So, Joe Biden's been president for about a year now. And his presidency has been... sadly, disappointing.

It baffles me and boggles my mind that Biden honestly thought the GOP would magically redeem themselves with Trump out of the way, even after January 6, 2021 and even after they refused to convict him despite knowing explicitly that he was responsible for the riot. Biden was VP under Obama when the GOP refused to give him anything, even going so far as to invent a phony precedent to deny him a Supreme Court judge just to keep their ill-deserved majority (nevermind the fact that Merrick Garland was hardly an ideologically liberal). And he had to have seen how the GOP violated everything they once stood for to stand by Trump throughout his presidency despite lie after life, and despite breach of breach of conduct that would've most certainly gotten any other man (or woman) convicted and thrown in jail.

However, I think my greatest disappointment and anger are reserved for the two Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who thanks to the Democrats' apparent inability to change the narrative on "Defund the Police" in 2020, hold sway and influence over the entire Democratic agenda in the Senate. They have seen with their own eyes what the GOP are up to, Sinema need only look to her home state of Arizona to see what the GOP are doing because of their devotion to Trump's lie that the election was stolen from him, a lie laughed out of every court it's been brought up in for lack of evidence. Yet that hasn't stopped the GOP from wasting time and money to look for "fraud" to justify new voter laws intended specifically to make it harder for Democratic leaning groups to vote, and even give partisan legislatures power to overrule election officials and send phony legislatures even if their candidate doesn't win.

Do Manchin and Sinema honestly believe the GOP won't get rid of the filibuster if they take back the Senate? Mitch McConnell has already violated every other rule in the Senate, why should we believe he somehow won't get rid of the one thing Democrats could use to block a GOP agenda if they end up in the minority? The GOP have happily ripped up laws they exploited to gain power as soon as those laws could be used against them by Democrats. And even worse, Manchin and Sinema aren't up for re-election until 2024, at which point it may not matter what stance they take, Democrats will either have the votes in the Senate or will be out of power in the Senate and likely the House, and may be unable to prevent the GOP from winning through intimidation. If they're really so sure they will be "rewarded" for their refusal to take a stand for what's right, why not ask to be put on the ballot in 2022 and see if the voters in their own states really think the same?

Despite all of this, though, Biden has proven why he was the wrong man for the job. Because of his reputation for being gaffe prone, he refuses to do the one thing the GOP are good at: Making sales pitches. Biden has refused to wield the power of the presidency to pitch his plans to the American public in the same way Trump used the office to enrich himself and to spew forth his lies without remorse. It amazes me that the DNC continues to believe that we can't risk upsetting the apple cart, that we have to keep electing so called "moderates" who do nothing in the face of GOP lies and obstruction, then act shocked when they lose or get blamed for stuff beyond their control. Pete Butiegig was right in 2019 when he said that no matter who Democrats picked or what they ran on, the GOP would scream about socialism, because in their minds anything that isn't even remotely right-wing Reagan or Trump esque is considered socialist even if it's not.

Beating Trump should've been the floor, not the ceiling. Even if Democrats expected larger margins than they got, that's no excuse for not selecting someone who was prepared to fight back. Someone who could be charismatic and willing to be a salesman. Someone who would truly fight hard from day one and deal with reality, rather than pine for the nostalgia of a Senate they used to know but no longer exists. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren saw this reality, Pete Butiegig saw this reality, even Amy Klobuchaur saw this reality and realized the time was right for new leadership. A Democratic party and presidency based around 21st century politics. Biden was asked numerous times what he'd do if the GOP achieved what we feared they would achieve with their backing of Trump, and every time he refused to commit to anything other than a false hope that the GOP wouldn't.

If Democrats do survive 2022 without losing control of Congress, they had better be prepared to do whatever it takes in 2023 to protect what's left of the American republic. If not, they'll have no one but themselves to blame for allowing the America as we know it to die. Yet again they shrank from the task given to them, convinced once again that the American people and the GOP are smarter than they really are. Trump's victory in 2016 should've been the wake-up call that Democrats can take nothing for granted, because the GOP are willing to do whatever it takes to win, consequences be damned!

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I couldn't have said this better myself, or gone into as much detail as you did but I have a very bad feeling that we are screwed come 2022 and then things will truly be hellish for Biden. Come 2024 I honestly think that we may need to primary him and get someone younger and someone who sees the problems we face on the ballot. I personally like Klobuchar and Butiegeg. The thing I'd worry about with Bernie is that we'd wind up having an Andropov or Chernenko situation where he would pass not too long after taking office if he won.

