Roosevelt. Johnson. Biden?

[babylonsister]

https://politicalwire.com/2021/03/26/roosevelt-johnson-biden/

Roosevelt. Johnson. Biden?
March 26, 2021 at 6:27 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

Charlie Cook: “Anyone who referred to Biden a year ago as a ‘centrist’ probably got carried away. One could have plausibly argued that he has long been in the ideological center of the Democratic Party, but he’s pretty far from the 50-yard line of the electorate as a whole. Still, his ideological posture of late has been surprising.”

“It shouldn’t surprise us any longer. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the parliamentary maneuvering over the stimulus wasn’t merely a tactical decision to skip the bipartisan approach; it was more strategic, more foundational…”

“Some wags used to joke that Biden was the type of politician who could put out the fire in a fireside chat. But truly, Biden’s agenda is more reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society than the more modest and forgettable Fair Deal of Harry Truman, Bill Clinton’s New Covenant, or Jimmy Carter’s New Spirit. As our nation’s 47th vice president once said about another expansion of federal authority, ‘this is a big fucking deal.'”

[captain queeg]

1. Might be. Joe is going to surprise a lot of people

[Boydog]

2. If Biden keeps peeling off that Trump

Support he's going to get a lot done.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Consequential presidents have expansive vision and a large plan to get things done

Presidents are often penned in by political, worldly, or economic circumstances, but those with the boldest long term policy plans can alter the course of the nation. I think Charlie Cook is right, though LBJ dims in comparison to FDR, as well as to Biden's potential.

Republicans tend to focus entirely on the short-term profit motives of their party's constituents and to foreign policy - Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes. Their resets are minor in domestic policy, and serve only incentive capitalism and a modest social safety net. Obama was penned in by the Great Recession, and by the GOP Congress, as was Clinton.

Biden has the greatest potential ever, I would argue. A peacetime Democrat with spending power. Imagine what FDR could have accomplished without the Great Depression and a world battling fascism!

Thanks for the OP. It's a great find.

[nuxvomica]

4. Biden is a centrist. This is what the center looks like.

Republicans have been moving the goal posts since Reagan so it has appeared that the right was the center. But this is the place of common decency and pragmatism that our politics has drifted away from.

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. I think so.

Biden legitimately cares about and relates to what used to be called "the little guy" but more accurately might be called typical Americans. With him, in sharp contrast to Trump, that is sincere. And typical Americans have been screwed for decades. As the rug has been pulled out below the middle and lower classes in America Joe Biden has adjusted accordingly. He might have manifest more as a steady as you go type President had the so called "Reagan Revolution" never happened, and had income inequality in America not exploded as it has over the last few decades, but it did. And Biden also fully gets that America has reached another moment of national reckoning in our centuries long struggle to break free from our racist roots.

Basic economic fairness and racial justice are not radical concepts, but they are basic to Biden. The fact that his policy stances now seem more radical than they once might have is testimony to changes that have happened in our nation since Joe Biden entered public service. Our ship of state has drifted far off course and Joe Biden is committed to doing what it takes to make the needed correction. We are so fortunate to have him as our President.

[PatSeg]

6. I agree

Biden isn't working from a liberal or moderate agenda. He is putting regular people first and foremost and if that is "liberal" so be it. It is who he is and has always been, but he is also a pragmatist and knows how to get things done. That often causes people to label him a moderate or establishment. Too often pundits have a need to pigeonhole politicians, put them in a convenient category, but people are more complex than that.

So lots of people are really surprised that Joe is liberal, but really he is about "basic economic fairness and racial justice", like you said. Apparently lots of people failed to notice, probably because he didn't pass their limited litmus tests and apparently those same people are incapable of seeing the broader picture. Fortunately, the voters saw what the politicos didn't.

[PatSeg]

7. I agree

Biden isn't working from a liberal or moderate agenda. He is putting regular people first and foremost and if that is "liberal" so be it. It is who he is and has always been, but he is also a pragmatist and knows how to get things done. That often causes people to label him a moderate or establishment. Too often pundits have a need to pigeonhole politicians, put them in a convenient category, but people are more complex than that.

So lots of people are really surprised that Joe is liberal, but really he is about "basic economic fairness and racial justice", like you said. Apparently lots of people failed to notice, probably because he didn't pass their limited litmus tests and it would seem those same people are incapable of seeing the broader picture. Fortunately, the voters saw what the politicos didn't.

[Yavin4]

8. I said this to my progressive friends during the presidential campaign

It does not matter what Biden did or didn't do in the past. He was going to govern like a progressive president simply because the times called for it. He's not a stupid man.

[Greybnk48]

9. I think it will be FDR, BIDEN, LBJ.

Maybe even BIDEN, FDR, LBJ, if we get the voting rights act passed.