The biggest mistake that President Obama and his attorney General Eric Holder made was not prosecuting the banksters that brought on the Great Recession in 2008. If they would have initiated consequences against those people, Trumpism never would have happened. I was directing a nonprofit at the time and was dealing with a lot of folks that were losing their homes and jobs. The anger was palpable. I almost lost my house. Millions of Americans suffered horribly and not one of those 1%ers EVER went to jail. That was the catalyst that brought Trump into our lives.
Agree that costs, per se, aren't the biggest challenge. Real wages have risen faster than inflation; real costs aren't up. But, oligarchic concentrations (in, as just one example, the meat packing industry) support price gouging. Even when those prices are nonetheless affordable to most, using price motivations to break up the near-monopolies through which oligarchs (Bezos, the Waltons, Musk) strangle our nation and world is, if not our biggest challenge, somewhere close to it, and intertwined with other large challenges, such as climate.
I agree with the general direction that Harris will probably take, initially. It seems that our most common grievance is about pricing. Corporate price gouging seems like a bipartisan issue across the country, and something we can all agree on. The problem with this issue is that unless its honestly monitored by some sort of independent agency, with the power to site and/or penalize, pricing changes seem to happen too quickly for the public and the lawmakers to respond to except to complain. And complaints are only as good as the news media will publicize and at the very least allow the public some avenue of venting before they smolder into a fire.
We’ve had this problem before and the present price gouging we all have been experiencing has been around for about 2 years. Although, I have noticed a slight leveling off from the super increases we had in our recent past, it’s not coming down, either. This seems incredibly unfair considering the pitiful way that wages have increased in an attempt to even up the divide.
The Democratic agenda always seems to be one of mopping up. It’s been said that a term of presidency for accomplishing any major agenda in policy is only the first 180 days before they need to start addressing reelection. Unfortunately, both Biden and Obama spent a good dell of time and effort to cleaning up the Republican messes of the past which took up most of that 180 days. The biggest problem is that we as a voting public keep creating an unfriendly atmosphere for change to happen.
An unfriendly congress seems to be our intention as a voting public. We complain as a country on not getting anything done, and then we elect the same divided lawmaking groups, perhaps as a double check. The fact that we can’t agree as a country on our agenda for our future seems to be an ongoing problem and one that will tie the hands of any administration. It is accomplishing one thing, though. It’s getting people mad enough to blow up and act out, so if not this administration, then the next, if our numerous partisan major issues are not address, I’m afraid more and more extreme responses will become our norm, to our own detriment as a country.
As whole public, we are doing a bad, bad job at 'training' our politicians, political class and media. Especially in the applying 'consistency' to that training to get things we say we want. Consistency is very important or teaching or training any substantive behavior, especially one that has any difficulty or discomfort.
Brian's "for being 81 years old and (thus) debilitatingly marble mouthed" draws an inference that age leads to "marble mouth." He knows better. Biden mispoke when he was younger! Pelosi and Bernie Sanders tend not to misspeak despite being older than Biden.
Thus, no "thus" was warranted.
As for the rest, Harris will need the trifecta to make real change, but if she wins by a big enough margin, it is possible that some Republican Senators may seek to restore their souls and allow programs good for America to pass.
Brian, I generally admire your work--a lot. This piece seems disjointed, and fails to adequately define its terms. You don't really describe BHO or JRB's ideologies, and seem inclined to minimize differences.
Also, Presidents have a responsibility to lead their parties, as well as unite them.
Lastly, it seems to me that Biden did marginally better on party-building. Obama notoriously abandoned and smothered the grass-roots movement he built and which brought him into office. My assumption was that he didn't want a movement which would push him and the government more to the left than his neoliberal inclinations preferred.
I see the main connection between BHO and JRB to be conflict aversion. Biden with his turn the page act and Obama with (where do I begin?)….
If things work out and Harris is elected I hope we see accountability for Trump and his lackeys, too. Then serious SCOTUS reform including expansion and root and branch overturning of their most odious jurisprudence (immunity at the top of the list).