What I think we need is someone who is further to the left but not so far left they won't appeal to that many people....that and someone who will wield the full power of the presidency and do whatever the hell it takes to get people to know what is best for the country and help them realize that the GOP is their enemy, not their friends.

I don't have good feelings about this fall because so many people I see on FB blame Biden for Omicron, inflation, high gas prices, the supply chain issues, etc. This may not sound good to a lot of people but perhaps the republic as we know it needs to die and then something better can rise like a phoenix....preferably something more to the left.

7634306 Bernie Sanders has more or less ruled out primary challenging Biden in 2024, and both he and Warren would be an uphill battle due to their age and hailing from blue states with GOP governors, meaning if they did win they would give up their Senate seat and a GOPer would almost certainly replace them.

Butiegeg is definitely a candidate for 2024, if African Americans can get past their hang-ups about them (not entirely unjustified but what exactly do they expect him to do when the police forces themselves seem resistant to change?) he would be a much needed breath of fresh air. His performance in the 2020 Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary prove that he can appeal to the same demographics that backed Sanders. But assuming he does launch a challenge against Biden, it'll be an uphill fight because the DNC will see him in the same vein as Edward Kennedy and once again circle the wagons to protect their establishment candidate even when it's clear the establishment needs to change (it's too shell shocked and too naive in its view of the GOP to be effective anymore).

I sincerely hope there is still some sembelance of a democratic republic after 2024, but particularly with the way the Senate, the electoral college and the Supreme Court all skew, to say nothing of the GOP's likelihood to gerrymander their way back into power in the House, I don't foresee our chances being very good. And I guess maybe indeed that we need to go through what other nations went through at one point or another before enough people realize our system needs to change. It took many European countries until after World War II to understand how to counter fascism and the dark side of populism, that capitalist societies by themselves are doomed to failure and necessitate government intervention on behalf of the people to keep the system working.

The electoral college is one thing that I think needs to go. If you look at vote totals, it is clear that we have the advantage but thanks to trump winning the right states back in 2016, despite Hillary being more popular, the GOP won that one. Then you look at 2000, a measly thousand votes in a congressional district in Florida decided the election. I have dealt with many people who praised the founding fathers for creating the EC back when the Constitution was ratified....in the late 18th century. That may have seemed to be a good idea back then but it has no place in the 21st century.

I truly hate to say this but it might take a trump victory in 2024 for the DNC to get their act together and realize that establishment candidates aren't going to cut it anymore. We need new, younger faces to lead the party....people who aren't afraid to grab the bull by the horns and do what needs to be done to not only save the party but to save this country. Regarding populism, the bad thing is that it is on the rise again in some European countries....nationalist populism.

As long as things stay semi-stable here, nothing will change. The SCOTUS will continue to be controlled by the right, gerrymandering will continue, voter suppression laws will continue and the electoral college will continue to be our enemy. I personally think we got lucky in 2020 with the way the EC works....and I have a bad feeling things will go to hell in 2024, the toddler will get re-elected and then he will find one way or another to establish a dictatorship. I hate to say this but maybe that is what it will take for this country to finally wake up and realize the status quo is not working....lets face it though, with as stubborn as so many people in this country are it would probably take a second civil war to fix these problems. The damn EC survived the first one, maybe a second one could kill the beast....my ideal situation though would be one that would drive a stake into the heart of everything that makes this country backwards compared to Europe.

Sadly though, the very way America came to be is what will make it so difficult to become something better. Maybe someday the US can become a country to be proud of, probably not in our lifetimes though.

7634711 I think it's become increasingly clear that the founders had a lack of imagination. They knew from the moment they wrote the constitution that Washington was going to be president, no one else would even dream of it because of how much they would have to give up. Only Washington was popular enough to have the support of the whole country. The electoral college was just a quirk to keep states from voting for favorite son candidates.

But they never imagined just how powerful and self-enriching politics would become, that the idea of the "common man" would take hold and prove so unshakable regardless of how well it actually turned out. If they had any foresight that one day someone like Jackson, Nixon or Trump would become president, they would've established clear guidelines for what the president could and could not do and ensure that he could be held accountable regardless of how much support he had. And the same goes for the system, they never imagined the Senate and the Electoral College would skewer so heavily towards overrepresenting rural areas and small states. The Warren court rightfully tried to fix this with its "People, not trees" ruling.

