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Ah yes, nothing everyone loves more then MegaCorps making even more profit and fucking over the working class. Biden is the worst President we've ever had, he even makes Bush seem like a liberal progressive
All of us are making more profit, it's not just the "MegaCorps". The cost of living in today's society is a pain in the ass, but prices have plummeted in the last two months, and food costs are way down now.
As for President Biden, he's been a good solid President. Between President Obama who is a top ten President, and President Biden who has been in the upper 30, it is lightyears better than the actual worst President of all time, Trump.
I'm no Biden stan, but I am a progressive, and he has definitely been more progressive than Obama was. Obama was a great president aka being a public figure/speaker, but Biden has had a much more progressive policy agenda and I'm all for that
You have to understand that the world is drastically different between Obama’s presidency and now.
You can’t flip a switch and make a nation of 346 million people be a social democracy. You have to slowly roll in changes.
Obama campaigned as a progressive and governed as a liberal. The world changing had nothing to do with it
EDIT: For instance, he ran on making abortion rights law, but once elected with a supermajority he switched gears and said it was not a high priority.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/obama-promised-to-sign-the-freedom-of-choice-act-o
Huh
There's more to the ACA than the healthcare marketplaces. The law includes governing what healthcare plans must cover, prohibits canceling or refusing to cover thingsfor pre-existing conditions, requires health plans come with prescription coverage, and even demands health care plans spend a certain percentage of premium dollars paid on actual healthcare, essentially capping the profit margin of insurance companies.
The millions of people that got healthcare because of the marketplace / subsidies are a win, but there's even more people who were able to get coverage because insurance companies could no longer deny them. Prior to the ACA, for instance, people with T1 diabetes were fucked if they ever had a stint of unemployment, as they would loose coverage, and then when finding a new job, if they didn't do it fast enough, would have to wait 6 - 12 months before the new employer's plan would cover things like insulin. People with cancer would get all cancer-related treatments denied because their employer decided to exclude cancer treatments in order to keep premiums low. The ACA put a stop to that.
I was just speaking to my personal experience.
The ACA was literally a right wing health care plan proposed by the heritage foundation, a conservative think tank.
EDIT: Not to say it didn't help people, I've also benefited from it, but it's not exactly progressive
EDIT 2: This is not my opinion, Obama said it himself. Here is a source:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2010/apr/01/barack-obama/obama-says-heritage-foundation-source-health-excha/
Hih
Obama has said it himself on multiple occasions
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2010/apr/01/barack-obama/obama-says-heritage-foundation-source-health-excha/
Was it terrible? No. But it was a half measure, already a compromise and the watered down more by Republicans. it was absolutely not progressive, it was liberal/centrist at best.
A progressive health care plan would be a single payer universal healthcare system
Just because it was watered down by the republicans doesn’t make it not “progressive”. It was “progressive” compared to the other option, which was literally not having any sort of health care coverage/insurance. Things are never that binary.
Remember Obama started with Universal Health care at some point and we ended up with ACA, which is still a win.
I'm talking about progressivism as a defined political ideology, not a vauge statement of making progress.
Obamas healthcare plan was inherently neoliberal, which is a centrist, or even center-right ideology. The market exchange is a capitalist solution to the problem that the health care companies can profit from
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
It's no secret the Democrats aren't exactly left leaning by global standards, in reality they are a center-right party that mainly still practices Neoliberalism
Huh
The conversation is centered around whether Obama was a progressive. He was not.
Progressivism isn't just confined to the US, so yes people are talking about progressivism with the full context of the global political spectrum in mind.
But even within the US, Obama is nowhere close to a real progressive like Bernie Sanders, who has been consistently fighting for leftist values for decades.
Hih
No. You just have absolutely no knowledge of political science or what ideologies like progressivism or neoliberalism are.
Also funny how you completely ignore my point about how even focusing just on America, Obama is still not progressive. You seem to not have any idea what we're even discussing
Are you even clicking on my sources? Or just picking the first tiny thing you can find a critique for and pulling a response out of your ass? The thing about "global standards" was a small aside that while true was not the point of the conversation.
Here's a bunch of more sources you probably won't read if you want to educate yourself on what political terms mean:
https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2019/6/11/18660240/democrats-neoliberalism
https://progressive.org/op-eds/barack-obama-not-my-hero-pitchford-201214/
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&u=googlescholar&id=GALE|A356354197&v=2.1&it=r&sid=LitRC&asid=6e89d156
Hih
I'm an American lmao. But sure man, whatever argument you can come up with am I right?
I realize what you’re doing, but I’m questioning why are you viewing events from the lens of classical ideologies? How is that relevant to viewing whether a policy was beneficial terms of actual progress or not? It’s actually hurting your opinion and outlook since you’re now attributing terms that have a different meaning in contemporary discussion and discourse as opposed to it’s classical definition.
Being a progressive does not have a different meaning in contemporary discussion. Progressivism doesn't mean something different in the US. The US has leftist progressives like Bernie Sanders.
You are all strawmanning me and trying to make it seem like I'm saying Obama made no progress, when I'm saying Obama wasn't a progressive.
We are talking about politics. Political ideologies are obviously going to be a part of the conversation. Quit acting like bringing them up is "viewing events from the lens of classical ideologies". You just aren't versed in political science.
Here is a page about progressivism specifically in the US if you want to learn more:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism_in_the_United_States
JFC dude. Read the room. I’m not arguing whether you’re right or wrong, but it seemed like you implied that Obama didn’t make progress because you called it “right-wing”. Like previously stated, terms have different meanings/connotations depending on context. Yes, even in contemporary discussions whether you agree with it or not. So people corrected you, rightfully so.
That said, I see where you were coming from and don’t disagree with the point you’re making.