That should hold off fascism for another 80 years.
"Then serious SCOTUS reform including expansion and root and branch overturning of their most odious jurisprudence (immunity at the top of the list)."
How do you turn that battleship with any speed?
There's two ways- force or our currently minoritarian, status-quo favoring Constitutional politics. Force, forget about it, the other side has a strong edge in men, meatheads, and the unscrupulous. Status-quo favoring Constitutional politics slows the turning of the battleship, in our direction at least, and provides for 'rural privilege' which amounts to reactionary privilege of people both culturally reactionary and bathed in Reaganomics logic.
To make the reforms you would want would require a conspiracy of mass internal migration (from blue to purple and small population red states) and impersonation (of blue state white people as red state white people) across electoral cycles to seize power long enough to blitz through structural reforms. And people are not that flexible /available to uproot their lives, nor that sneaky about their intentions to get the secret plan done before the other side notices.
Excellent analysis -- and I agree. The one thing this piece leaves out, though, is the foreign policy choices that Kamala will face as president. The pro-Palestinian/anti-genocide movement is strong and growing among progressive young people. I wasn't around during the anti-Vietnam war movement, but this seems comparable in the energy it's generating -- at least in my small corner of the world. From here it looks like Kamala's presidency (God willing) might be more like LBJ's, marked by historic domestic achievements but marred by foreign policy struggles. At the least, that will be a major challenge she will face.
IMO Obama was much better on foreign policy. He got pushed around a lot but his instincts were skepticism towards getting entangled in foreign wars, especially in the ME. He was more even handed towards the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Biden seems to be unusually tolerant of the number of children killed with American bombs. Obama foreign policy team (Ben Rhodes et Al) are also very critical of Biden on this.
And yes there was an Israel-Hamas Gaza War on his watch.
And it was nice that BHO said he didn't want, would not tolerate settlements, but when Bibi did them anyway, BHO was out of schlitz to escalate, retaliate, o4r stop anything ISrael was getting, then, or during its Gaza War, or 'peacetime'
Afghan surge vs letting the band-aid get ripped off in Afghanistan?
IMO most imp mistake Obama made on foreign policy was appointing Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State. It was truly bizarre bc one of the reasons he won the primary against Hilary in 2008 was bc of her vote for the Iraq War and Obama was campaigning against Dumb Wars. Obama was bad on drone wars etc. but you just have to read the book Hilary wrote after serving in his admin to appreciate the restraint Obama showed. The only criticism Hilary made in her book of Obama was that he was not hawkish *enough*. Hilary was def more hawkish than average Dem. Is Biden more hawkish than average Dem? He did pull out of Afghanistan and showed more restraint on sending certain weapons to Ukraine early on. But Biden, IMO, just has boomer fetish for Israel that is causing him to sanction human rights organizations and International Courts for the country being accused of human rights violations. Obv everyone would’ve supported Israel after Oct 7. but Biden’s support seems to be driven by an ideological belief, as opposed to political incentives dictating Obama.
No Benghazi = no 'her e-mails', at least not for that. Somebody would need to find something else, some other reason to start to care about them that sounded civic/important.
And Chait is a weird case-he reflexively punches left. He's fine when he punches right, but he gets crazy when he punches left. I would, at most, call him "very selectively liberal", or more likely "centrist"-but really, he's a curate's egg.
The biggest mistake that President Obama and his attorney General Eric Holder made was not prosecuting the banksters that brought on the Great Recession in 2008. If they would have initiated consequences against those people, Trumpism never would have happened. I was directing a nonprofit at the time and was dealing with a lot of folks that were losing their homes and jobs. The anger was palpable. I almost lost my house. Millions of Americans suffered horribly and not one of those 1%ers EVER went to jail. That was the catalyst that brought Trump into our lives.
I think initial stimulus was far too timid, too. Biden seemed to learn from that.
But deeper than that it was the continual shrinking from any and all fights. It just emboldened the Rs.
