• some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    22 hours ago

    Tragedy? He wanted to be president all his life and he got there.

    He funded a genocide. I think that was tragic.

  • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    It’s not like this is the story of a great man who through no fault of his own ends up with a tarnished reputation. He was never all that good and his tarnished reputation is a direct result of his own choices and actions.

    • kreskin@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      many of us hated him way back to when Obama picked him as a VP choice. Terrible, terrible idea.

      • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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        2 days ago

        Wasn’t his entire appeal to be the white middle class appealing conservative type who would ensure the more ”progressive” Obama didn’t get out of hand.

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        Like I can’t even think of the great positive accomplishment that would be tarnished by the end of his presidency. As a comparison, Ruth Bader Ginsburg actually did some important and positive things before her selfishness destroyed her legacy. What was Biden’s greatest hit? Maybe being slightly less anti-gay than the conservative wing of the Democratic party during Obama’s term? Nothing during his presidency seems to rise to the level of a historic accomplishment. His legislative career was mostly bad.

  • kreskin@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    ““The Joe Biden story is one of the great tragedies of American politics. I really mean that. He should be having a glorious, well deserved, highly acclaimed retirement. And he’s not,” veteran Democratic political strategist James Carville said”

    Its a bigger tragedy that James Carville still gets quoted in the last 20 years. He should be selling used cars in New Jersey.

    • futatorius@lemm.ee
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      5 hours ago

      Yeah, no. Biden was a Reagan Democrat, opposed to school integration and especially busing, when he came in. He was one of the main authors of the Patriot Act. He’s long pushed the lie that Social Security has an irreparable funding crisis (try lifting the cap, genius), he’s never been worth a shit at resisting intrusive spying by tech companies, and his foreign policy might as well be refried Kissinger war crimes. And his appointees? Garland, worse than useless. Blinken, an empty suit. He couldn’t be bothered to remove that saboteur DeJoy from the Post Office. At least the FCC Commissioner was all right.

      But I’d still prefer a blithering mediocrity to the cancer that is Trump.

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I mean, he’s tons better than the dipshit getting ready to replace him, but that doesn’t put him anywhere near ‘good’.

    Let’s not lower our standards just because of the orange contrast.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      What standards? If you can’t get over the concept and f an ideal president, you’re going to be very disappointed the rest of your life. You should absolutely advocate your preferences and cast your best vote. However the reality is that all too often you need to vote against the worst candidate or compromise on the least bad.

      Biden may not have been my ideal candidate either but it was an easy choice to vote for him over the other guy and I do believe he did better than most here give home credit for

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        What standards? If you can’t get over the concept and f an ideal president, you’re going to be very disappointed the rest of your life.

        “Don’t sell weapons for genocide”

        “ZOMG YOU WANT PERFECTION!!!”

          • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            I voted for Harris. That doesn’t mean anyone should seriously entertain the notion that either Biden or Harris weren’t shit candidates.

            Yet here you are, pretending that “second worst” and “perfect” are synonyms.

            People stayed home because they saw that NO ONE was going to fight for them. There was no fucking point to voting since everything is going to get worse forever anyway. You got everything you wanted from Biden/Harris/Netanyahu. You didn’t have to move to the left. You got your fucking genocide. Now stop lecturing everyone who isn’t as happy as you with the shit choice you deeply love.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Where are all the centrists who insist that Biden is the most progressive president who ever drew breath?

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Here. He ran as a centrist, acted as a centrist, and pursued the most progressive policies of any president in my life, except maybe Carter

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        “Pursued” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

        The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest thing Biden got done. Centrists expect everyone to act like it’s the New Deal and the Great Society rolled into one. That ain’t holding water. We saw what we lost with BBB.

    • Soulg@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      I’m not a centrist but he’s absolutely been the most progressive president in my lifetime in terms of policy.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        There aren’t any. But there is no shortage of centrists who want progressives to be happy with what makes centrists happy. They’ll outright lie and say that Biden is progressive.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Probably Franklin Roosevelt, though cases can be made for both Lyndon Johnson and Theodore Roosevelt.

        • futatorius@lemm.ee
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          5 hours ago

          Teddy was a rabid imperialist with a great fondness for eugenics. His anti-corruption drive had a small measure of success, and he founded the national parks system and passed the Pure Food and Drug Act. But he was a mixed bag.

          • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            I listed the only three presidents that could remotely be called progressive. They’re all mixed bags.

            Biden isn’t fit to be in the same paragraph as any of them. He’s a centrist. He sold weapons for an ongoing genocide. He was instrumental in passing the 1994 crime bill. He made sure student loans could not be discharged via bankruptcy. His treatment of Anita Hill was disgusting, but at least we got Clarence Fucking Thomas out of it. He has half a century of disaster in his wake. He made a big chunk of the mess that his simps praise him for pretending to make baby steps toward cleaning up.

            Biden is a centrist and nothing else at all. Calling him a progressive is insulting to progressives and to anyone you expect to be stupid enough to buy such unmitigated horseshit.

    • Hugin@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Yup he was big on killing the advanced us nuclear power program during the clinton admin. Just because the republicans were pro nuclear. That did more damage to our carbon footprint than any good that came from the IRA.

  • zbyte64@awful.systems
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    2 days ago

    Best part about his presidency was him getting out of the way and letting Bernie and Warren do pro labor and consumer things.

  • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I can’t believe he’d throw away his legacy of decades of destroying black people’s lives 😔

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    This is another reason why this ancient fossils shouldn’t be allowed to wait this long to retire. If he had retired from office about a decade ago … people would have remembered him for a lot better things. The fact he stuck around this long will mean that everyone just remembers this fossil that drove the bus off a cliff and everyone wondered why they ever let him take the wheel.