Biden / Harris Focused Discussion

[fwc577]

Am I naive if I think this video will change their minds?

Yes, PBS is government funded so they will say it's a lie cooked up by Biden.

[Elenos]

They don't care that factors completely out of Biden's control are driving food inflation. They just see the prices go up and whinge about Democrats.

The only factor that's driving higher prices that is genuinely outside of Biden's control and/or ability to influence in a major way is climate change leading to droughts ( and even then there's measure to be taken to alleviate the impact on food prices ) . Everything else from energy prices to fertilizer prices to sunflower oil prices are things he could have and should anticipated being a problem and taken steps. He didn't because he and his team did not think it that inflation was going to be such a problem.

This was the same White House that for months that Russia was going to launch a full major offensive. Did no one there stop to think that perhaps two of the biggest agricultural exporters on the planet fighting like this would create a major problem?! I am not a farmer, but even I knew well in advance how vital Ukraine was for the grain market.

Like maybe I am out of the loop on this but what concrete steps have either the Biden admin or Democrats in Congress even tried to take to alleviate the problems?

The Inflation Reduction Act? Now that's a fine joke really: Oh it's meaningful legislation alright, for healthcare, for the IRS and tax collection, for reducing deficits. It has a lot of good things attached to it.

In terms of actually reducing inflation, all the experts I've seen laugh at that notion.

I do not believe Republicans in Congress have any business in the majority: They're the worst possible people to elect as legislators, they'd do very badly, but it's a load of drivel to excuse to bad job Biden has done as president in a lot of areas.

But it's not Biden on the ballot, the people who pass budgets and laws are, and Republicans have no understanding or willingness to really do that.

[Draco-Onis]

The only factor that's driving higher prices that is genuinely outside of Biden's control and/or ability to influence in a major way is climate change leading to droughts ( and even then there's measure to be taken to alleviate the impact on food prices ) . Everything else from energy prices to fertilizer prices to sunflower oil prices are things he could have and should anticipated being a problem and taken steps. He didn't because he and his team did not think it that inflation was going to be such a problem.

This was the same White House that for months that Russia was going to launch a full major offensive. Did no one there stop to think that perhaps two of the biggest agricultural exporters on the planet fighting like this would create a major problem?! I am not farmer, but even I knew well in advance how vital Ukraine was for the grain market.

Like maybe I am out of the loop on this but what concrete steps have either the Biden admin or Democrats in Congress even tried to take to alleviate the problems?

The Inflation Reduction Act? Now that's a fine joke really: Oh it's meaningful legislation alright, for healthcare, for the IRS and tax collection, for reducing deficits. It has a lot of good things attached to it.

In terms of actually reducing inflation, all the experts I've seen laugh at that notion.

For the record: I do not believe Republicans in Congress have any business in the majority: They're the worst possible people to elect as legislators.

The only thing democrats could have done to fight inflation would be through taxation. Unfortunately President Manchin and VP Simena have been strongly opposed to it. Another would be stopping the trade war started by Trump with China but this administration is neo liberal.

[Elenos]

The only thing democrats could have done to fight inflation would be through taxation. Unfortunately President Manchin and VP Simena have been strongly opposed to it. Another would be stopping the trade war started by Trump with China but this administration is neo liberal.

Inflation is not being driven by taxation or the trade war. It's driven by energy prices, supply chain issues and the Ukraine-Russia war that's drove agricultural prices higher because both countries are vital in that area.

[Draco-Onis]

Inflation is not being driven by taxation or the trade war. It's driven by energy prices, supply chain issues and the Ukraine-Russia war that's drove agricultural prices higher because both countries are vital in that area.

Taxation is a great tool to fight inflation when done right, the trade war with China has increase cost for US because tariffs are passed onto the customers. There's nothing Biden can do about energy prices aside from nationalizing our domestic production which would never fly. The US is energy independent but all that is simply being sold on the open market.

[Endus]

Inflation is not being driven by taxation or the trade war. It's driven by energy prices, supply chain issues and the Ukraine-Russia war that's drove agricultural prices higher because both countries are vital in that area.

And corporate greed/price gouging, more than the factors you're citing.

https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-p...akers-respond/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...est-since-1950
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...s-robert-reich

[fwc577]

I hate when these nutjobs version of "do your own research" is to parrot whatever bullshit they see in memes or on Faux/NewsMax.

Anyone saying there is so much Biden could've done to combat inflation. Let me point things out the simplest of simple facts for the simple.

Netherlands - 14.5% inflation
United Kingdom - 10.15% inflation
Germany - 10% inflation
Mexico - 8.7% inflation
United States - 8.2% inflation
South Africa - 7.5% inflation
Singapore - 7.5% inflation
India - 7.4% inflation
Canada - 6.9% inflation
Australia - 6.1% inflation

Inflation is a world-wide problem. Not a United States problem.

