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this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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It makes sense. He's actually been competent, which not many (certainly not I) quite expected, but the media hasn't reported a lot of his successes, which have been unusually deployed and quite complex to begin with. People don't understand it. Maybe they'll vote for him anyway, but it's not assured, somehow even with Trump on the other side again.
e.g.how he blocked the railway strike at Christmas to save "the economy" first and foremost at the workers expense, but then kept working afterwards to help get most if not all of their demands met (I'm not sure if they got any sick leave though). Right or wrong, in the past that would have been hailed as a "huge success", but instead we barely heard about it.
Likewise with Gaza he has tried to toe the line - we technically have obligations to fulfill there, but does genocide change that, and if so what is the process by which to do that, and is he engaging in that, or doesn't Israel have a veto anyway, so what else is he doing that we might want done?
We have depended upon our media so much, to tell us not just what happened but what it means and how to feel about it all. So with it being bought out now by billionaires... it is like our fourth branch of government has become as unreliable as Congress and the Supreme Court.
I think the media is reporting Biden's accomplishments accurately when they happen, however nobody is really interested. The news media (particularly on TV) thrives on controversy, conflict, and violence, even if they have to exaggerate. "If it bleeds, it leads". Things working the way they ought to simply doesn't drive attention.
I often joked during the 2020 election that Biden's campaign should have been "Make Politics Boring Again". Good governance shouldn't make headlines. But there are some people who assume that if someone is out of the news, they must be irrelevant.
There's been a LOT of times someone has said, on lemmy, "man I wish Biden would just do x" only to get responses of "Biden started the process of doing x several years ago, here's the progress that's been made, here's the timeline for completion."
It's not that people don't care, it's that people literally don't know.
Oh I do not mean to suggest that they make false statements, just that they have an enormous bias, well as you said, towards providing "focused" coverage in some areas but then virtually nothing else.
So now he is trying to make his case to the American people, and like I guess he is worried (title of the OP) that nobody will believe him, b/c if he did good stuff then surely they would have heard of it (except... that is not the case - he did the good stuff, but they did not hear about it, at least not from the common news media).
And even that is irrelevant in a large sense, b/c Trump is in the news daily lately - but like, somehow that is working for him!? This is where I sigh and wonder if we will even have so much as the farce of a democracy a couple years from now, b/c if that is our mantra - that whatever the news shows is "good", while facts themselves are, if not "bad" then at least irrelevant? - then we deserve whatever we will have chosen for ourselves, at that time.
And yes, I know - "but they did...!" - and I am countering with "why didn't we do...?", like each individual state could implement some kind of ranked-choice voting? I don't know if that would work for the Presidential election, but if it would help with the members that we send to Congress and the Senate, then while it would take some few years, we could really change things, in less than a decade. But instead, I guess we just... won't?
Elections aren't about gaining voters, they're about getting yours to the polls. Trump constantly in the media fires up his base. Biden's base doesn't even like him yet.
As always, Dems are hoping that fear of what the other side would do if they won will drive its base to the polls. But as all the comments here show, I worry that that will not be the case.
e.g. people recall how Biden "slapped" the train workers - not so much forgetting as never even knowing in the first place that Biden stayed with the situation for months to help them get a good proportion of what they had asked for.
If facts do not matter so much to conservatives, who are in possession rather of "alternative facts" and then vote with their hearts rather than heads, so now too it seems that liberals are likewise receiving possibly a different set of "alternative facts", and may also (e.g. the Gaza situation) vote with their hearts rather than heads.
Not just the media, but perhaps worse, unverified strangers on the Internet though social media. The biggest thing that pisses me off is every time I the lesser of two evils argument spouted of paired with Biden's handing of something that 100% should fall in the domain of Congress to solve. So may things that historically have been attributed to the President were ultimately created and decided on by Congress and the public attributes way more power to the President than they actually have because of it.
If we want actual support to Gaza we need to push our congressional members to provide that support. Which is laughable because congress can't even pass a bill that had bipartisan support because half of one floor bends knee to the will of a private citizen. Biden keeps having to overreach his office with executive orders and policies that aren't backed by law and as such are highly transient and subject to constitutional review allowing them too be thrown out, as well as peace time commander-in-chief powers to do things like supply airdrops or back door old equipment sales to their other countries to affected groups.
