One of the biggest unforced failures of the Biden administration is the reported complaint of Joe Biden that people weren’t acknowledging the economic turnaround.
Biden did a lot of good for the economy! Massive stimulus via the infrastructure bill, a sensible approach to recovery from Covid, acknowledging that recovery from an inflationary period would be necessarily painful, etc. He was a steady hand at a time when America needed one.
But what sends me into apoplexy, what really grinds my gears, is that this motherfucker was so out of touch to believe that this was a messaging problem. He felt that Americans had not yet heard of his accomplishments in turning around the tide of economic misfortune, how badly the republicans would have bungled it, and how the next four years would have been a period of huge growth based on the previous four.
All of these points were absolutely true.
But there is no housing supply. The economic pressures are so hard on young people that their biological impulses are changing.
Young empiricists have taken a look at the climate and have correctly deduced that their future is full of pain in the absence of truly radical action.
And Kamala’s strategy for relieving pressure on the housing market was a $25,000 credit for first time home buyers? In an environment where housing prices have doubled and tripled in fifteen years?
I am one of the very few members of the public that attended Feinstein’s funeral at San Francisco City Hall. And the only one there that day wearing sneakers. I attended her lying in state, paid my respects to a committed civil servant, and in the book, cautioned Pelosi against a similar, “ignominious” end. Then I hear that Pelosi has filed to run again in 2026. As an 86 year old.
At some point the Democratic leadership looks less out of touch and more actively malicious considering the serious and existential crises of the young and near-young in the United States.
The country is in decline because of its extreme individualism, its lack of compassion, and its ruthless “politics is the art of the possible” approach by leaders who could not possibly inspire with bold leadership.
The party is chasing local maxima.
Harris’ solution to the housing problem really annoyed me. There are so many other more effective ways to go about making housing more affordable but she just ignored them. This, in my uneducated opinion, would have also motivated more voters.
In a more general sense, the mainstream Democrats have always had a difficult time with messaging which is nothing new but really showed itself in this past election.
Democrats think that if you just spend time educating the voting population on all the good their policies will do then the voter will make a rational decision in the voting booth. And in the exit polling that is exactly who voted for Harris, highly educated people that like that kind of lecture type of politicking. But most people don’t vote like that - they don’t want a professor in the oval office they want a cheerleader.
Lies. But rubes love lies because they’re palatable and don’t create the challenge of critical thinking.
Disagree on only one point: the time for a cheerleader has passed.
The people now want a Teddy Roosevelt progressive. A person who physically kicks asses and legally enforces regulations on the Corporates who are undermining the country’s well-being to pad their pockets. A leader who is tough, speaks plainly, and has grit and vision for the conservation of natural resources.
None of these qualities describe any current members of the Democratic party.
There’s a lesson in Teddy though. The industry republicans did their damnedest to sideline him and would’ve succeeded if McKinley hadn’t been shot. They put him in the vice presidency in the first place to get him out of the New York governors house.
Very well said. I hated Harris’ “economic plan.” It wasn’t going to make a dent. It might get some people in rural passover states afford a home, which is great for them, but would do nothing but maybe raise costs of entry level tiny condos in any city.
But I do think they accomplished a lot in Biden’s term. If you compare the US’ inflation to other 1st world countries, we recovered far better. We were moving in the right direction. It would have been far worse with Republicans.
And they accomplished all that with a festering rot of DINO obstructionists in the senate, and a republican controlled House. They did an amazing job with the limitations they had.
But they didn’t adequately lay the blame in the right hands. They didn’t address greedy corporate Housing speculation. They tried and failed to reign in “shrinkflation”. And they failed to bring some sanity to the immigrant blaming, and instead somewhat joined in on it.
And Kamala’s strategy for relieving pressure on the housing market was a $25,000 credit for first time home buyers?
This was also going to be coupled with a large tax credit to construction companies for building single-family homes and another tax credit for selling them to first-time homeowners.
Taken together, that all sounds pretty good. But I think what really needs to change is zoning laws. The problem is that the federal government has no control over the zoning ordinances of local communities. Hell, state governments barely have control over that. Usually whenever a rezoning of a neighborhood is brought up, it causes a firestorm at city council meetings.
