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Comment by rhizome | Hacker News Reader

> Yeah, same here, but that's because we live in progressive bubbles.

Biden is a stopgap, he was what was required to get rid of Trump, which was job #1, a P1 if you will. A "progressive bubble" or other media-created marketing phrase is not a factor, it's a pure transaction: Trump has to go. People rose to the occasion this time.

> You cannot imagine someone actually liking Biden without being soft in the head

This isn't a fair interpretation of what they were saying, nor realistic. People are going to lament that a big part of Biden's support was functional, in order to get Trump out, but people complain about unchangeable things all the time. It's not significant.

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I think the point is, if everyone agrees Biden is just a stopgap, why didn't they just pick someone better?

For him to be a "stopgap" at all must imply that some Democrats today see him as the best end-game option, and we just need to "convince" them to be even more progressive

> if everyone agrees Biden is just a stopgap, why didn't they just pick someone better?

Because the electoral college distorts what "someone better" means. Democrats picked someone more popular than Trump in 2016 and lost. Biden's home state is the swing state of Pennsylvania. Home state advantage is generally fairly minor, but in this case the margins are so close that it might have actually made the difference (obviously we'll have to wait for the final count, which we won't have for days).

Exactly right about the electoral college distortion. If we went by popular vote we could probably have had someone much more progressive. But we have to thread the needle of the electoral college.

The electoral college advantage doesn’t systematically advantage republicans: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/2.... Don’t forget that Obama’s “blue wall” states are smaller than average and benefit from the EC. And they’re historically quite progressive economically. Obama in fact had a structural EC advantage in 2012: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-democrats-get-lucky...

> In fact, Mr. Obama would probably have won the Electoral College even if the popular vote had slightly favored Mitt Romney.

> If all states had shifted toward Mr. Romney by 5.3 percentage points, Mr. Obama would still have won Colorado and therefore the Electoral College — despite losing the national popular vote by 1.5 points.

Losing the upper Midwest produces an EC disadvantage for Democrats, but that’s not an impediment to a traditional progressive candidate in the Sanders mold.

Moreover, the EC gives an average of a few point advantage one way or the other. It’s not enough for a “much more progressive” candidate. You can see this by looking at the House popular vote, which is proportional (and not affected by gerrymandering). Republicans regularly win the House popular vote: https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/chat-...

> The electoral college advantage doesn’t systematically advantage republicans

Indeed, which is why one would hope that solutions for moving beyond this creaky, janky system would be embraced in a bipartisan fashion. Sadly, the approach that is furthest along in that regard, the NPVIC (which I have issues with, but is still better than the current system) has so far only been enacted exclusively by states that Biden carried this year. Regardless of the fact that the electoral college does not inherently benefit the Republican party in the long term, the events of the past 20 years have sufficed to make them adamantly against any reform here.

If the risk is that someone like Romney, or McCain get in, I think progressives would feel more free to take risks and pick a more progressive candidate. To most progressives, while they're not fans of Romney and revisionism aside weren't fans of McCain, having one of them in power feels less dangerous than having Trump in power.

If next election they're up against an attempt for Trump to get back in, then yes, you could expect a large progressive turnout for a Biden re-election. But if he's against a more moderate republican, I don't think you'll see the turnout that happened this year repeat, which may turn out to be a problem for his supporters.

Note that Biden has already indicated that he would prefer to serve only a single term. Of course that doesn't mean he definitely won't be running in 2024, but if true then the race will be more wide open than a typical incumbent candidacy.

Do you have a source for him saying that? I can only find that he says he intends to be a “transitional candidate” to the next generation.

A search for "biden single term" brings up the first result as this: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-0...

"Former Vice President Joe Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term. While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital. According to four people who regularly talk to Biden, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters, it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president. “If Biden is elected,” a prominent adviser to the campaign said, “he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.” The adviser argued that public acknowledgment of that reality could help Biden mollify younger voters, especially on the left, who are unexcited by his candidacy and fear that his nomination would serve as an eight-year roadblock to the next generation of Democrats."