A very good way to put it..."shrinking from any and all fights", Check out Holder on Seth Myers show. Pathetic. 2 mins. https://youtu.be/b3dW7UY9a7k?si=EmRs_Gl6r7IOkxir
Obama's shrinking? Agreed
Agree that costs, per se, aren't the biggest challenge. Real wages have risen faster than inflation; real costs aren't up. But, oligarchic concentrations (in, as just one example, the meat packing industry) support price gouging. Even when those prices are nonetheless affordable to most, using price motivations to break up the near-monopolies through which oligarchs (Bezos, the Waltons, Musk) strangle our nation and world is, if not our biggest challenge, somewhere close to it, and intertwined with other large challenges, such as climate.
It is the easiest lift to just say “Khan stays” and she won’t do it.
I agree with the general direction that Harris will probably take, initially. It seems that our most common grievance is about pricing. Corporate price gouging seems like a bipartisan issue across the country, and something we can all agree on. The problem with this issue is that unless its honestly monitored by some sort of independent agency, with the power to site and/or penalize, pricing changes seem to happen too quickly for the public and the lawmakers to respond to except to complain. And complaints are only as good as the news media will publicize and at the very least allow the public some avenue of venting before they smolder into a fire.
We’ve had this problem before and the present price gouging we all have been experiencing has been around for about 2 years. Although, I have noticed a slight leveling off from the super increases we had in our recent past, it’s not coming down, either. This seems incredibly unfair considering the pitiful way that wages have increased in an attempt to even up the divide.
The Democratic agenda always seems to be one of mopping up. It’s been said that a term of presidency for accomplishing any major agenda in policy is only the first 180 days before they need to start addressing reelection. Unfortunately, both Biden and Obama spent a good dell of time and effort to cleaning up the Republican messes of the past which took up most of that 180 days. The biggest problem is that we as a voting public keep creating an unfriendly atmosphere for change to happen.
An unfriendly congress seems to be our intention as a voting public. We complain as a country on not getting anything done, and then we elect the same divided lawmaking groups, perhaps as a double check. The fact that we can’t agree as a country on our agenda for our future seems to be an ongoing problem and one that will tie the hands of any administration. It is accomplishing one thing, though. It’s getting people mad enough to blow up and act out, so if not this administration, then the next, if our numerous partisan major issues are not address, I’m afraid more and more extreme responses will become our norm, to our own detriment as a country.
As whole public, we are doing a bad, bad job at 'training' our politicians, political class and media. Especially in the applying 'consistency' to that training to get things we say we want. Consistency is very important or teaching or training any substantive behavior, especially one that has any difficulty or discomfort.
I mostly agree. But allow a nit-pick:
Brian's "for being 81 years old and (thus) debilitatingly marble mouthed" draws an inference that age leads to "marble mouth." He knows better. Biden mispoke when he was younger! Pelosi and Bernie Sanders tend not to misspeak despite being older than Biden.
Thus, no "thus" was warranted.
As for the rest, Harris will need the trifecta to make real change, but if she wins by a big enough margin, it is possible that some Republican Senators may seek to restore their souls and allow programs good for America to pass.
Brian, I generally admire your work--a lot. This piece seems disjointed, and fails to adequately define its terms. You don't really describe BHO or JRB's ideologies, and seem inclined to minimize differences.
Also, Presidents have a responsibility to lead their parties, as well as unite them.
Lastly, it seems to me that Biden did marginally better on party-building. Obama notoriously abandoned and smothered the grass-roots movement he built and which brought him into office. My assumption was that he didn't want a movement which would push him and the government more to the left than his neoliberal inclinations preferred.
You nearly lost me when you called Chait a “liberal.” But I’m glad I kept reading — interesting and thought provoking thesis!
Gosh, where to go with this one…
I see the main connection between BHO and JRB to be conflict aversion. Biden with his turn the page act and Obama with (where do I begin?)….
