politics

Punted a Bork nomination and had to eat the Thomas one instead. Sucked all round & Bork openly against Civil Rights & Privacy which would have been at odds with Roe.

• the economy is still pretty shitty for most Americans. broadcasting how good it is for the few that it's actually amazing... is not going to win many friends.
• Biden is pushing for military support of a genocidal, apartheid state.
• his support for abortion is... less actual support and more just him keeping his mouth shut. he's personally apposed to it. One wonders if we'd have RvW codified in law if a progressive was in office.
• afaik, none of the student loan debt that's gotten forgiven wasn't already supposed to be forgiven... years, or even decades, ago. he's done very little to actually lower the cost of tuition and such, or to curtail the blatant financial fraud that kept people locked into crippling debt.
• climate change, They're also basically corporate love notes. the funding for climate change, largely is a lot of tax incentives for companies to do what they were going to do anyhow... while also not directly addressing the issues of climate change... (or, directly counter to it- see re-opening the Willow Project in Alaska. after promising no new oil drilling...)
• he's old, and not nearly as progressive as more than half the people that would be voting DNC. (note I'm very carefully not saying 'democrats', because there are a lot of people my age who are progressive independents.we still largely vote blue, but we don't trust institutions because... why should we?)

His handling of Israel's genocide is a big one. This isn't just because America, Biden's handling of this mess has been uniquely horrible, and it's losing him votes.

Biden was never getting my vote anyway. Red fascist, blue fascist, its all fascism. And there is NO acceptable level of evil.

Fair enough

That's probably the gist of it right there in fairness - he could have tried harder. Then again, he knows what's what, and like (a) the mess he inherited from the previous occupant of the job took an enormous amount of effort to deal with, like basically ALL of the efforts, really, that were to spare (and things like the border crisis, huge spike in homelessness, greedflation, etc. continue onwards even now), and so (b) to have fought the good fight would have come at the cost of enormous political capital that would have prevented other things from happening. Thought experiment: what would Dems be willing to give up, in order to have made a useless (I mean purely in the sense of doomed to failure in the short term, though ultimately such things may need a coordinated effort over many years) attempt to appear to try to codify Roe v. Wade? Would we have been willing to sacrifice funding for Ukraine? Passing a budget for the year at all? College loan remittance? Political capital has limits, so in order to work towards that goal, something else must be sacrificed, that's just reality.

Also, unpopular opinion alert - or rather, adjacent to one, in the service of a deeper understanding - women are not prevented from having abortions, at least on the federal level. If a state such as Florida or Texas etc. prevents such a thing, then don't live in those states? There are MANY things going on in those states - book burnings, teacher shortages, also libraries, also doctors/nurses, also basic infrastructure, the list just goes on forever - and Biden is merely one old man, so what is he being asked to do, replace Jesus in those states? There is only so much that he or any one person could do. e.g., when a Supreme Court seat opens up, that's when he can do a lot to work towards his goal, but I cannot say this loudly enough, even as a President he cannot pass laws. He can be part of a solution but he cannot be the entirety of one. Nor should he be.