[Elenos]

Inflation is a world-wide problem. Not a United States problem.

COVID is a global problem. Tell me did that excuse the shit Donald Trump did in not tackling it problem properly.

No it does not. He ignored the problem and rightly got attacked for it.

Biden ignored the looming problem of inflation, that many others ignored it does not excuse him. I am a European, and over here in Europe were busy taking down governments recently because we feel they've done squat on the matter.

[fwc577]

COVID is a global problem. Tell me did that excuse the shit Donald Trump did in not tackling it problem properly.

No it does not. He ignored the problem and rightly got attacked for it.

Biden ignored the looming problem of inflation, that many others ignored it does not excuse him. I am a European, and over here in Europe were busy taking down governments recently because we feel they've done squat on the matter.

LOL. Absolute delusions. The American economy doesn't exist in a bubble. Inflation is a worldwide problem with a major root cause being COVID. Go do your own research because you haven't done a single lick of shit. Also, get off news max and 4chan, they're rotting your brain.

When other people have posted legitimate information in this post about causes of inflation and your response is BuT bIdEn DiDn'T dO eNuF, then you're snared by the propaganda.

[Draco-Onis]

COVID is a global problem. Tell me did that excuse the shit Donald Trump did in not tackling it problem properly.

No it does not. He ignored the problem and rightly got attacked for it.

Biden ignored the looming problem of inflation, that many others ignored it does not excuse him. I am a European, and over here in Europe were busy taking down governments recently because we feel they've done squat on the matter.

The reason for global inflation are the actions of central banks and policy makers decades ago. The energy policies of the EU was short term thinking, the federal reserve after the financial crisis of 2008 didn't normalized the financial environment because they didn't want to "spook" the market other central banks did the same. I mean you can blame your leader but most leading financial analysts were telling them that the good times would be forever. It wasn't that long ago every central banker was just spewing the line about inflation being transitory.

A long time ago central banks decided that the stock market would call the shots which is why they aren't very good at preventing problems anymore.

[Elenos]

LOL. Absolute delusions. The American economy doesn't exist in a bubble.

Leaders tackle problems, a lot of people could have seen inflation coming, especially the very White House that was warning about the war in Ukraine, which created huge energy issues, food price issues. The Biden admin is on record as saying they didn't think the issue would get this bad ( https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/31/p...ntv/index.html ).

They screwed up, plain as day.

You can offer whatever excuse you want for that reality and you can invent whatever justification you want for why they can't tackle it. Point is they flat out failed on this issue and continue to fail. The spiel of "it's not their fault because X reason", when X reason boils down to Ukraine and the impact the war it had on the global economy. Something PBS itself noted: I don't read 4chan, or watch Fox News.

Hurling insults my way won't change reality: People feel Biden screwed up. His popularity reached some of the lowest lows of Trump, and that's saying a lot considering what the orange clown did in office.

[Kaleredar]

Leaders tackle problems, a lot of people could have seen inflation coming, especially the very White House that was warning about the war in Ukraine, which created huge energy issues, food price issues. The Biden admin is on record as saying they didn't think the issue would get this bad ( https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/31/p...ntv/index.html ).

They screwed up, plain as day.

You can offer whatever excuse you want for that reality and you can invent whatever justification you want for why they can't tackle it. Point is they flat out failed on this issue and continue to fail. The spiel of "it's not their fault because X reason", when X reason boils down to Ukraine and the impact the war it had on the global economy. Something PBS itself noted: I don't read 4chan, or watch Fox News.

Hurling insults my way won't change reality: People feel Biden screwed up. His popularity reached some of the lowest lows of Trump, and that's saying a lot considering what the orange clown did in office.

I'm of the solid opinion that Trump, who helped cause the problem in the first place, would have done no better... and likely made the situation worse.

I'll take a guy that assumed incorrectly but who has a vested interest in solving the problem over someone like Trump that only looks at every situation deciding how he can maximize the money flowing directly into his pocket while minimizing the amount of work he needs to do.

[Endus]

Hurling insults my way won't change reality: People feel Biden screwed up.

The important word in that passage is now in bold.

Nobody should give a rat's ass what ignorant people "feel". If those feelings aren't backed by reality, they're at best willfully ignorant and intellectually lazy, and their opinions should be, at minimum, discarded. The only step beyond that would be to move on to straight mockery and derision, but that's probably going too far.

What should never be done is making decisions based on what misinformed and reactionary idiots "feel" to be true. Those same people "feel" the Earth is flat or is only 6000 years old. You want to be taken seriously? Stop kneejerking emotionally over shit you're intentionally not informing yourself about, and spend an afternoon at your local library learning the basics so you don't make a fool out of yourself.

