The Joe Biden Presidency II : He's too old...or something like that!

Different scenarios though. Biden's done well but he's still on this planet. In 2009 Biden was what, 67? By then people are either still working or retired. Biden came into his wealth near the end of his life. Harris married into it. It's not the same thing to compare a lifetime of gains to some who still has years of earning potential ahead of them. That, and Biden was known as one of the poorest members of Congress until he became VP. Harris was 50 with plenty of years ahead to still make money. That, and being able to take out a $2 million loan for a home in Brentwood is a disconnect. A massive disconnect.

This isn't me criticizing Harris either, it's me being skeptical that she can tell the wealthy neighbors who poured money into her campaign to piss off when they try to do something. She's received a ton of campaign cash from Cali wealth that wants Khan out and the NLRB to be given a shave. Biden would've told them to take a hike. Harris? I'm skeptical about.

 

"If you can't drink their booze, cash their checks, ******** their secretaries and still vote against them, you don't belong up here."
(Sam Rayburn)

Do you see Harris as too feminine to replicate Rayburn, or something? I think she can be relied on as much as anybody ever.

 

Signed,

My brother


(See Doom & Despair Thread)

 

It's nothing to do with Harris being too feminine (Which is ludicrous to suggest, especially if you know any of the women in my family, Lord knows I'd be put in the ground if I thought that, they'd get away with it too ), it's to do with the fact that she married a fellow who was a partner at a big name law firm and is able to take out a $2 million loan for a home in Brentwood while still having years of earnings potential ahead. That's a whole different world than most Americans live in.

My concern is whether she'll be able to tune out her neighbors (Who are quite wealthy in their own right) and again, a lot of California wealth is pouring money into that campaign with the hope that Lina Khan is ousted and that the NLRB gets shuffled back into irrelevancy. I'm not saying Harris won't tune them out, I'm saying that I'm skeptical of whether or not she will tune them out. I can count on Biden to tell wealthy donors to piss off (Being poor and Catholic will give you that ability). Mark Cuban's on record saying he'd like to see Lina Khan out. I hope Harris tells him to go back to harassing NBA refs.

Rayburn's background was also massively different from Harris. Same with Johnson's, Biden's too. It was the kind of poor that is near unimaginable nowadays. Especially for the first two. And wanna know who I can definitely trust to tell wealthy donors to piss off? AOC. And look at that, also grew up poor and Catholic .

 

Math politics is hard.

 

And Harris was 49 and spent 23 years working "real jobs" while Biden spent his career in politics..

I'm seriously not getting your point here. Yes, she's ridiculously rich right now, but she spent the first 49 years of her life living a middle class life...

 

That's misleading, given that Harris has spent her career in politics while Biden did work some normal jobs (Public defender) and managed properties at one point. When Biden was nominated VP his net worth then was a measly $27,000. At 67 years old. Biden's massive wealth didn't come till after he was VP.

My point is she married into wealth at 49, a time when you have years of earning potential ahead of you and it's the kind of wealth that lets you take a $2 million loan for a house in Brentwood. That sort of money when you still have money to earn is going cause a serious disconnect. And it's going to connect you with people who are hilariously disconnected. So I'm a little worried about all the wealthy donors hoping that Harris will cut the more progressive parts of Biden's administration.

All I ask is that she ignores the likes of Cuban and Hoffman along with her fellow Brentwood residents when it comes to Lina Khan and the NLRB.

 

I guess, but you could do a whole lot worse than Harris in the "so wealthy they're disconnected from reality" category. Her beginnings were pretty humble, all things considered. Maybe her success informs the ease with which she talks about being a capitalist. She tends to believe in the martketplace and entrepreneurship, which sure as hell isn't hurting her this election in terms of getting former GOPers to support her. But I can't say that any of that troubles me at all.

I do get the sense that she's bought into Biden's build the economy from the bottom up and middle out philosophy. But for her, that means focusing, say, on small businesses. Burt also Biden stuff like lowering drug prices.

