Biden/Harris Presidency Discussion Thread

It was just a comment about how idiotic and bumbling Biden is.

America claims to be leaders of the free world and they keep producing stupid politicians.

He could stop putting forward bills that get blocked by judges because they are racially discriminating.

These being so far.

The Small Business Administration relief program.

Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act which was rolled into the bigger bill.

This allows conservatives to portray the Biden administration as "reverse racists" and so far at least the courts are agreeing

Also well it's hard for him to do this while keeping the left wing of his party at least slightly happy but he could choose staff picks that don't invite easy criticism, catherine lhamon being the current example.

Also he could give a top down direction to not include controversial groups/theories that put off moderates

and before there is the constant whining about the source it's got the response from the department in it. Note the way relevant to the first point I made about making picks that make attack easy, Deputy Education Secretary hosted the group previously

They aren't smart moves, not being on the level of some of trump's plans doesn't make it a good idea. It will help the republicans in 2022. Biden got in as the moderate, these type of things are just bad strategy, shoring up votes among groups that will always vote democrat anyway.

Why do you think he thinks its the right thing to do and isn't motivated by the left in the party either by their direct influence or as a sop to them. Bidens got a really long political history so this talk about principles is hard to judge, like he co authored the crime bill back in the 90's, would it be safe to say that was motivated by his principles???

And yes I would still cos it stupid, hell one of the example stories I posted has the administration admitting it's a mistake, though my more cynical view would be that the "mistake" is that it was noticed, mistakes by inclusion are different to mistakes of omission.

You say this as if these things are even possible. Given the crazy Senate rules around filibustering a 60-vote majority is needed to pass any legislation beyond Reconciliation bills. Those are limited in both number and content. That means it's impossible to get anything like electoral reform passed without Republican support or getting people like Joe Manchin, who Biden has zero leverage over, to vote to repeal the filibuster.

Biden used Reconciliation to get Covid Relief passed a few months ago and will use it again for his Infrastructure bill later in the year. That's about as good as he can get within the broken rules of American democracy. For the record Trump faced exactly the same obstacles which is why he only got his tax bill through during the term where the Republicans controlled all 3 branches.

American democracy is fundamentally broken. It relies on a bi-partisan consensus that no longer exists to get anything done unless all of the stars line up for a given party for a short period of time.

Ah C'mere. That's the equivalent of criticising the Democrats for their failure to convict Donald Trump at his impeachment trial.

Agree, and the Senate Dems continue to play right into McConnells hands.