WHAT THE ACTUAL F.... ???

There is a single steadfast rule for being alive right now, and it is:

Do not bet against the dumbest possible outcome.

The frenzied midterm second-guessing among Democrats appears to be intensifying. You can find the stories everywhere: Democrats fear they’ve failed to counter GOP cultural attacks. That they’ve fumbled the politics of immigration. That they’re unlikely to pass major new legislation to campaign on. That labor’s decline has put key races in peril. That they’ve failed to address widespread economic anxieties.

They’re right, on all points.

A key threshold question is whether you believe the Democratic Party’s image has broken down in non-cosmopolitan America in some fundamental sense.

I like Biden. I still like him as a person. I sure as hell like him better than the motherfucking scumbagging fucking traitor he beat.

I took shit from my friends for being for him in the primary. We wanted someone who could win and he did win, Trump gone. He took control of Congress. He passed an infrastructure bill, ended a 20 year war, tons of jobs, COVID is over, appointed a great judge to the Supreme Court, and has done more than anyone else outside of Ukraine to turn the tables on the expected Russian victory that I see as either an incipient WW3 or at the very least a flashpoint in the new Authoritarian vs. Liberalism Cold War. I don’t care about the fact he isn’t a great orator. I’m dismissive of claims he’s too old. He’s done a great job if you look at it from an Al Gore debate counting on my finger policy debate way, which I do.

Biden’s victories in 2020 were not due to a brilliant strategy. He won the Democratic primary because of his support from two blocs: Black Democrats, who backed him because of his alliance with former president Barack Obama and their view that an older White male candidate was needed to defeat Donald Trump; and White Democrats, who rallied to Biden at the urging of the party establishment, which was convinced that Bernie Sanders would lose to Trump. He won the general election because of the same intense anti-Trump sentiment that carried the Democrats to victory in the 2018 midterms.

But the malaise since is from him. It’s not Schumer and Pelosi or not paying enough attention to the progressives or not passing BBB or doing or not doing anything. It’s not Manchin or Sinema. That’s all cope and deflection.

And I don’t mean this in a “buck stops here” way, but his low approval rating is his own fault because of who he is even if we all think he’s doing great. By our metric he is! So, we’re the 40% who approve.

I think his campaign over-learned the “stay off Twitter” and “this too shall pass” lesson that saw them through the campaign. The Biden presidency started with his advisers, the party establishment, pro-Biden voices in the news media and the president himself casting his approach and style as political genius: Biden and his team were successful because they uniquely understood the U.S. electorate. He was the Democrats’ whisperer to White Americans who didn’t have college degrees or worked in blue-collar jobs while understanding Black voters really well.

The reason they were permitted that luxury is that the campaign was about beating Trump. We don’t really know what Biden’s presidency is about. Biden and his team bet on their political genius: Biden could be both moderate and progressive, beloved by the Democratic base and by swing voters, a friend of congressional Democrats and also Republicans. It was magical thinking. They bought their own hype.

I’m starting to think that Joe Biden doesn’t know what his presidency is about.

Biden is That Guy. He is Good Government. He is Process. He is Get Everyone On Board and then Do What Seems Best. He also doesn’t seem that interested in taking credit in the press, he wants to not have any regrets on his deathbed, I think. He seems almost to be strained when talking about the not inconsiderable accomplishments he has made.

But, due to his steadfast belief that he could deal with the Republicans in Congress the way he dealt with them during 34 years in the Senate, to the way he’s presented the programs he supports, he fundamentally no longer “gets” the situation he is in. He’s had to be dragged kicking and screaming and clawing the carpet every millimeter of the way away from his bedrock belief in the essential goodness of the “other side. His brand as a moderate politician was so strong that Biden could push an agenda of progressive ideas in the mold of Franklin D. Roosevelt and still not face a backlash from more centrist voters.

All those things I listed above that are “wins”?

They are wins. But they could have been Big Wins. But they’re not.

Biden’s desire for “bipartisanship” in his victories has consistently denied him victory on the big items that would have saved both his presidency and the immediate future of the Democratic Party this fall. And yet still he continues.

Whether millennials and Gen Z like the president matters. They helped put Biden in the Oval Office in the first place by turning out at record rates to vote overwhelmingly blue.

But what appeared to be zeal might actually have been a mirage, according to polls from Quinnipiac University and Gallup. Boomers rate Biden about seven points lower today than they did at the beginning of 2020; among zoomers, he’s lost about 21 points.

In the past two months, Biden has tried to recalibrate by moving to the right on a number of fronts: emphasizing deficit reduction, his support of the police and his bipartisan proposals, as well as ending most Covid-19 mitigation policies.

I don’t see evidence that’s working.

And right now, there’s a domestic policy debate going on that demonstrates all of this.

Student debt, and what to do with it.

It used to be, Americans believed in the value of education. In the two leading states - New York and California - the government took major steps to fund education so that any student with the desire to get an education and the willingness to put the effort forth could achieve that, at whatever level they aimed at, without having to consider Ability To Pay. And it wasn’t just New York and California. All the states in the Midwest that had good solid state higher education systems - University of Wisconsin, Ohio State, University of Michigan, University of Illinois, Colorado University - just to name a few, those were places any student who showed aptitude could get into, graduate from, and get a leg up on life.

