President-Elect Joe Biden

Joe Biden and David Axelrod Take in a Bulls Game

Whew, that’s a relief to say. Try it, “President-Elect Joe Biden”

Thanks to everyone sane who voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. I will admit Joe Biden was not in my top three candidates for the Democratic nomination, but I will give him a chance to be a good president. And really, let’s be honest, yesterday’s coffee grounds would be a better choice than Donald J. Trump having a second term.

January 20th, 2021 cannot arrive soon enough.

Joe Biden and Super Tuesday

The Wild, Wild West

First, I am disappointed that more Americans don’t consider Elizabeth Warren as the best choice for president. She seems to me the most likely to get a progressive agenda through Congress.

Second, I worry that Joe Biden, the Democratic establishment’s favorite, also known as Credit Card Joe, will not beat Donald Trump. Biden reminds me of Al Gore, of John Kerry, of Michael Dukakis, even of Walter Mondale. And of course, Hillary Clinton. All centrist, corporate friendly Democrats, supported by the Democratic establishment, who won the Democratic Party’s nomination, but then lost because of these same reasons. Maybe I’m wrong: I don’t know how Biden would actually perform when going up against the Trump/GOP Wurlitzer. Biden does have a tendency to misspeak, make gaffes, but then there is Trump who lies nearly every sentence he utters.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Third, if Biden does pull out the nomination, of course I’ll vote for him in the general election, just as I did for all those mentioned above1 but not enthusiastically. Donald Trump is a threat to our entire planet, and a threat to the continuation of America as a nation of democratic ideals; other than marching in the street, voting against Trump is our only recourse to removing him.

Financial Entanglements 

The Guardian U.K.:

The former vice-president Joe Biden surged to Super Tuesday victories in nine states, sweeping the south and taking the key state of Texas in a remarkable comeback on the most pivotal night of the Democratic presidential primary race.

His rival, Bernie Sanders, won the crucial state of California, according to the Associated Press, where 415 delegates – more than any other state in the Democratic primary – were up for grabs. Exit polls indicated that the Vermont senator had an approximate 15-point lead, though final results may not be confirmed for days.

The win gave Sanders a much-needed boost after a rejuvenated Biden swept the southern states of Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma, propelled by black voters, and scored surprise wins in Massachusetts and Minnesota, before topping the winning streak with the delegate-rich state of Texas.

(click here to continue reading Super Tuesday: Biden sweeps southern states as Sanders wins California | US news | The Guardian.)

Chase Rainbow

Vox:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was the first Democratic 2020 hopeful to take a direct swing at former Vice President Joe Biden since he got into the race, accusing him of being “on the side of the credit companies” in a fight that launched her political career a decade ago.

Warren’s quarrel with Biden isn’t personal. It’s about a 2005 bankruptcy bill he supported as a senator. Warren opposed the bill so vehemently that its passage inspired her transition from a Harvard bankruptcy law professor, who studied middle-class economics, to a senator and now a presidential hopeful.

“I got in that fight because [families] just didn’t have anyone and Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies,” Warren said after an April rally in Iowa. “It’s all a matter of public record.”

The bill made it harder for individuals to file for bankruptcy and get out of debt, a legal change that credit card companies and many major retailers had championed for years. The bill passed Congress with large majorities, but most Democratic senators, including Barack Obama, voted no. Biden voted yes and was widely seen at the time as one of the bill’s major Democratic champions.

To Warren, bankruptcy is fundamentally about bad luck rather than irresponsible behavior. The changes were mostly unnecessary additional burdens for struggling families that would enrich powerful special interests. Supporters of the changes, like Biden, believed that too many people were filing for bankruptcy — often people with more ability to repay their debts — a problem that was costly not just to creditors but to ordinary nonbankrupt consumers.

 

(click here to continue reading Bankruptcy law: Joe Biden vs. Elizabeth Warren – Vox.)

Footnotes:
  1. except Walter Mondale, I was too young []