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Michael D (Piketty)'s avatar

AR - I see. Your core point is that Biden has been wrong on issue after issue and Kuchinch has proven to be right on big issues that at the time were not popular..

I totally get it and wont argue your point.

Given that the US has a Representative Democracy being 'right" on an issue does not really matter if you cant win office. And winning office many times requires that politicians are WRONG on issues.

Here is where i think you might consider looking at Political leaders from a different lense.

Obama said and stood for policy issues much more in line with my "liberal" policy beliefs. He too was opposed to the Iraq war. He campaigned on Universal Health Care.

But none of that changes the fact that Bidens American Rescue plan and if passed his infrastructure Bill will have far more positive effect on the lives of poor and middle class Americans than anything passed by Clinton, Bush2, Obama or Trump...

So sure it is great if a leader "gets it right". And certainly Kucinich has don that. I will argue Sanders and Warren did as well but we can table that for another day. But it is BIDEN that won and BIDEN that is getting the Bills passed. Not Kusinich not Sanders not Obama.

This is how Republican Democracy works.

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Diogenes's avatar

Perhaps my original and probably poorly stated point about Joe Biden is that without counterfactuals it's hard to determine if a candidate is good or bad choice. It's not enough to argue if President Biden passing the American Rescue plan and perhaps his infrastructure Bill helps. It must be shown that it is substantially different than anything Trump would have done and let's face it, say what we want about Trump, he was no deficit hawk. I'm not at all surprised to see that President Biden is continuing many of the policies I liked least about the Trump admin.

Presidents are like quarterbacks. They're blamed far too much when things go wrong and thanked way to much when things go right. I actually place less emphasis on their yes than their no power. That is, what are they willing to stop dead in its tracks with a veto. This is an area where having principles really matters. The area where presidents still have enormous yes power, starting wars, I'm probably more aligned with Sanders, DK and Trump than I am with Biden.

The unknowable for me is if DK could get elected. As you say correctly, democracy is the process of getting votes, but as Stalin said it does not matter who gets the votes as much as who counts them. I find it hard to imagine those with real power would ever allow us to count the votes for someone like DK for all the reasons their perfectly happy to allow that count for Biden. Like most things, I hope I'm wrong about this.

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Diogenes's avatar

If you want an example of a candidate I would crawl through broken glass to get elected it's Ron Wyden. Unfortunately, he's too smart to run.

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