The difference between Ukraine and Gaza is that unlike Ukraine, have does not have a unified Palestinian force that the US can safely supply arms to (HAMAS has actively proven that they are not the good guys) and that we're legally obligated to supply arms to Israel, which we are not to Russia. Biden can only sit loudly at Israel stating that genocide is bad threaten that this could lead to a withdrawal of US support, but he can't actually withdraw US support. Congress needs to provide a bill for him to sign that does that.
On a side note... I'm fairly convinced that a good chunk of the rhetoric spouted to not vote for Biden likely originated from foreign sources to plant the Idea in people's minds and get them to repeat it everywhere because on the surface it feels right. The vote any vote not for Biden is a vote for Trump rhetoric probably exists for similar reasons, mostly to help reinforce the thought that both sides are the same because it's quite easily proven not true and likely increases the odds that someone it's used to convince to vote for Biden ultimately ends up either withholding their vote in protest or voting for someone else out of spite.
Excellent points, truly.
Esp on congressional v presidential power/responsibility. I must admit im rather guilty of this, too. Its easy to hate on our cultures authoritarian tendencies that prevade in the stupidest fucking places, and yet i still consistently think, "wheres that marjuana legislation, Joe? Why arent you passing executive orders to prevent the intellectually challeneged baboon heading Texas from busing his responsibilities to my state? Or at least offer more executive support in handling the influx of ppl? Maybe something to give out more work visas, no?
Reading this tho reminds me, most all of that is legislative tasks. weve just all been brainwashed by years of executive encroachment to where the broken parts of our system behave extra broken.
Keep fighting the good fight. Your words hit hard.
The best way to think of it is that the presidents power is roughly bellcurved relative to how much Congress is in alignment with them. If Congress is completely out of alignment with them they have very little power because congress can pass a vote on what he vetos or issue a stop on any executive action he takes. If Congress is slightly in alignment or out of alignment he becomes able to singlehandedly stop laws and executive actions aren't likely to get overruled and will have up go under judicial review. If Congress is completely in alignment with him, he doesn't need to use his veto powers or executive actions and if he does they likely won't be contested anyway but we're generally better off with Congress passing a law.
Point of order, we are not legally bound to sell weapons to anyone. The Leahy Law actually bans the sale of weapons to countries or organizations credibly accused of war crimes. The creator of the Leahy Law has publicly said Israel should have been cut off by that law. Former civil servants have said that Israel gets a special vetting process that requires several political appointees to agree Israel is problematic. In contrast to any other country getting a single civil servant.
We are in fact taking great pains to send them weapons illegally.
Consider though what "unverified" means these days - the media circus is one of the three main sources that got Trump elected the last time (Hillary Clinton's corruption, e.g. with the DNC collusion, and Ted Cruz were the other two main ones iirc), so it seems like they have lost the public's trust?
Therefore if people turn to "unverified sources" - and who even is that really, like aren't Hank/John Green, Innuendo Studies, Kurzgesagt, CPG Grey, and then on the left the comedians like John Olivier, Jon Stewart, even fucking Bill Maher, and ofc on the right are those like Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, etc.? - can we really blame them, when the "verified" sources ARE lying to us? And keep in mind that people like Donald Trump, Mitch McConnel, Lindsey Graham, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Bohbert, etc. are among the "verified" ones, yes? They are "verified" by virtue of having the seal of approval by authority.
Maybe you mean places like the CDC, FDA, FBI, etc., and while I whole-heartedly agree, many others do not agree. (Also, Republicans like Trump are constantly ordering them to say or not say some things, like removing all words "Global Warming" or "Climate Change" from the official documents, and Yellowstone National Park was even forbidden to collect temperature data any longer - plus look into why doing taxes sucks, and why the post office sucks, it all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when these organizations are targeted for destruction and then they get to cite how "unreliable" they are later, as if one action had nothing whatsoever to do with the direct consequences of it.) Meanwhile, in authoritarian communist China and Russia, the "verified" sources could be among the least trustworthy of them all? Now, the USA is not that... we have our own whole other thing going on here, but in both cases people turn to "unverified" sources for the same reason, and imho it is not the presence of the unverified sources that should concern us nearly so much as the absence of good information from verified ones - by which I mostly mean news media, but in some highly specific cases government agencies too, when they are forced to comply by a Congressional order despite the facts, possibly remaining under attack for YEARS until the director is replaced by someone who will be more easily controlled.