Finally, she chose Tim Walz as her running mate. I get it that the VP doesn't direct policy, but his strengths and skills as a messenger are pretty progressive. And rural. Given the chance, I really feel as though a Harris administration could leverage his skillset to finally start making inroads for the Dems in rural America.

Anyway, as much as I appreciate Joe Biden and fell that he'll be judged very positively by historians, he was terrible at knowing how to tout his administration's successes. I'm sure age and his stutter had something to do with it. But he also seemed to naively think that people would eventually and on their own grasp the reality that the American economy had performed remarkably coming out of COVID. All those jobs! The amazing GDP and real wage growth! Nope. I doubt Harris will make the same mistake.

 

It's not really fair to call someone who made it to the Senate via being an assistant Deputy Attorney, Deputy Attorney, and Attorney general as spending their career in politics. While there are certainly aspects of politics for DAs and AGs, they are still doing actual lawyer work while they are in office. ADAs and DAs are expected to work cases and DAs and AGs are still managing lawyers that are actively working cases.. Biden, on the other hand, graduated from law school in 1968 and 4 years later he won his first Senate race. Yes, Biden didn't use his position to make a ton of money, but Senators, by and large, live in a different world from their constituents and the longer they spend in office, the more detached they get from those constituents.

Yes.. Harris is ridiculously wealthy due to her marriage, but again, she spent the first 23 years of her career making $200k or less a year as SF DA and AG. Not to mention her time as a child and young adult in a single mother household with a largely absent father...

As for billionaires getting her ear.. It's interesting that you think they don't already have the ears of Democrats, including Biden.

 

The point I'm making is that I'm skeptical of whether or not Harris will continue some of the more progressive parts of Biden's policies given that her and Biden come from different worlds. Biden's done well, but he's still on this planet. He came into his wealth after a lifetime of work. Harris married into it (Nothing wrong with it) well before she became a Senator and well before retirement.

You come into that kind of money, be it marriage, career, inheritance, at a time when you still have to make a living, it can easily disconnect you from your roots. It already puts you in a world that's different than what most Americans live in. And while I know SF is expensive, I imagine $200k before the tech boom could get you far.

I never said anything like that, but it's telling that Biden ignored the likes of Larry Sanders on economic policy and walked a picket line, something that probably had every executive from California to New York panicking.

 

Former GOPers are supporting her because she's not Donald Trump and their party is full of outright weirdos and fascists. Not because of her economic views.

While Biden could've done better on messaging, a lot of it is also on US media for spending more time doing things like treating Afghanistan like it was still 2005, following Trump around, and doing bad stories like interviewing a family of 11 who didn't know what the price of milk was despite apparently consuming a lot of it and buying PF Changs frozen food.

 

So much this.

Also, Kamala getting criticized for not doing sit-down media or being absent from public view, when she was all over the place. They just didn’t cover any of it.

 

The thing to consider is that US media wishes they could cover the glamorous elements of sports or be at red carpet events asking celebrities who they're wearing. That, or they saw All The President's Men and want to live that. There was a reporter I saw on Twitter who was arguing that Kamala talking to the host of Call Her Daddy wasn't a real interview. This person worked for a notable outlet that I almost messaged them asking what made them the arbiter of interviews. Even had my journo credentials ready.

The funny thing is most of the legacy interviews I've seen with Kamala has mostly been incredibly dumb questions. Norah O'Donnell for instance just kept asking about abortion restrictions for instance in one. There's a reason sanewashing is a new term. But it's also telling that the NY Times has implied that they're angry that Biden won't give them the time of day.

I've raised this before, but in the documentary The Reagans one reporter mentioned how they had a lot of fun covering Reagan because of glamour.

 

^^^^^^^

Journalism 100 years ago, and I think even 70 years ago, was the province of the working class more than the middle class. Now it’s like being a lawyer, half of the big shots coming from the upper middle class/boarding school set, and the other half being nepo babies.

