First off, the moron in chief actually tweeted this today.
For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2019
One commenter to the tweet noted that the MiC has tweeted in support of a new moon mission in the past, and in fact signed a directive in 2017 telling NASA to refocus its efforts to moon exploration. To which another commenter responded, “To every Trump tweet there is an equal and opposite Trump tweet.”
But what I really want to talk about is Joe Biden. His campaign is not going well.
As recently as this Wednesday, Biden’s campaign was saying he still supported the infamous Hyde Amendment that bans federal funding for abortion. But after angry posts about Joe’s record on abortion rights ripped through social media, Joe on Thursday night announced he had changed his mind. He cited the several recent draconian state laws limiting abortion access as his reason.
Well, okay. But then last month the Biden campaign told the world that Joe was working out a “middle ground” position on climate change, and he was promptly hammered for it by pretty much the entire political left. So the campaign hustled out a policy proposal that “contains a number of passages that seem to have been copied and pasted, at times with very superficial changes, from various advocacy organizations, policy shops, and in one instance a Vox article,” it says at Vox. The proposal may not be bad — although it has been criticized for going too easy on fossil fuel interests — but it does give the appearance that Biden and his campaign hadn’t thought about this stuff too much until recently.
How long has he had to think about running for and serving as president? Why isn’t he better prepared? One gets the impression that Joe thought he could run on charm and the strength of his resume. Maybe at some point in the past that was so; not this year.
I’ve already complained about why “electability” is a chimera (see also). What does Joe Biden offer the nation, really? I don’t want to go through all of Joe’s political history in this post; not even the Anita Hill debacle and his famous support for the credit card industy. Those happened several years ago, although we don’t know if he’s really learned anything since. Let’s focus on his record as President Obama’s Veep.
In response to someone who touted Biden’s experience with foreign policy, a writer at Talking Points Memo said,
This is, frankly, insane.
First, let’s look at Biden’s history and America’s foreign policy over that same time frame. We’re we REALLY so successful? Did we change the world in any beneficial way? Did we end our involvement in unnecessary wars? Did we help bring freedom and democratic governance to the oppressed? Did we really accomplish anything at all, or did we merely slow the foreign policy free-fall nightmare of the Bush/Cheney years?
Second, let’s not pretend this is something it isn’t. In general, foreign policy is EASIER than domestic policy. The Executive branch has more freedom of action, and the questions in play tend to be straightforward. Can anybody REALLY distrust that a Warren or Harris administration would make good decisions, considering the number of advisers and experts available to them?
How effective was Joe with domestic policy? It’s hard to say, but of course the Obama Administration wasted way too much time and political capital trying to “work with” Republicans, who consistently spat in their faces. Yet today Joe seems prepared to walk down that same Road of Fail and is talking about his talents for bipartisanship.
In April, John Long wrote for New Republic,
In his campaign launch video, Joe Biden echoed a refrain common among establishment Democrats, retiring Republicans, and legacy media pundits since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. The story goes like this: Trump is a malign interloper who swept in and “hijacked” the Republican Party, leading it astray from its true, noble ideals. Biden implies this in his opening pitch, saying that once we are rid of Trump, all will be more or less well.
Did Joe sleep through the Obama Administration?
See also Richard North Patterson:
In Biden’s account, Trump is an aberration—as though America got hit by a moon rock. His tacit slogan seems to be “back to the future”: all we need to restore the supposedly Halcion days of Obama-Biden is to excise Donald Trump.
No. As many have said, Trump is just a symptom. The Republican Party is the disease. Yes, Trump must be defeated, but our leadership has to understand where the sickness is coming from or some even more depraved version of Trump will be in the White House soon enough.
I was sorry Biden didn’t run in 2016, because I believe he could have taken the nomination away from Clinton and probably would have beaten Trump. But we can’t go back now. If he’s the nominee I will vote for him, but please, let it be somebody else.
tRUMP is the 'feature' of conservatives, not a 'bug!'
I'll vote for Biden if I have to, like most of you.
But I pretty much prefer every other Democratic candidate more than him.
Joe has been in the Senate and national politics since right before my 15th birthday.
IMO: Biden's about as good a symbol of post Nixon Democratic politicians as anyone: He's good on some issues, but way too corporatist, centrist, and wishy-washy on the vast majority of them.
A vote Joe is says you want more of THAT Democratic Party.
But I will if I have to!
I will actively work against Biden if he is the nominee. He has a 40 year record of using his political power to harm ordinary people, starting with his work to stop desegregation. He will appoint anti-abortion judges. He cannot be the nominee.
Donald,
The Moon is a part of Mars?
Yeeeeeesh.
As with any other subject except grifting, tRUMPy, everything you say about space, you pull out of Uranus!
If the dems run Biden they will re"elect" Trump. I won't have any part of that.
A Joe choice would be like a dose of Castor Oil. It would beat the Drano Enema regime we are now on, and for that a glorious and giant improvement. I suppose I could fake a happy face and take it bravely.
