General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBiden's center pivot.
Threes a trend, journalists like to say. Well, Monday made four notable moves by President Joe Biden towards the ideological center, so its officially a pattern worth taking note of. They are:
1. His recent budget request, which proposed nearly $3 trillion in deficit reduction, not traditionally a liberal priority.
2. His endorsement of a Republican bill blocking a new D.C. criminal code, which blindsided congressional Democrats.
3. His Trump-esque changes to the immigration system, which will severely curtail access to asylum, and his consideration of restarting migrant family detention.
5. His approval on Monday of the Willow Project, a major oil drilling project in Alaska opposed by environmentalists.
Together, these moves suggest Biden is moving towards a re-election campaign and preparing to target moderate and independent voters, seeking to remind them of his centrist roots.
bucolic_frolic
(42,676 posts)Grabbing the other side's thunder is traditional strategy. If Biden grabs the political middle voters, the GOP is done. Or we can hope so.
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,145 posts)Cuthbert Allgood
(4,867 posts)BannonsLiver
(16,162 posts)Walleye
(30,723 posts)His budget was very progressive and laid out Dem priorities well.
Biden is strategic with an aim at delivering the most possible for working Americans. The Willow drilling project is a little puzzling given his stellar record so far on climate, but there will be some strategic benefits to it for sure. Biden does nothing without including the working class, so there must be something in the Willow project that was part of a bargain.
Walleye
(30,723 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)That one of the three points is simply NOT true. When the Republicans have control they always grow the deficit enormously, forcing action by Democrats.
After H.W. Bush had hidden the desperate straits the Republicans had brought the government to, in the process of transferring most of the wealth to the wealthy that was needed to enact the agenda Bill Clinton was elected on, Clinton was hit on taking office with an enormous budget crisis and had to set aside important progressive goals to focus on bringing us back from that Republican-engineered brink. Nixon/Ford - Carter? W. Bush - Obama? tRump - Biden?
This pattern has become the norm.
dsp3000
(469 posts)Willow is it.
Johnny2X2X
(18,745 posts)Perhaps this is part of a deal to get more progressive laws passed, or maybe payment for ones he's already signed into law.
Biden has delivered more for the Left than any President since LBJ or FDR, he deserves the benefit of the doubt and then some.
uponit7771
(90,225 posts)... being proposed are fair 4. Willow approval was done under Trump and BLM allowed scaled down version after lawsuit.
Shit kicking article, people who didn't vote for Biden even in the center would never know about any of those issues.
l
There's no "moderate" voter pool big enough to be targeted
Walleye
(30,723 posts)WhiteTara
(29,676 posts)I think. Klain was a friend of progressive thought and this guy is a fixer. Sad
bullwinkle428
(20,626 posts)the effects of Ron Klain's departure.
Celerity
(42,666 posts)tableturner
(1,676 posts)pinkstarburst
(1,321 posts)Hotler
(11,353 posts)JohnSJ
(91,962 posts)Whether trump actually gets indicted will be up to the DOJ, and Biden has made it clear he will NOT interfere the actions of the DOJ
Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)is a right wing talking point adopted by the Main $tream Media. Certainly, we're not obsessed over it, but the statement implies that liberals, and thus Dems, are profligate spenders with no concerns for deficits or debt.
Not true. Dems tend to try to help people through government action, but their spending proposals come with the means to pay for them. Dems are just not afraid to raise taxes to do what is necessary in the public sphere.
I don't mind a slight "centrist" shift in policies after a pretty successful porgressive surge over the last couple of years.
JohnSJ
(91,962 posts)JohnSJ
(91,962 posts)Autumn
(44,762 posts)Amishman
(5,541 posts)I'm seeing a fair bit of alignment on Joe's approach and courting indies
Autumn
(44,762 posts)Most independents in the U.S. lean toward one of the two major parties. When taking independents partisan leanings into account, 49% of all registered voters either identify as Democrats or lean to the party, while 44% identify as Republicans or lean to the GOP.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-the-2020-electorate-looks-like-by-party-race-and-ethnicity-age-education-and-religion/
Celerity
(42,666 posts)Add in the Xennial aka Carter Babies (born 1977 to 1980) micro gen and we should pass them with ease, again in terms of votes cast, not just eligible voters.
Also we are vastly more Democratic in our voting patterns than the older gens (especially Boomers and up, but now, worryingly starting to include older Gen Xers). We helped turbocharge the 2018 Blue Wave, were a key factor in Biden's 2020 win, and helped turn the Red Wave into a puddle splash in 2022.