As to the first paragraph, both her parents were college professors, in an era where they didn’t have to take out a ton of loans (and maybe none at all, given they were in California in the 70s.). Once just one of them was a full professor, they were halfway between upper middle class and middle class. C’mon, it’s a shame dad wasn’t around, but I don’t think he abandoned the family like Barack Senior did, right?

As to the second, her power base is NoCal, and that means Silicon Valley. Maybe she’ll transcend that. Or maybe she’ll be to Silicon Valley what Chuck Schumer is to his homeboys on Wall Street. It’s a valid concern.

 

as recently as 40, 50 years, reporters with college degrees were rare. Now, it’s pretty much 100%.

it was, as you say, a blue collar job.

 

About a decade ago, I worked a job that had me dealing with a lot of old school media types. Gruff, working class, liked a smoke and a drink, and funny. One of my colleagues was this tough as nails woman that would always grab me if there was a food truck rally going on. Scary as hell but nice. Another was this huge left wing pro-union type who wasn't afraid to speak their mind. A lot of them were in their 50s, and here's me the youngest at 24, 25.

That was a fun job to say the least, and I honestly would be happy to do that for the rest of my life if that was the case. Pay was decent, benefits were too, I loved the people I worked with, I was working in Detroit proper* in an old newspaper building and not some suburban office park. But as mentioned, the landscape isn't the same anymore, and there's a reason I'm hoping to not be in media in the next few years.

*: It was an interesting time then. Detroit had declared bankruptcy, but it was starting to show signs of life. Lot of restaurants that are now classics were up and coming. Part of that is being young, but I miss being able to walk to the Park Bar, go to the Bucharest Grill that it shared the building with, get a shawarma and a beer on Friday at lunch then walk back.

 

100 years ago journalism was as yellow as a canary eating a banana. It hadn't developed anything like professionalism yet. That was a recent development, recent enough that we, the immediate postwar kids, were the only generation to have it for most of our lives. We took it for something now permanent, but apparently it is going away again...

 

Terrific article on Biden’s “whole of government” approach, how it works, and why it has pissed off billionaires.

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-11-04-end-whole-of-government-approach/

 

Biden's administration was pretty much the end of Reagan and GOP beliefs about corporations and government.

Dems make life better for us. That's always been the case.

 

Here’s the thing…name any do-gooder, non or barely ideological reform or change you’d like to see.

If Harris wins, we the people can make it happen if there enough of us and we do what we need to do.

If it’s Trump, he’ll make the change if Tim Cook doesn’t bend the knee, but if Cook does become one of his vassals, he’ll protect Apple’s ability to screw people.

 

Why do you think Joe always goes back to those cornpone stories of Scranton & Dad losing his job and banging his fist on the formica table "they have it in for the little man, Joey!" A US senator is a pretty damn good gig that pays well above the average and he was senator-ing for 40+ years before he was VP

 

Guys...

What if...

Joe Biden is really the Second Coming of Christ, saving us from ourselves, providing us with another chance, and taking the righteous, like Jimmy Carter, home now... https://t.co/B6e85BTkx3

— The Devil's Architect || 10000% Kamala Harris Stan (@TheDevilsArch) November 5, 2024

 

I strongly suspect that Biden is gonna get ripped to shreds in the coming weeks in months. From his appointment of Garland to his let’s face it…disastrous slow walking of Ukraine…to his failure to hold Israel to some sort of account for actions in Gaza

id post the link but that would be me admitting I didn’t delete twitter last night. It was Nancy stating that if Biden had dropped out earlier there would have been an open primary…and then when Biden immediately endorsed Kamala it made any other choice impossible

 

I don't think so. Your talking about the symptoms, not the disease. We were going to get eventually to this point due to the global economy and failure to address key areas.

I will give Garland. Failure to be more aggressive and go after his crimes while not realizing the extent of institutional weakness. However, there was this thing called COVID and our focus was elsewhere. I would add the failure to address the border even with attempts being made through Congress.

We would have been a lot worse off in the short term and possibly long term without Joe to right the ship. Long term is not looking good, but will need to play out...