And, no shit political ideologies are going to be part of a conversation when we’re talking about politics, but what I’m saying (again) is stop going off of wikipedia because you can’t get your point across effectively anymore and it’s diluting you’re messaging.
Can’t believe I have to spell all of this out for you.
Lastly, I see that you’ve just discovered “political science and ideologies”, but don’t assume others on the same plain as yourself. Some of us have been doing this longer than you’ve been alive.
Fucking hell, can you possibly be more patronizing? Maybe you should read a book. Because nothing I'm saying is false or misleading. Meanwhile you've flip flopped all over the place and have no real point and have contributed no sources to back up any of your claims.
I have not "just discovered political science and ideologies". I simply am versed in the actual meanings of words, instead of just loosely using words like "progressive" to mean whatever I want.
Wikipedia is simply a good way to introduce political concepts to people who obviously have no idea what the terms like liberalism, conservatism, progressivism actually mean. Like most of the people replying to me in this thread.
You say you understand where I'm coming from, yet don't even have a consistent point that you're working with here. You're just arguing for the sake of it so you can be patronizing.
You liberals are just pissed because I had the gall to criticize Obama from the left. I have backed up everything I've posted with sources (some directly from Obama himself) that confirm everything I've said.
Everyone responding to me, including you, are just finding some random nonsense to strawman me with so you can pretend to have an argument.
Oh my god. Talk about being ignorant and tone deaf. We’re done here.
Agreed. clearly there is no getting through that thick liberal skull of yours
This is a big distinction. Obama did the optics of the job very well, and I'd say he did a good job as president overall, given the situation. Biden I think is doing an even better job in a worse situation. He's not terribly concerned about optics though.
Aww look at the smooth brain. Stuck in its trump delusion
you're a clown
At first I thought you just completely forgot about the 4 years before Biden, then you made the comment about bush and that just means that your opinion is completely worthless and wrong.
If you think Biden makes bush look like a liberal progressive, I'm not sure you know what words mean.
I can't tell if you're a disgruntled progressive or provacateur conservative. Assuming the former and you're actually complaining in good faith, what do you expect of Biden?
As near as I can tell, Biden has picked up the pieces of the most ravaged American economy in a century while dealing with divided and useless legislature and an immoral, activist supreme court.
I agree Biden hasn't handle corporate greed and abuse as much as I'd like, but that really is congress's job.
Is it the rail worker strike? Congress made it illegal for them to strike with a veto proof majority. Interestingly, they now have the sick days they were prepared to strike over and the unions publicly thanked the Biden administration for working behind the scenes to make it happen.
Honestly, he's the most progressive president since LBJ, or even FDR, and is working with far more combative branches of government and far more dire circumstances.
Biden was near the bottom of my list in the primaries, but I was absolutely wrong. He may not be as progressive as I'd like, but he's the leader we need right now. He's a consummate politian who believes in the process and is open to being persuaded to still more progressive outlooks.
Assuming a position of good faith is starting your response on a flawed premise. Notice how there is never any evidence or even claims of evidence, merely a assertion that [insert current democratic president here] is "the worst president evarr!!!1!" When Obama was in office he was also "the worst president evarr!!!1!" The next Democrat president we have will also be "the worst president evarr!!!1!"
I appreciate your attempt here, because I do think it's important to have level headed discussion surrounding these sorts of statements. It's a benefit to the rest of the bystanders that will come in here later and not see that sitting unopposed. But as far as engaging an actual conversation, you are surely wasting your time. You'll notice that the hour old comment has 13 replies on its chain but only crickets from the original commenter. I'll be very surprised if we hear from them again on this thread but if we do you can be assured that it will contain more of the same bizarro clown shit with no identifiable basis in reality.
I am really, seriously reaching the end of my rope here with the willful ignorance and purposeful misinformation. This is the sort of thing that has taught me I should not ever be allowed to be in charge of anything, because if I were, this is the sort of person I'd have imprisoned on the basis that they are a danger to society. But fortunately for them our constitution enshrines their right to be an idiot and to talk about it.
I believe this is generally “Sea-lioning”. They pop up and toss out some argument that doesn’t even have to make sense just to suck up the time of somebody so that they can’t engage in honest discourse with someone arguing in good faith. IMO, ignoring the trolls is for the best.
This is a really important thing. Many of us I suspect have had moments where we wished he'd just tell the court to fuck off and not follow a ruling, or try an untested legal maneuver to work around Republicans.
To heal a democracy however, you have to work through the system. Working outside of it just weakens the government more. People need to see our rules and traditions triumph to have faith in them.
How can you possibly say he’s the worst president ever compared to what just happened in 2016?!?! By what metrics are you using?
I’m just glad we have an adult at the helm and I don’t have to wake up the next morning to see what bat shit insane thing has just happened. He’s not a spectacular president but he’s solid and consistent. And he is not by any stretch a liberal progressive. I wish he were.
Besides you even contradict yourself by saying he loves the MegaCorps and then calling him a liberal progressive. Which is it? I’m pretty sure those two are mutually exclusive.
Exactly. For four years, practically every fucking day it was, “Oh God, what’s he done now?”
Internationally stressful. Biden is hitting out of the park in comparison. Trump was jacking off in the bleachers and broadcasting it on the 6 o clock news
Man I am capable of critiquing Biden but that Bush line is beyond the pale lol. You’ll just hate Biden no matter what, clearly.
Dubya gave us the housing market crash.
Lol wut.
What r u smoking?
Maybe ask children in the middle east who'd parents we bombed, or the South Americans whose countries we sent death squads to, or the Vietnamese with Agent Orange birth defects, or the families of Americans who died pointlessly in the war on terror who they think the worst US president is and I'm sure they will mention Joe Biden and him making big businesses profitable.