President Biden’s policy agenda is incredibly popular, much more popular than his opponent’s. But Biden the man? Not so much.
The question now is whom to blame for the approval gap between the president and his agenda: voters, the media or Biden himself.
Democrats have long argued that their policies are more popular than those of Republicans. In a recent blind test conducted by YouGov, that was unmistakably true. The polling organization asked Americans what they thought about major policies proposed by Biden and Donald Trump without specifying who proposed them. The idea was to see how the public perceived ideas when stripped of tribal associations.
Biden’s agenda was the winner, hands down.
Of the 28 Biden proposals YouGov asked about, 27 were supported by more people than opposed them. Impressively, 24 received support from more than 50 percent of respondents.
The problem is the proposals are either dropped, or poisoned. Like he campaigned hard on unions, then he butchered rail workers bargaining power. He campaigned on renewable energy, then signed into law mandated sales of federal land for oil and gas extraction. The affordable care act has an unintended flaw making millions of Americans too poor to qualify for any kind of assistance getting health insurance, he campaigned on fixing that gap. Instead he raised how wealthy you can be and still qualify for assistance. He’s raised defense spending, dumped a half trillion more on the US highway system, and deported way more immigrants and shutdown asylum.
It should be mentioned that the people he appointed to the NLRB have been hugely positive for union activity and power. Even with the railroad thing (which they did end up getting concessions on) Biden is still the most pro union president in our lifetimes.
They also passed the largest climate bill ever.
The GOP has blocked every single attempt at improving the ACA and has tried to repeal it dozens of times.
Can you point to a someone who hasn’t? Congress routinely increases military spending without the military even requesting more funding.
I get that half measures don’t feel like wins, but when half the government is controlled by people who want to destroy it, they are. If we want sweeping legislation that fixes more issues, we have to strip enough power from the GOP to make it possible. Until we do that, half measures are really all we can hope for. We elect people because of their platform, and then we don’t give them enough votes to pass legislation. I’m not saying the Democrats/Biden are flawless here, but we have to live in reality.
They ran a hell of marketing on this, a non-rail union, that voted against the strike, made a statement that some rail workers got some sick days. Not all of them, not as much as they could have gotten, and most importantly of all, like i said, their bargaining power for the future is ruined.
Ironically thats the same bill Im referring to. Again, they did great marketing.
Like i said, they did make changes to it. No attempt was made to fix the poor americans not getting any help.
Doesnt change anything
Okay I get that you don’t find those particular changes to be good enough, and I would agree with you. That doesnt make them lazy, and they’re still the best chance we have. And you’re completely ignoring the structural obstacles that they literally don’t have the votes to overcome, even if every single Democrat in Congress agreed.
If we had given the Democrats a fillibuster proof majority and the White House for more than 2 months in the past couple decades I’d agree with you. But we haven’t done our job well enough here, just as much as they haven’t done theirs well enough. Framing the entire party as a lost cause and ineffective without looking at all the reasons why only hurts us.
ETA: I do believe the ACA and the IRA were absolutely worthwhile and have positive benefits. Just because you don’t like parts of the bill doesn’t mean they aren’t.
I dont think my opinions are what you think they are. I havent called anyone lazy, im not criticizing democrats for not doing enough, theyve done a lot, a lot of harm. The story isnt republicans wanted to break the rail strike and democrats didnt stop them, the democrats outlawed the strike! They passed the IRA with zero republican votes, and still included millions of acres in federal land leasing explicitly for oil and gas extraction.
Oh apologies I misunderstood your position. I’m not really interested in listening to how any objectively good thing the Democrats do is actually bad regardless of context, which appears to be your position on most things, so have a nice day!
Regardless of context? I dont think youve looked into any of these topics beyond headlines.
You would be incorrect, that’s okay though.
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