The Dem. party is diverse and few get their perfect candidate. Remember, you always go into the new political situation with the politicians you have and not the politicians you wish you had, or some other stupid Rumsfeldian quote bastardization. Still someone closer to my ideal is still my hope. Anyone but Trump is certainly the one I am going for.
I am getting so tired of being mistweeted by our current administration. For every tweet their is an equal but…now that is funny.
There's little chance we'll have to worry about Joe being the nominee. His "strong" poll numbers at this point mostly reflect name recognition. His self-destruction has begun with reminders he's never learned lessons about plagiarism, gaffes and 1990's style radical centrism. He'll be with us for a while only because of big donors.
I fear a Biden nomination for all the reasons everyone upstream has listed. But most of all, I fear Biden because he's an inept candidate – according to people who've worked on his campaign he runs a lousy campaign – and Trump will likely destroy him.
People will say of him the same things they said of Hillary Clinton – "a deeply flawed candidate" – but for the opposite reasons. Hillary was wonky where Biden takes on positions because the wind is blowing that way; Uncle Joe is the affable retail politician where Hillary was inept at connecting with people.
The debates should shake things up, and so it's a little early for the hand-wringing.
In Biden's favor, unlike every other Democrat, he polls better than Trump in Texas. That's not a small thing.
I initially thought Biden as VP to Obama meant he had the traits to be a unifier in the democratic party between the progressive and moderate wings and initially welcomed his entry into the race. It was easy to forget that for all his "cool" and competence as president, Obama wasn't a progressive either. Joe's role as VP was to help "sell" Obama to the establishment, that in spite of his transformational blackness (which was, truth be told, speaking as a black man, the only thing that was substantively transformational about him), he's really one of us, and help him navigate those waters to their mutual benefit and that of the "centrist" bundlers. Neither man was a progressive, and while that might have been passable with the electorate in 2009, it was out of step in 2016 and certainly is for 2020. Biden's time has passed.
A Biden nomination will recreate for the democrats the same situation they had in 2016, with a really good chance of reproducing the same devastating result. Trump will attack him from the left, and Biden, thanks to his past history and current policy stances and character traits, will be lacking a credible response at best, and at worst, dig holes and make it worse.
If Biden is the nominee, the best we can do is to work hard to get him elected, and then continue to work to change the party from within. There’ll be more space to do that in power as opposed to being behind the eight ball so to speak of a second Trump term.
My biggest fear is that a Biden candidacy may have the same effect on progressives, who make up the bulk of the activists willing to work hard in the trenches, as Mitt Romney had on the right wing activists in the GOP in 2012. And GOTV will be crucial to the chances of a democratic victory. The work needed to put him over the top will be that much harder.
I agree completely with your conclusion – let it be someone else but Biden. That said, previous comments have said (maybe by mistake) that we should oppose Biden if he's the nominee. Ummmm, ya' wanna think that through?
The Obama/Biden team was too moderate, too eager to make nice with Wall Street and not as progressive as I'd like by half. BUT, compared to Trump, Obama/Biden are Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln and FDR rolled into one package.
Somebody needs to market a Joe Biden weathervane that points whatever direction the wind blows. (Liz was the first candidate to call for impeachment after the Mueller report came out. That's leadership. Joe got it right on the Hyde Amendment but he had to retake the test to get it right.
Oh, Joe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F21m0R8zE1A
One of my strongest interests is in criminal justice reform. We need radical changes in sentencing, huge programs to educate and equip people who are incarcerated to the extent that our recidivism rates are halved, and to do something about the school to jail pipeline and illiteracy. We need to do something about the kids dropping out of high school who haven't learned to read well enough to fill out a McDonald's application.
What we don't need is more Jared Kushner reform, piecemeal, behind the tables, that hides away. We need someone to lead, in public, loudly, cogently, humanely. Someone for whom cruelty is abhorrent. Someone who will work to change American indifference to human suffering.
When I project a possible Biden, Harris, and Warren action on these fronts, he comes last.
There's an urgency needed to address mass poverty and mass incarceration. There's lots of real suffering in our streets. Real reform gets postponed and postponed while people die in prisonsllllk. Harris might be a firebrand, but I trust Warren and her belief that disbanding corrupt financial alliances will change structures.
I'm afraid Joe spent most of the Obama administration detailing his vintage Corvette.
Biden is very much an old-school Democratic politician. His reflexive tendency and habit of thought is to temporize and split the difference. Used to be the GOP had a majority who worked and thought the same way. It worked well enough.
It worked right up until the GOP learned it could get more of what it wanted by being more extreme and incivil as a negotiation tactic and a way of winning by poisoning the well. There are no moderates in the GOP.
I like Biden and, lacking any other Democratic alternative, I would vote for him. He is a good guy. As honest and forthright as the situations allow. But, being cruel and intemperate here, he is a squish when the American people need a Progressive leader with hard edges and a willingness to step on toes.