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We could have just ran a popular candidate that helped people for four years instead of spending that time what to do about the unpopular candidate not being able to decisively beat the worst president in the history of America.
A random empty suit off the street would easily beat trump.
Probably would be handling genocides better too
bUtTrUmPiSwOrSe!
Legitimately just do one thing for people that makes a visible, palpable change in their lives for the better and you'll never lose an election again.
Biden has given a massive boost to unions in multiple ways, restarted enforcement of anti-trust laws, eased enforcement of Marijuana laws / moved towards decriminalization, and has forgiven $138 billion in student debt.
I'm no fan of Biden and we should definitely demand better, but it's ridiculous to claim he hasn't done just one thing to make people's lives better. This list is just off the top of my head, except the figure for student debt. I didn't even include climate issues since there has been some bad to subtract from the good, but he's been far better than any Republican would be.
what is this "move to decriminalization"?
Just appoint a head of the DEA who won't arrest people for pot and pardon everyone in prison for possession/distribution. He chooses to allow the violence of criminalization to continue.
The overwhelming majority of that was due to a bush-era law.
We saw how much unilateral power the executive has under trump. We see how capable the democrats are of whipping the vote when it's funding to bomb foreigners or lock them in cages. What would it take for you to realize they are not unable to do these things, but unwilling? I struggle to imagine a scenario that would prove that, which hasn't already happened.
You know he already pardoned everyone who was in federal prison for simple possession, 2 years ago, right?
And told the DEA to reschedule it
And passed a bill for full federal legalization, which the Republicans defeated in the senate?
Yes, Trump famously got everything he wanted. Ukraine never got their military aid that he tried to block, and the Department of Justice famously bent to his every whim and prosecuted his political opponents when he kept ordering them to. I remember it well.
This is actually the most heinously dishonest of the things you've been saying but I have become discouraged and don't want to spend too much more time researching and illustrating why this is all wrong.
Family separation at the border was already dead when Biden took office; it only ran for about a year in the middle of his presidency. But Biden did start the task force to find the kids' families and reunite them. The flow of immigrant children was quite literally in the exact opposite direction of what you're saying under Biden: From being imprisoned in cages to being back with their families. Look up your own citation for it, I'm getting genuinely irritated that I have to spend time talking about this.
The president doesn't pass bills, and this one wasn't passed by those that do pass bills. Tell progressives again that they don't know how government works.
I'm gonna cut to the chase of a longer comment I typed out. The only part that really needs to be said:
"So, since there's no way to argue with it factually, the combatant seizes on a deliberate misunderstanding of what I was saying and tries to reframe the whole conversation around that misunderstanding, in order to create a thing to disagree about which isn't the factually-indefensible original thing to disagree about."
The rest and the context are pretty self-explanatory.
You wanted to give him credit for passing something that didn't pass and that he can't pass. If you don't want people getting on your case for it, don't tell others that they don't know how government works.
He proposed legalizing it. Nothing passed. Proposals and failures are not accomplishments. He doesn't get credit for BBB for the same reason: it failed.
You may be willing to give him credit for failures. I give him credit for his successes, such as selling weapons to Netanyahu for genocide.
You seized on literally the only thing in my long-enough-to-be-tedious list that was an attempt instead of an outcome, and are trying to spin it into me giving him credit only for failures. I'm almost impressed.
The first two items in my list represented the successful outcome of his second attempt at something, after the first attempt was blocked, but those $144 billion and 40% reduction numbers are the outcome (after the initial much bigger attempt). Then comes the attempt at marijuana legalization. Every other item is simply the outcome.
I think you should get some sort of award for how vaguely plausible you make this argument sound, given the yawning gulf between it and what actually happened, and the fact that the evidence for it not happening the way you said is literally just right up there in the comments up above (not buried away somewhere in some government document that there could be legitimate debate about how to interpret.)
Well, if you're going to try to give him credit for shit he hasn't done, I'm gonna call you on it.
Never said that. You're telling on yourself.
Okay, fine. Let me try again.
You seized on literally the only thing in my long-enough-to-be-tedious list that was an attempt instead of an outcome, and are dealing with it as if giving him credit for that attempt was the only thing I'd done, instead of one attempt listed among a big group of demonstrated successes. I'm almost impressed.
The first two items in my list represented the successful outcome of his second attempt at something, after the first attempt was blocked, but those $144 billion and 40% reduction numbers are the outcome (after the initial much bigger attempt). Then comes the attempt at marijuana legalization. Every other item is simply the outcome.
I think you should get some sort of award for how vaguely plausible you make this argument sound, given the yawning gulf between it and what I actually said, and the fact that the evidence for it not happening the way you said is literally just right up there in the comments up above (not buried away somewhere in some government document that there could be legitimate debate about how to interpret.)
Happier with that?
If you don't want me pointing out when you call a failure an accomplishment, all you need to do is not call a failure an accomplishment. If you feel entitled to me addressing every last word of your comment, you should consider that I'm not here to fulfill your unreasonable sense of entitlement.
Okay, fine. Let me try again.
You can't meaningfully respond to the substance, so you're seizing on weird little trivialities -- out of this list of billion- and trillion-dollar scale good things Biden did, one and only one of them was merely a good-faith attempt to do something good, and it didn't succeed! Dude sucks.
That's a very bad argument, and I feel like I've spent entirely too much time at this point explaining why that is. Happier with that?
I argued with what I took exception to.
If you don't want me saying that you're trying to pass off failure as success, I've already said how you can avoid that in the future.
So you don't take exception to any of the rest of it?
Well, I just re-read it, and you were right: it was tedious.
But since you asked: I'm not great with the implication that asking the DEA to look into descheduling is an accomplishment, either. You did ignore what the other commenter said about democrats always managing to find the votes to bomb foreigners, but I figured you wanted to focus on what you took exception to, and not start a slapfight over every last word in someone's comment. I'm only saying this now because you asked, not out of any desire to provoke or indulge further combativeness.
Do you believe Biden should pardon everyone in prison for Marijuana-related crimes?
Just skip to the bit where you can't defend your position and call me a Russian. It's all you'll ever know.
Answer the question.
Go upstairs and ask your parents what it's like to live with disappointment, because I'm not going to participate on your terms.
Just skipping to the bit where you can't defend your position?
I haven't stated a position.
Makes it pretty hard to defend one then
It's great for frustrating sea lions, though.
Any new DEA administrator would have to be approved by the Senate, and an an appointment that was a defacto decriminalization vote would not pass.
The bar that was set in this discussion was that Biden hasn't done anything to improve lives. I have already made a comment elsewhere in this thread indicating that I do not suffer from the delusions you are putting on me. Biden absolutely should be doing more, that just wasn't the bar presented.