If things work out and Harris is elected I hope we see accountability for Trump and his lackeys, too. Then serious SCOTUS reform including expansion and root and branch overturning of their most odious jurisprudence (immunity at the top of the list).
That should hold off fascism for another 80 years.
"Then serious SCOTUS reform including expansion and root and branch overturning of their most odious jurisprudence (immunity at the top of the list)."
How do you turn that battleship with any speed?
There's two ways- force or our currently minoritarian, status-quo favoring Constitutional politics. Force, forget about it, the other side has a strong edge in men, meatheads, and the unscrupulous. Status-quo favoring Constitutional politics slows the turning of the battleship, in our direction at least, and provides for 'rural privilege' which amounts to reactionary privilege of people both culturally reactionary and bathed in Reaganomics logic.
To make the reforms you would want would require a conspiracy of mass internal migration (from blue to purple and small population red states) and impersonation (of blue state white people as red state white people) across electoral cycles to seize power long enough to blitz through structural reforms. And people are not that flexible /available to uproot their lives, nor that sneaky about their intentions to get the secret plan done before the other side notices.
Excellent analysis -- and I agree. The one thing this piece leaves out, though, is the foreign policy choices that Kamala will face as president. The pro-Palestinian/anti-genocide movement is strong and growing among progressive young people. I wasn't around during the anti-Vietnam war movement, but this seems comparable in the energy it's generating -- at least in my small corner of the world. From here it looks like Kamala's presidency (God willing) might be more like LBJ's, marked by historic domestic achievements but marred by foreign policy struggles. At the least, that will be a major challenge she will face.
IMO Obama was much better on foreign policy. He got pushed around a lot but his instincts were skepticism towards getting entangled in foreign wars, especially in the ME. He was more even handed towards the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Biden seems to be unusually tolerant of the number of children killed with American bombs. Obama foreign policy team (Ben Rhodes et Al) are also very critical of Biden on this.
Intervention to overthrow Qadhafi?
Bombing Syria and arming anti-Asad rebels?
Supporting the Saudi war in Yemen?
And yes there was an Israel-Hamas Gaza War on his watch.
And it was nice that BHO said he didn't want, would not tolerate settlements, but when Bibi did them anyway, BHO was out of schlitz to escalate, retaliate, o4r stop anything ISrael was getting, then, or during its Gaza War, or 'peacetime'
Afghan surge vs letting the band-aid get ripped off in Afghanistan?
IMO most imp mistake Obama made on foreign policy was appointing Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State. It was truly bizarre bc one of the reasons he won the primary against Hilary in 2008 was bc of her vote for the Iraq War and Obama was campaigning against Dumb Wars. Obama was bad on drone wars etc. but you just have to read the book Hilary wrote after serving in his admin to appreciate the restraint Obama showed. The only criticism Hilary made in her book of Obama was that he was not hawkish *enough*. Hilary was def more hawkish than average Dem. Is Biden more hawkish than average Dem? He did pull out of Afghanistan and showed more restraint on sending certain weapons to Ukraine early on. But Biden, IMO, just has boomer fetish for Israel that is causing him to sanction human rights organizations and International Courts for the country being accused of human rights violations. Obv everyone would’ve supported Israel after Oct 7. but Biden’s support seems to be driven by an ideological belief, as opposed to political incentives dictating Obama.
"Intervention to overthrow Qadhafi?"
Avoiding this one alone = no Benghazi
No Benghazi = no 'her e-mails', at least not for that. Somebody would need to find something else, some other reason to start to care about them that sounded civic/important.
And Chait is a weird case-he reflexively punches left. He's fine when he punches right, but he gets crazy when he punches left. I would, at most, call him "very selectively liberal", or more likely "centrist"-but really, he's a curate's egg.
Now do the differences between appointees as between the two administrations. Who was Obama's Lina Khan?
Then do amounts of government spending.
Bottom line-Biden is not a neoliberal. Obama put Reagan up on a pedestal.
It's bait and switch to say you're comparing Biden and Obama, and then spin to hypotheticals about an imaginary Hillary Clinton presidency.