He's nearly 78 now. He'd be 81 next time around, and his campaign this election cycle could hardly be called vigorous. The electorate will be younger also. I don't think there will be much appeal even as an incumbent unless his accomplishments in office are remarkable.

Assuming republicans control the senate, it would be practically impossible for Biden to accomplish anything remarkable.

It seems the best we can hope for is a president who doesn't try to fire CDC experts and who doesn't appoint far right judges.

His campaign was 'not vigorous' as you called it because of the pandemic

If Biden is alive in 2024, I could absolutely see the Democratic party running him as a candidate and losing.

Thank you, I needed a laugh.

I honestly don't think any of the Dems in the primary except him would've beat Trump given how important WI, MI, and PA were.

Na, those votes were coming regardless of the loon running

Beto, hands down. But he never stood a snowball’s chance because of how stupid the FPTP-imposed primaries are. You need to out-left or out-right all other candidates your party puts forward to get their backing for the real elections. It’s a recipe for disaster.

>You need to out-left or out-right all other candidates your party puts forward to get their backing for the real election.

How can you claim that when Biden was one of the least left leaning democratic candidates?

The problem was that more progressive policies were divisive even within the party, and out of the more moderate candidates running Biden has the most name recognition and probably the most "we know we're going to get".

If by "someone better" you mean more progressive, then you're exactly right: you need to convince a portion of the moderate majority to be more progressive. That is a difficult & long term process.

> more progressive policies were divisive even within the party

divisive within the Party, but not among the constituency.

I'm not sure who you are referring to when you say constituency. What is your definition of that term? Mine is that all people are part of the constituency: A person elected president is responsible for leading everyone; A person elected to the House or Senate is responsible for representing everyone in their district/state, not just their party. My definition of "party" are all of the people registered as Democrats.

I think you're right that some aspects of more progressive policies are not divisive for the country: I think most people would agree that everyone should have healthcare. I think most people would agree that everyone should have access to education. I'm not sure I even look at those sorts of things as "progressive". The progressive part is how those things are structured and how they are paid for.

As I think about it further, I think there's also a possibility that a majority of Democrats do believe in progressive policies on things like this, but when selecting a candidate they opted for one someone not as progressive because they didn't think the progressive one had as much chance of getting elected. Their calculation, perhaps a bit cynical, was that the less progressive person that gets elected can do more than the very progressive candidate that loses.

democratic voters tragically did respond to the fearmongering of establishment propagandists, but the problem for them isn't in the electoral sphere. it's on the ground where people are facing mass evictions, a mental health and suicide epidemic, poor communities facing a "dark winter", and so on. the moderate wing of the democratic party choosing not to protect vulnerable communities won't make these problems go away.

Weren't the Democrats trying to craft a new aid package for the "dark winter"? I thought they were simply blocked by the Whitehouse/Senate who probably didn't see cooperation on this as beneficial to their election prospects... and a Whitehouse that couldn't seem to make up its mind on the issue.

I agree establishment leadership is skeptical of more progressive policies, probably not for philosophical reasons but for a more cynical calculations that support isn't good for their political prospects.

you're talking about the covid relief package that pelosi refused to pass because it would've helped trump's chances at reelection.

I'm not sure that package would have done very much. I suppose it would have been better than nothing though, and another one could have been passed after the election. You're probably right that Pelosi calculated that a compromise wasn't in her interest, but I'm also not sure if it was in the Republican's interest: I think both sides would claim victory and it would have come down to whoever was able to spin it the most to their benefit.

Unfortunately, now that the election is over I also don't think it will be easy to get anything done. The GOP is not going to want to give Democrats an early "win", and will likely pivot to their "but the deficit!" talking points now that they're out of office. I think things will need to get much much worse before a compromise is possible.

"more progressive policies" is a broad term, could mean anything from "Medicare for All" to "Abolish the Police", and some of these are much more divisive than others.

"abolish the police" isn't a policy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_abolition_movement

"Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

if you read past the headline, the actual policy it proposes is to reduce the number of police and cut the budget.