Also, of COURSE a lot of this comes from outside sources - I thought this was verified at some point - but also it would be a huge missed opportunity for that particular foreign not to take advantage of that opportunity, and they definitely are not that stupid. Also we do it ourselves to other nations all the time. Water is wet, stones are hard, h8rs gonna h8 and cheaters gonna cheat - at some point I don't even blame them anymore - or rather I at least cease to be surprised - and start blaming ourselves more for falling for such cheap tricks, over & over again! It is hard to get out of an abusive relationship, I get that, but if we need to do it then we just need to get it done, somehow! Or else we will fall, as a nation - and ngl that has a much better chance of happening now than it did back when Trump ran the first time.
I was mostly using unverified in lacking sources and people not going through and verifying their sources before just blindly believing them. Which seems to happen a lot.
People see Biden did something and don't look into why Biden did the thing he did then start calling him every because he did the thing he did without understanding why he did it. It's a vicious circular loop that I've seen with pretty much every president we've had since I can remember.
Biden seems to be pretty conscious about remaining within the bounds of law so there's a good chance there's generally some obscure treaty or other random grouping of legal documents that when all bundled together cause the reaction we see. I like to look up what those are because I find it interesting but I can guarantee the bulk of people in this thread do not.
But the public is right to do this, particularly regarding international wars like Ukraine and Gaza. The United States has not declared war via Congress since 1942. Yet clearly we have fought plenty of wars since then solely under the command and authorization of the presidency alone. Which means there is 80+ years of precedence of creating an imperial presidency that authorizes Biden to act against both Russia and Israel. He is choosing not to avail himself of the precedent. And genocide is the result.
Israel is legally obligated not to engage in collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Yet, they are doing those acts anyway. The Constitution requires Congress to declare war. Yet Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the War on Terror, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine/Gaza demonstrate that is apparently an illusory Constitutional requirement. Laws are meaningless if there is no enforcement mechanism.
This is undoubtedly true. And it is a sad reflection of the weakness of our system, our historical actions, and the intellectual capabilities of our citizenry that it is as highly effective as it is. Trump will destroy The West if he is elected in November. And plenty of Americans don't have a problem with that because they don't understand what it means. Which is a consequence of neoliberal privatization and deregulation of all social programs, including public education.
As Malcolm X said, this is Chickens Coming Home to Roost. And, unfortunately for us who live in the United States today, an innumerable number of Chickens are coming home to roost in our very near future. I wish I had been born in Denmark or Norway - at least their social democratic safety nets would allow my community to thrive as the world burns around us
I feel this in my soul.
They did get nominal sick leave. 3 days I think, which is better than the 0 they had previously, but still effectively useless.
edit FOUR sick days and the ability to convert 3 PTO days to sick days:
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
I’ll bite, what are the obligations we have towards them?
This is my take as well... if you get a hundred hugs and one slap, you're gonna remember the slap. And selling out the rail workers was one huge fucking slap.
Oh it definitely seemed like a slap at the time... but then as another commenter pointed out here, he got them like everything that they asked for (https://lemmy.world/comment/8562627 => https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid). Okay so it took 4-5 months more than was hoped, and in the end they did not get the "7 sick days" that e.g. Bernie Sanders wrote a letter in support of but rather 4 sick days + the ability to convert 3 PTO days into sick ones (which in some sense is better in terms of being more flexible, like if you needed a doctor's note or something, though obviously is still worse than like 7 sick days plus additional PTO days beyond that).
So my point is that we should be notified of both the successes and the failures, but our biased media seems to be only highlighting the latter, while virtually ignoring the former altogether. That leaves the general American public - who have jobs irl so do not have time to invest MANY hours hunting and rooting out proper information, both pro and con, on every single issue - unprepared to make a fully-informed decision.
So in retrospect... was it a slap & a "selling out" then? He stuck with them until it got done, just as he promised he would. And it did ultimately get done. He did not "abandon" them, he just did it differently. My words here are not a huge ringing endorsement in support of him, but neither are they biased anywhere nearly to the degree that the media is showing?
I wonder why are you leaving out the part where the rail workers ended up getting almost everything they wanted in the following weeks?