state, who (unbeknownst to the Afghan government) made a deal with the Taliban to withdraw all US troops by April of 2021. It was Biden who managed pushed the date back to the end of August. As poorly handled as it was, the results would have been beyond catastrophic had Trump still been in power.

And there's been a slew of legislation passed by the Democrats since Biden took power covering everything from climate change to infrastructure to manufacturing. No small feat given they're up against perhaps the most obstructive Republican party in history. And yeah, abortion rights are being rolled back thanks to (once again) Trump stacking the Supreme Court with pro-lifers, unfortunately one of the few promises he was able to keep. With the House back under GOP control it seems unlikely that anything can be done at a federal level for the time being.

Just for the record, I'm not saying he hasn't done anything. I'm saying my impression is that he hasn't done anything.

Did that legislation mainly get implemented by Presidental Order or whatever they're called?

Even from that NPR article tage linked:

So the main things I've heard about are things that got blocked like the student loan amnesty. 

Na it was passed through congress. Executive orders are fairly limited in scope, and can immediately be undone by whoever is next in line.

I think you get Kevin Kline to impersonate him

Yeah, that ain’t why he was fired. I mean, nice try by Murdoch owned WSJ to try and create a less damning narrative, but you don’t fire someone with zero notice over text messages you’ve known about for months.

They fired him with zero notice so he wouldn’t be able to use his platform to fuck with them. It was probably planned for months.

Washington Post is Bezos' toy newspaper, iirc.

Is that the first sensible thing he's ever said? 

Bloody liberal.

Tucker to CNN!