Because they weren’t saddled with “student loan debt.”

Fifty years ago, I graduated with the first of three degrees I would get from institutions of higher learning here in California. And when I got the third one, I came out of all that with Zero Debt. Nada. None. Zip. Without the option of publicly-supported public higher education, that would not have happened.

As a result, I could go do what I wanted to do, without having to worry about whether I made enough money to be able to both pay the debt and pay the rent. I think, looking back on what I did, that the people of the State of California got a good deal on their investment, a good ROI.

And then the policies begun by Governor Sainted Ray Goon, to make those “trouble making students” have some “skin in the game” to get their educations, began to have an effect.

Nowadays, there are a lot of fields of academic study (all the ones I did and a few others) that have trouble attracting students - if they’re even still there. The Department of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at San Francisco State was gone by the time it became California State University San Francisco. In its place was the Department of Criminal Justice Studies.

Why was that?

That happened because students with degrees in “Interdisciplinary Social Science” were looked askance at by recruiters in job interviews - “What is it you actually know about, anyway?” But students with a degree in Criminal Justice Studies went on to become senior members of the criminal justice system and have incomes that would cover their debts. I could go on.

My nephew has degrees in finance. That’s a field a lot of people went into because they would make a lot of money. And they could pay the debt they incurred getting the degree doing all the things that leave that sneer in the voice for many of us when we say “finance.” After working in the field long enough to see the “dark side” clearly, my nephew decided to quit before he kileld himself and go to work in a job where his knowledge actually helps “normal people.” He’s really good at it! But he doesn’t make the money he was making when he was going bonkers working on the “dark side.” And he still has that same debt to pay off. Most people in that field wouldn’t make that choice, regardless of what the result was to their mental and physical health and the personal quality of their life.

Because they have that mountain of debt to pay off. And there is no more relentless collection agency on earth than the U.S. Government. They’ll be happy to garnish your Social Security check.

And those are the people who stayed and finished their degree! Forty percent of students - primarily from the middle and working classes - who try to go to school don’t finish. It’s hard to do, coming from that background, with the finances that have to be dealt with. And so they leave, and they don’t even get the lower-paying college-graduate jobs; they get the non-college-graduate jobs and paycheck. And they still have the college student loan to pay off.

And even if you can discharge other debt, you cannot discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. Thank you very much you Republicans and the “bankruptcy reform” you passed. That President Obama signed.

Biden campaigned on student debt relief, but he seems determined to make liar of all of us who said vote for him to get good policy.

There are around million young and no-longer-so-young Americans are saddled with almost $1.7 trillion worth of debt. Canceling $50,000 of that debt would be a bold stroke that would make Biden a hero to people whose economic lives are stunted before they begin.

Doing that wouldn’t be the “bribe” that Senator Rmoney said it was (thanks for the reminder you will always be a piece of shit, Mittens, even if you can leap the low bar of believing elections should be respected - you and Marine Le Pen are tied as Democracy believers).

Elizabeth Warren has demonstrated that $50,000 is the right cutoff. Doctors, lawyers, and MBAs typically borrow far more than that, and they would still be on the hook to pay back most of their debt. Contrary to the critics, who caricature debt cancellation as rewarding the rich, most people saddled with student debt are far from wealthy. And the debt makes them poorer. By definition, those from rich families have no debt because their parents pay tuition.

But, so far, Biden has suspended debt in temporary dribs and drabs, delaying payments because of the pandemic, doing a kind of political striptease about permanent debt cancellation.

Yesterday, in an attempt to deal with weeks of leaks, Biden confirmed when asked at the White House, "I am considering dealing with some debt reduction. I am not considering $50,000 in debt reduction, but I am in the process of taking a hard look at whether or not there will be additional debt forgiveness."

What the Actual Fuck????

Say what?????????????

Biden just took an issue that could be a bold winner - for him, for the Democrats, and for tens of millions of people who, you know, vote, and turned it into a piñata.

The average student debtor - in the crucial 18-39 voting demographic - carries about $37,000 in debt. The $10,000 cap that Biden has endorsed would relieve only about a quarter of the burden.

If Biden ends the general pause of all payments due to the pandemic, which expires August 31, and substitutes a cancellation of $10,000 in debt, the average debtor will experience it as an abrupt increase in payments owed.

That will happen the month before Election Day. Do you think those people will be “Fired Up - Ready to Go!” after they recalculate eating and student debt payments?????

This turns a political winner into a big loser. Republicans and deficit hawks would still whack him, while the intended beneficiaries would have no reason for gratitude.

Now I remember why I lost my enthusiasm for the Obama Administration.

Literally, the only reason I have left to support this guy and his party is - the Republican Threat to Everything Good and Decent.

I can see that threat, and I will vote accordingly.

But most Americans don’t see it and won’t vote accordingly.

Do. Not. Bet. Against. The. Dumbest. Possible. Outcome.

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