r/InternationalNews • u/Passervore • Apr 24 '24

Opinion/Analysis Biden launches police-state crackdown at US universities

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/24/vcgw-a24.html
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u/drawnred Apr 24 '24

its wild how he was a senator during the end of the vietnam war and doesnt see this as a bad PR move

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u/Zankeru Apr 24 '24 edited Apr 24 '24

Biden is barely more politcally savvy than hillary clinton. The only reason he is president is that the democratic party needed a composite canidate for liberal voters to choose instead of Sanders gaining power. Obama and other dem leaders begged him not to run and he had to close offices in entire states from low fundraising. His actual performances on campaign and in office has been a series of blunders interspersed between throwing out crumbs of popular leftist policy.

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u/BZenMojo Apr 24 '24

I think Clinton was more politically savvy but she just had worse politics in general. To whit, Clinton didn't know why people didn't like her but Biden genuinely thinks people that hate him actually like him.

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u/PacVikng Apr 24 '24

Biden was a formidable political animal, look at the crime bills he got passed, and afterwards convinced a Black nominee to pick him as VP after those same bills decimated the black community to enrich for profit prisons, as they were designed to do.

If we were still in the mid 90's he still would be. He's under no delusion about how people feel about him, its advantageous to him to seem dithering and old like your slightly racist grandpa who has always been nice to you but used to drop the N bomb on occassion. You hate the kind of person he is but love your grandpa, or so he thinks, like I said he's running on windows 95 in a windows 11 world.

Clinton on the otherhand, seems like a highly intelligent, yet conservative woman (she campaigned for Goldwater), who had unbounded political ambition, and savy.

She knew she wasn't likeable or pretty enough to climb the ladder on her own so she married a handsome and charismatic bumpkin-esque guy with his own ambitions but maybe not quite enough brains to make it happen without proper backing, put a saddle on him and rode him all the way to the top. Her problem was she thought she'd earned the presidency, that it was owed to her and we'd all see that.

Instead she faced off against the only narccisist in the country bigger, than her and let her own sense of entitlement/destiny blind her to the change in political tide signaled by Obama winning in 08. He went moderate but he campiagned in 08 on hope and change the progressive rallying cry.

I think what we are seeing now are the same growing pains we saw in the 60's/70's, its going to get even uglier in the short term, but I'm hopeful that if we can make it through these next 4 years and come out the other side we wil be better for it and hopefully force some real choices in 2028.

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u/ted_cruzs_micr0pen15 Apr 25 '24

I agree with a lot of this. But it’s pretty documented how liberal her and bill became in college. She was a Goldwater girl in high school because her daddy said so.

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u/ArmorClassHero Apr 25 '24

And that's the most left she's ever been. She's shifted more right every year since.

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u/h4ms4ndwich11 Apr 25 '24

2016 wasn't about Hillary losing. It was victory by callback to the racist, evangelical, anti-government, pro-cruelty days of Reagan. He even used the same phrase, M.A.G.A. Drug war, deregulation, pro-evangelical platform, explosion of public debt, anti-union, pro-business, anti-inclusion, anti-education. And I know, what's not to love about those things, right? /s. Trump still might have won without Comey making a statement about "buttery males."

Conservative America craves a return to its racist roots. A black man as president shook them to their core, shout out to Fox News, and the Republican party leaned into that. They have ever since the CRA and it has never failed to rally votes because their reliable voting block is xenophobic, homophobic, authoritarian, and generally gullible to whomever is pandering to them because they're all ignorant, asshole, or a combination like Trump.

Clinton going more progressive then would have backfired. It might work today with record inflation, inequality, corruption, pro-employer gig work, and now women's rights being revoked, as if Congress would ever vote for those things. But it took a narcissist who wanted to be a dictator, even trying a coup, and a party of enablers that allowed the country to reach a new low. Because what difference does it make when they'll all still be millionaires, billionaires, or entitled right wing cult members who call themselves Christian, or who are just racist, that can be pandered to for support reliably again come Monday morning?

It took revisiting the country's darkest places before large swaths of complacent and ignorant voters even blinked. The true cult members haven't been phased at all. Their guy is on criminal trial while selling bibles and it still doesn't even register who or what they're dealing with. They want to hate a colored, foreigner, or minority even more. Fear and anger are the party's currency because it works. The party still exists because Republicans cut taxes, so there will be a never ending line of wealthy lining up to support the party's cause. Why help anyone else when all they have to do is lie to stupid people over and over again to help themselves?

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u/BZenMojo Apr 25 '24

Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. This doesn't even need complicated theorycrafting about the tortured heart of the American public -- 60% of white voters vote Republican in every election, we have the electoral college, and she skipped campaigning in Michigan.