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A message to wavering Democrats (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I know that it's popular to dismiss President Biden. I get it. He's old. This is the first election featuring the 2 oldest candidates, ever. So what? The future of the WORLD is literally dependent on this election. To boot Biden from the ticket and try to bootstrap another candidate is madness. Booting this incumbent and hoping his VP will succeed is like firing the cook and hoping the dishwasher will give you Michelin-quality food. Stick with the old man, and figure out a way to enact his popular policies while also expanding the Supreme Court, enacting term limits and limiting "Christian" Nationalists.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Many of those have nothing to do with Biden's performance (this covers almost half):

job growth etc - this is just the pandemic "ending" and NCOV2019 becoming endemic, it has absolutely nothing to do with what Biden did
American Rescue Plan - sure, and I'm pretty sure Trump would've done the same, given that he pushed for getting the vaccine available
Americans are no longer deployed overseas - are we not counting Iraq and surrounding regions? Also, Trump initiated the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden's only real contribution here was to delay but still withdraw, but he did withdraw (that's a fantastic thing)

Then the "meh":

judges confirmed - isn't that just... business as usual? When positions open, they need to be filled
black women in Court of Appeals, LGBT/Native American in cabinet - okay? Assuming they were the best people for the job, it's not really something I'd reelect a president for
climate investments - how effective have those investments been? I don't know the specifics, but 8 charging stations have been built; that's... not great

And the notable:

infrastructure bill - I'm not super familiar with it, but I'm guessing a lot of the rest are related to this
most Americans with health care - is this related to something he did? If so, that's cool.
clean water - aside from random horror stories like Flint, MI, clean water really isn't something I think about

But the majority of those are legislative actions, not something the president does directly, other than sign bills into law. Here's what I do expect the president to do:

diplomacy - diplomacy with Hamas and Israel, Ukraine and Russia, Iran, and China has been pretty bad; we're closer than ever to war with China and Iran
balance the budget - yes, the president doesn't control what Congress authorizes, but the executive branch has a lot of say in what that budget ought to be; the deficit is still massive, and I haven't seen a lot of evidence of cuts (2023 was higher than 2022), and borrowing rates are quite high
pardons - resolving Julian Assange's legal issues was a good start, but what about Edward Snowden? Ross Ulbricht?

Trump is, perhaps, worse on the above (though he promised to free Ross Ulbricht), but that doesn't make Biden good. And Biden being older and less capable means he'll probably have a harder time doing the first two.

Biden is... mediocre at best, he doesn't really excite anyone. Trump is different, so maybe he's appealing to undecided voters, idk. For me, I live in a state that's essentially fixed on who will win here, so I'll be voting third party because I think that's the most valuable use of my vote.