18 to 34 year olds support Biden as the nominee in 2024 by a net 48 points HIGHER than the older Gen Xers and the younger Boomers in an A- rated poll from a couple weeks ago.
So we had all better care if we start tacking too hard to the centre (ie. moving to right from the stances of the past 2 years) and supporting too many things that the younger gens are solidly against.
quaint
(2,513 posts)Autumn
(44,762 posts)Independents swung heavily against Republicans in 2018 and 2020 because they hated Donald Trump, says Dick Wadhams, the former Republican state chair in Colorado. Now these same unaffiliated voters are looking at the guy in the White House, Democrats in Congress, Democrats in the state legislatures, and I dont think they like what they see.
Still, most strategists in both parties agree it will take time, and sustained real world gains on inflation and the pandemic, for Biden to climb out of the hole hes fallen into with independents, especially because so many of them say in recent polls that they do not consider him a strong leader. While Biden still has time to recover among them by 2024, Republican pollster Glen Bolger says the President faces much longer odds of a significant rebound before Novembers midterm elections. Over that time frame, Bolger argues, its hard for independents to move from where they are to even a mixed rating of the guy.
Given the tightening correlation between voter attitudes about the president and their choices in House and Senate races, thats a daunting prospect for Democrats. Their best chance of avoiding a wipeout among independents this fall may revolve less around improving their view of Biden than rekindling their doubts about Republicans particularly their ties to Trump.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/08/politics/biden-polling-independents/index.html
quaint
(2,513 posts)Autumn
(44,762 posts)for Republicans because of Roe in 2024?
quaint
(2,513 posts)Have a great day.
Emile
(21,905 posts)brooklynite
(93,870 posts)....BUT he's been doing this since he was in High School, documents everything, and has tens of thousands of followers. He's also done a podcast in conjunction with St. Louis Public Radio.
ST. LOUIS Its 7:32 on a recent Wednesday morning, and Gabe Fleisher is racing to put the finishing touches on his daily newsletter, Wake Up to Politics. Its been a busy 24-hour news cycle. Another day, another bombshell, the newsletter begins.
Late on Tuesday afternoon, reports emerged that James Comey, the fired F.B.I. director, had written an internal memo suggesting that, in a private meeting with President Trump, the president had asked him to end the agencys investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. I hope you can let this go, Mr. Trump reportedly said to Mr. Comey. In the wake of this disclosure, the newsletter recounts, some Democrats in Congress were using the words obstruction of justice and even impeachment. Meanwhile, the big story from the day before that Mr. Trump may have shared classified information with Russian officials during a White House visit continues to roil Washington.
Its a lot to digest and cogently explain. But a deadline is quickly approaching, and its not just the one concerning the more than 2,000 subscribers who expect their Wake Up briefing to appear in their email inboxes just after 8 a.m. each weekday. More urgent is that, in about 13 minutes, Gabes ride to school will show up.
For Gabe Fleisher is not a Washington pundit or a producer for CNN, but a 15-year-old freshman at a St. Louis high school.
The free newsletter, which he has been writing in some form since he was 8, is a surprisingly sophisticated, well-researched summary of the days political news. It counts among its subscribers Gene B. Sperling, contributing editor at The Atlantic; the MSNBC anchor Steve Kornacki; Major Garrett, chief White House correspondent for CBS News; the Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. (who on Twitter called Wake Up one of the best political newsletters to hit my inbox); the Game Change co-author Mark Halperin; and Jim VandeHei, the founder of Axios and a founder of Politico as well as reporters for The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today, many of whom are among Gabes nearly 5,000 Twitter followers. (Twitters chief executive, Jack Dorsey, is also a follower.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/style/gabe-fleisher-wake-up-to-politics-newsletter.html
All of the bullet points contain citation links.
Emile
(21,905 posts)brooklynite
(93,870 posts)FWIW I'm not objecting to a centrist pivot.
bigtree
(85,918 posts)...the bulk of Pres. Biden's record, so far, is decidedly progressive, along with the party.
The 'deficit reduction' point is misleading, as his budget calls for raising taxes on those earning over 400k which is as historically progressive as you can get on a budget proposal.
Moreover, previously, only Democratic administrations have reduced the deficit, Clinton's and Obama's.
betsuni
(25,128 posts)W_HAMILTON
(7,813 posts)A lot of the deficit reduction is from RAISING ADDITIONAL TAXES ON THE RICH, which is a "traditionally liberal priority."
And if anyone thinks deficit reduction is a conservative priority, check the deficits that Republican presidents have inherited and then look at the deficit they left their Democratic successors. I think you have to go back to around the Eisenhower era to find a Republican president that left the country in better fiscal shape than what they inherited. Talking is much different than doing.