If you read further the author says

"I’ve been advocating the abolition of the police for years"

"We don’t want to just close police departments"

"People like me who want to abolish prisons and police"

i mean again, advocating for abolition isn't a policy proposal.

take for example angela davis, the most prominent prison abolitionist today. she says in this interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3q_qV5mHg0) that there currently isn't a model of a prison-free society, only hints here and there.

Okay, call "abolish the police" a long-term goal instead of an immediate policy. It (and its shorter term policies like "abolish half the police by defunding them") are still very divisive among the electorate.

you can't abolish half of a thing. abolishing half of slavery still leaves you with slavery. you're confused about some basic terms here.

and if you're using a broad enough notion of divisiveness, then anything is divisive, including tan suits and dijon mustard. so divisiveness as you're using the term is not a property of the relation between the constituency and the political object (policy/slogan/etc.), but it's instead a tool that social engineers can use to create antagonism between populations.

for example, abortion appears to be an extremely divisive issue because of the way the issue has been socially engineered, but if you look at the data, a large majority of americans agree on the vast majority of abortion cases. it's the edge cases and disagreements on the rationale for/against abortion that are used to create the appareance of divisiveness.

> you can't abolish half of a thing. abolishing half of slavery still leaves you with slavery

Then I guess the abolitionists failed because slavery still exists.

You're right, abolition of slavery won't be achieved until settler colonial slave states like the united states are dismantled and replaced with a fair society. However, the abolitionists did accomplished many great notable things, such as killing a bunch of racist southerners.

Well, in practical terms, you have to be able to win the Democratic primary to be the Democratic candidate. There’s no “they” that could have picked someone better, and the people that you or others may have thought were better did far worse than Biden in the primaries.

As un-democratic the electoral college is, the US parties do a much better job in picking candidates in a democratic manor. Especially when compared to Germany, our parties run their party leaders as top candidates for chancellor. Party heads are elected by party members, but in practical terms any results under 85% plus percent is already seen as a lack in confidence.

So yeah, who ever wins party primaries is the candidate the parties base wants. Obviously, distorted by money, but still.

Sure, but it's pretty clear that certain candidates get more backing from the DNC mothership and the media than others. In turn, this affects voter perception.

They did pick someone - him. Let's not forget he was the nominee because he won the primaries meaning he was considered the best of the contestants. Not everybody is as progressive as Sanders and not everybody liked Sanders tone

I have a feeling that if you somehow ran a ranked-choice vote-transfer algorithm, you'd still end up with Biden as the candidate fewest people take issue with. The eternal problem of the left is getting people to agree on the specifics of how things should be improved.

People only rose to the occasion by chance. Had there not been corona and had the economy still been booming, Trump would probably have won. Surely it is possible to find someone out of 300 million people with the same qualities as Biden -- not a big ask, since his #1 quality is that he's not divisive -- but 30 years younger?

His #2 quality is probably having been Obama's Vice President. The majority liked Obama though to vote him in twice, and Biden represents more of that.

That's a good point.

I would chime in with that's the entire point, another 8 years of Obama-esque policy.

Biden will be 86 in 8 years...

oh god no, not more of that

For democrats who chose him during his primaries, his #1 quality was that he was a moderate/centrist. The democrat party isn't only made up of leftists/progressives. There were a considerable number of democrats who were scared of Bernie and turned off by his supporters.

For GOP/Independents who voted Biden, his #1 quality was also that he was moderate and a close second was that he was not divisive.

> People rose to the occasion this time.

A bit nitpicky, but I think it's important: "people" cannot be really considered responsible for the win. If just 1.5 voters every hundred had flipped side, Trump would have won. At this point, with the results so close, who wins the elections is basically a coin toss- which arguably isn't a terrible thing in democracy, as it means that the parties compete fiercely and almost optimally for votes. But still in the end the outcome of these elections seems due mostly to chance.

Note that due to the electoral college, it's not as close as you make it seem. On the national level the current votes is 51% for Biden vs 43% for Trump, that's quite a large difference.

On the NYT website it says 74.5 million votes for Biden vs 70.3 million for Trump. It makes about 51% vs 48% (without counting the other candidates).

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