(3c/9) Blue No Matter Who — Even When Centrist Democrats Are Incompetent?
Does anyone look at Biden or Harris or even AOC and think that these people excel at their jobs and really deliver for the American people?
The Terrible Damage We Do . . . Voting Blue No Matter Who. • (1/9) Centrist Democrats Do Not Reflect the Will of their Voters • (1a/9) “Top-Down” Makes More Sense Than “Left-Right” Today in the U.S. • (2/9) Voting Blue No Matter Who Just Gives Democracy a Great Big Screw • (3a/9) Why Vote “Blue No Matter Who” If Centrist Dems Never Play to Win? • (3b/9) Why Don’t Centrist Dems Show Up to Fight (Blue No Matter Who) • (3c/9) Blue No Matter Who — Even When Centrist Democrats Are Incompetent?
Why vote for Centrist Democrats when they are so bad, so incompetent at their jobs?
This is what it really boils down to, right?
Centrist Democrat officeholders rarely play to win.
Much of the time they don't even bother to show up for the fight.
But even when they do show up for the fight and presumably are playing to win, they’re just not good at their jobs.
They are incompetent. It’s not the A-Team.
Democrats are “not sending us their best.”
Did Joe Biden's 40+ years in public office really mean that he was going to be competent as president?
Biden campaigned on the basis of (1) his eight years in the White House as Vice President and (2) his decades of experience in the Senate and his “ability to get things done there working with Republicans.”
He told us that things would be different with Republicans after the fever of Trump had broken.
How’s that working out?
- Biden fundamentally misunderstood whether and how Senate Republicans would be interested in working with him.
- He fundamentally miscalculated about “the fever breaking” with regard to Trump being out of office.
Biden also misunderstood a fundamental difference between democratic voters and their politicians and Republican voters and their politicians.
- Republican politicians are scared of their far right voters.
- Republican politicians know that those far right voters — mostly Trump supporters — can and will vote them out of office if necessary.
- Republican voters control their politicians with an iron fist.
It is the opposite with Centrist Democrats.
- Instead of being scared of their voters the way that Republicans are, Centrist Democrat politicians have contempt for their far left voters . . . and for all of their voters in general.
- Remember that Democrat voters who support things like Medicare for All, fighting climate change, dealing with student debt, etc. form the majority of Democrat voters.
- So Centrist Democrat politicians actually have contempt for their mainstream voters.
- Unlike Republicans, Centrist Democrat politicians are used to controlling their voters with an iron fist.
This means that even if Republican senators and representatives wanted to make a deal with Joe Biden, their voters weren't going to permit it.
It's hard for me to believe that Joe Biden so fundamentally misunderstood this dynamic, but maybe he really is that clueless.
Biden seems to have believed that the Republican politicians actually could make deals with Democrats regardless of what the Republican voters wanted.
That’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works.
It’s kind of crazy that a guy who has been in politics for his entire adult life was either unable to see it or — more likely? — understood the dynamic and was just BS’ing us about what he thought his chances were to get things done with Republicans.
Either way, Joe Biden's mouth was writing checks that his capabilities in office have not been able to cash.
Part of being good at your job is understanding how things work and how to get things done.
Biden doesn’t seem to understand either of those.
Another part of being good at your job is being able and willing to use the power available to you to get things done.
Biden has always seemed uncomfortable and unwilling to use the power of his office.
- He doesn’t take unilateral executive action where he could.
- He doesn’t use his bully pulpit to force certain reluctant Democrats to go along with the policies that he wants.
- He takes his marching orders from Senator Joe Manchin, as opposed to bringing the full force of his office and power down on Manchin (and Sinema) to move his agenda forward.
Why hasn't Joe Biden used the force and power of his office to incent Joe Manchin to go along with what Biden wanted? Why hasn't Joe Biden played hardball?
If you think this wouldn’t make a difference with Joe Manchin, look at how much of a reaction Bernie Sanders got out of Joe Manchin when he wrote an editorial in a West Virginia newspaper calling out Joe Manchin.
Manchin didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Sanders got that much of a reaction with a single op-ed.
Can you imagine if Joe Biden had been leading an ongoing pressure campaign against mansion over the past couple years using the full force of his office and the bully pulpit?
Joe Manchin is thin-skinned, and part of the reason he has been able to get away with being so corrupt is that he rarely gets called out in public for it. You have to wonder what his reaction might have to be if the light of day were shining relentlessly upon him in the most public ways possible . . . ?
Perhaps it would not have worked.
But at least Biden would have tried, and you could say that he (Biden) went down fighting.
But preemptively surrendering?
That is never what competence looks like.
And don't even get me started about Biden and Schumer not being able to get things done in the Senate last year because of the Senate parliamentarian. When a president and a Senate majority leader of the same party take “no” for an answer from an unelected bureaucrat (the Senate parliamentarian), that is the height of incompetence and weakness.
You've got — actually, we’ve got — a senate majority leader and president who are unwilling/unable to use the power of their offices to get their jobs done.
Remember that the Senate parliamentarian can be fired in an instant and replaced with someone who will enable the president and the Senate majority leader to get the legislation through the Senate that they need to.
Republicans sure weren’t going to let an unelected bureaucrat get in the way of their agenda when they controlled the Senate.
That is incompetence on the part of the Democratic leadership. Call it for what it is.
When you look at Schumer or Harris or Pelosi or even AOC, you see similar patterns where these people just aren’t good at the jobs they were elected to do.
Why do centrist Democrats keep voting for incompetent schlubs like these people?
Don't they think they deserve better?
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