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Another thing we have to take into account was how messed up things were back then. Only property owning white males could vote at the time and hell, senators were voted in by state legislatures, not the people. And yes it was clear that Washington would be president given his role in the revolutionary war. From what I understand Washington was against the idea of political parties and the shit storm we have today is a clear example of why he had his concerns about them.

The EC was created to help rural areas have more power so that the big cities wouldn't be the ones electing the president all the time. To me it is sad that even in an election where one candidate is far more popular than the other and gets millions more votes (Hillary Clinton in 2016) that the less popular candidate can win solely because he won the right collection of states. Of course getting rid of the EC would take an act of God because unless we have a few election cycles where republicans are crushed on every level above county commissioners, it will never happen.

7634723 Interestingly, before 2000 there was one other quirk of the EC that went largely unnoticed. In 1976, the incumbent president Gerald Ford actually won more states than his challenger, Jimmy Carter. However, Carter won because the states he won had more electoral votes (and his margin of victory in two was extremely close, if the votes had been just slightly differently he would not have won them). Arguably, Carter was the better candidate than Ford given Ford's complete pardon of Nixon, but the point still stands that the candidate who technically won more votes in the country was not the one declared the winner because another candidate won the right states.

It was only in 2000 and 2016 that the EC proved itself a failure. Gore was infinitely more qualified for the presidency than W. Bush, would not have squandered the Clinton budget surplus with tax cuts for the wealthy, would've maintained U.S. reputation abroad by not pulling out of deals his predecessor made and potentially might have been able to prevent 9/11 by paying more attention to the intelligence briefings warning about Al-Qeada. He also likely wouldn't have been tempted to go after Iraq or tell the lie about WMDs. And of course, Hillary Clinton would've had members in both parties scrutinizing her despite her political experience, likely would've been primary challenged in 2020 and most certainly would've spared us the embarrassment of the Trump presidency, as well as would've taken Cvoid seriously to the point where we might have been done with the pandemic by now.

I do agree with you on 2000 and this is coming from someone who supported Bush back then. Yes I used to lean right before I took a huge move to the left. One thing you can do on the usdebtclock.org site is look at past deficits and in 2000 the national debt was actually decreasing because of Clinton. I have watched documentaries and Bush ignored a lot of intelligence briefings in the summer of 2001 that could have prevented 9/11 entirely....and yeah, the whole Iraq thing was him wanting to finish off his dad's job. Thing is, Bush 41 simply wanted to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia.

And had we had Gore after Clinton, everything up through now would have been different and yeah, we likely wouldn't have been a global embarrassment by electing a man-child as president who I wouldn't trust to run a lemonade stand....and yeah, with Hillary we could have nipped Covid in the bud before all these variants started coming along.

I think the biggest problem is that the choice between 'moderate' Democrats and Republicans is just such a moot point. Buttigeg and Klobuchar are ideologically highly conservative individuals. Democrats want a fucking parade thrown for them just for trying to achieve the bare minimum and don't even try very hard to achieve that. After they fail millionaire tv pundits ask if they're to fall left. Republicans are overtly fascist and even after January 6th Nancy Pelosi STILL wanted the Republican Party to be strong. At some point Neoliberals just need to realize that it's impossible to work with Republicans and they just keep trying the same thing that's been losing them elections since the 1990's

7635387 Indeed. They forget that the GOP didn't wanna work with Bill Clinton on anything at all, they kept drumming up outrage after outrage to make him look back, and then peddled their "Contract With America" nonsense that they had no intention to act upon. And when Clinton beat them in '96, they still couldn't accept that he won, so they tried to smear him with the Lewinski scandal as if somehow lying about a conseual affair was worse than lying about a break-in or lying about selling arms to terrorists (or insisting you weren't part of the deal even if you did know about it).

And what did the GOP do after Obama got elected to fix the economy after the GOP messed it up again? They did the same thing they did with Bill Clinton. Heck, the ACA was very much the GOP's counter to Clintoncare in the 90's, and the GOP actually went against what they'd previously supported just because they couldn't accept that a Democrat was offering it.

The GOP have never truly been out of power long enough to reconsider their policies. They have built themselves a reality proof echo-chamber, and Trump is the end result. That's why they're doing what they're doing now. There will never be another candidate like Trump that the electorate will willingly embrace despite obvious signs that he only cares about himself. Everyone else at some point will be seen as not Trump-like enough because they were all at one point or another part of the establishment. At one point or another they all had their doubts about Trump or didn't outright praise him, or break the law to keep him in power. So the GOP's only solution is to basically destroy democracy rather than do the simple thing and kick Trump to the curb.