Playing to these people's "feelings" is a symptom of society spiralling down the drain. It's how societies collapse. It is not ethically defensible or reasoanble.

[Blur4stuff]

Trump and republicans demonstrated with covid how badly they will screw up in a crisis. Things absolutely would be worse right now if republicans were still in control. Their incompetence and willingness to embrace every conspiracy theory that comes along proves that.

[Ivanstone]

Nobody should give a rat's ass what ignorant people "feel". If those feelings aren't backed by reality, they're at best willfully ignorant and intellectually lazy, and their opinions should be, at minimum, discarded. The only step beyond that would be to move on to straight mockery and derision, but that's probably going too far.

The US has been running on the idea "the feelings don't care about your facts" for almost 250 years. Once in a while they usefully overlap and some actual work gets done.

[Nymrohd]

The US has been running on the idea "the feelings don't care about your facts" for almost 250 years. Once in a while they usefully overlap and some actual work gets done.

Rather, Democracy has been running on the idea of "feelings don't care about your facts" since ancient Athens.

[Elenos]

Nobody should give a rat's ass what ignorant people "feel". If those feelings aren't backed by reality.

Politics is and has always been about perception.

But I won't go further on that, because from a facts based perspective Biden has handled inflation poorly, that isn't a debate or fake news or misleading stories on far right websites.

Trump and republicans demonstrated with covid how badly they will screw up in a crisis. Things absolutely would be worse right now if republicans were still in control. Their incompetence and willingness to embrace every conspiracy theory that comes along proves that.

A far better argument then trying to dismiss the poor handling of inflation by the Biden administration.

Democrats however are not succeeding in this area at convincing people that keeping the majority would be in people's best interest. Looking at projections on RCP and 538 things seem fairly dire.

On a purely personal note: I believe Biden lost the midterms the moment he handled the Afghanistan Withdrawal as poorly as he did, and he never managed to turn the public's perception of a failed leader since. The only major advantage democrats gained was how angry people got when then Supreme Court made it's abortion ruling.

[fwc577]

On a purely personal note: I believe Biden lost the midterms the moment he handled the Afghanistan Withdrawal as poorly as he did, and he never managed to turn the public's perception of a failed leader since. The only major advantage democrats gained was how angry people got when then Supreme Court made it's abortion ruling.

See, again, you're showing yourself more and more as someone who is being indoctrinated by right-wing media / sources.

The failed Afghanistan withdrawal is about 95% on Trump.

In Feb 2020, Trump and the Taliban agreed to the US-Taliban deal which promised withdrawal from Afghanistan. We had 13,000 personnel in Afghanistan keeping the country from Taliban takeover and become, once again, a terror state.

This deal promised the continual reduction of troops with final withdrawal to occur by May 1st, 2021.

When Joe Biden took office, the number of troops had been reduced to 2,500.

On May 1st, the Taliban began an offensive to re-take Afghanistan and it took until 31st of August to get the remaining troops out, with some casualties.

When Biden took office, he was handed a shit sandwich. America lacked the personnel to properly operate in Afghanistan and the result was the deaths of 13 servicemen during the withdrawal.

Criticism came during public hearings from Mark Milley and Kenneth McKenzie who claimed we need to continue to keep personnel in Afghanistan and they even advised the Trump administration that they needed more than the 2,500 that remained in the fall of 2020. Trump didn't care about the servicemen, Afghanistan, or the safety of America. He had lost an election and was too busy trying to fuck things over for the people who would come after his term.

[Elenos]

@fwc577 https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...t-afghanistan/

A particular comment:

And the receipts are brutal for the Biden administration. Its commentary in recent months on how this would play out has proved excessively optimistic and, in some cases, flat-out wrong. Even if you believe this was never going to go smoothly, it raises huge questions about just how in tune the administration was with the situation on the ground and how prepared it was for a situation such as this.

Excuses didn't change Biden's poll numbers, nor did they change the blowback the Democrats have gotten since then for the disaster that unfolded.

It was also just the start for the many many troubles Biden has.

Afghanistan destroyed Biden's credibility as a competent president. His poll numbers have collapsed and his party will lose the elections soon baring some unexpected unseen outcome.

[The Stormbringer]

It's a shame most people don't realize that the recession is strictly due to Trump's actions in office. Specifically, the 2019 Trump China Tariffs. All the big economists said that a recession would be coming in a couple of years, and COVID basically slowed the economy down enough to delay that even further. Well, guess what! We're sliding into it right now, and it's--wait for it--NOT BIDEN'S FAULT! Gasp!