Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I’d be really curious as to your evidence for this, as when Biden was first elected to the Senate the Democrat caucus included at least one outright segregationist.
Biden has always been a centrist within the Democratic Party, now that has at times made him a conservative (when the party was balanced between reactionaries and centrists), a centrist (when the party was balanced between conservatives and liberals) or a liberal (when the party was balanced between centrists and progressives). But he’s always kept himself in the relative centre.
What are you talking about? Neither of the two previous Democrat presidents had coups staged at all, never mind against regimes for being “vaguely left-wing”.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranDid you mean to have those switched? Otherwise, yeah, I agree.
X3 Last I checked Saudi Arabia’s massacring of Yemeni civilians wasn’t a coup against a vaguely left-wing government, it is instead a set of crimes against humanity being perpetrated by religious extremists with a desire to wipe out a different branch of Islam and establish regional supremacy.
![]()
The political spectrum goes Reactionaries-Conservatives-Centrists-Liberals-Progressives-Socialists. The mainstream of the Democratic Party generally spans three ideologies in a row at any one time, with Biden placing himself in the middle of that set of three.
Edited by Silasw on Nov 13th 2020 at 4:19:00 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranBiden spent a lot of his Senate career being "tough on crime", even criticizing Republicans for not being tough enough on crime, and worked with those segregationists to oppose busing.
With regards to Latin America, Biden was a vocal proponent of Plan Colombia, which was very much an archetypal US action in Latin America. Plan Colombia was a response to the FARC, who were violent left-wing guerrillas. Plan Colombia broke the FARC (but not violent right-wing militias), but the reduction in illegal violence was more than offset by increased state violence, much of it against villages with little or nothing to do with the FARC or cartels. It also failed to meaningfully reduce cocaine output despite claiming a victory on that front due to reducing coca acreage in Colombia. Broadly speaking, the poverty-reduction component of the stated plan failed to materialize in any meaningful way. At best, you can argue it stopped some bad dudes by funneling money, weapons, and training to dudes who were no better.
I think he can be socially pressured to be better domestically, but I'm less optimistic of a change of course on how we treat Latin America, especially given how foreign policy is generally much less of a "front page" issue.
Edited by Balmung on Nov 13th 2020 at 10:33:08 AM
Correct, he was at times very conservative within the senate. That doesn’t make him on the right-wing of the Democratic Party, when a chunk of the party are reactionaries being conservative is being centrist within the party.
Plan Colombia has plenty of issues with it from what I can see, but to compare it to the horrific acts committed by the US during the Cold War seems to either downplay said acts or exaggerate the level of direct involvement the US is having in human rights abuses in Colombia.
You’re not wrong that Biden has supported some pretty horrific things during this years as a senator, what it feels like you’re missing is the sad truth that things much worse than what Biden has supported has been attempted/done.
Edited by Silasw on Nov 13th 2020 at 4:33:46 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI'm not missing that, it's just not really relevant to my point. My point is that his record on this matter is very much in line with the status quo and that other people were worse doesn't really change that.
He may do better now, but I'm not personally counting on it.
Edited by Balmung on Nov 13th 2020 at 10:52:39 AM
![]()
When did I say that? Because I'm pretty sure I said nothing of the sort.
What I did say is that his legislative record puts him well in the conservative branch of the Democratic party (but again, likely pragmatic enough to go with the way the wind is blowing at a certain point), and generally in line with how we've treated Latin America for decades.
Re: Busing.
I really have to ask, but what exactly do the people who bring this up think the national consensus on busing was in the Seventies? The way it's portrayed, nefarious Joe Biden worked with all those segregationists to torpedo a measure with consensus appeal, but liberal politicians everywhere were getting rocks thrown at them by angry whites over the issue. You don't run on policy that makes people vote for anyone, but you. To be clear, all the evidence speaks to its effectiveness for uplifting black people and its harmlessness towards whites, but that doesn't matter if its an issue Democrats lose elections on.
More broadly, there's a tendency on the left wing to take Biden's fifty year career, isolate individual policies, decontextualize them, and use them as litmus tests. Politics don't work that way.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Nov 13th 2020 at 12:16:21 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."The Secret Service is being ravaged by the Coronavirus: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-coronavirus-outbreak/2020/11/13/610eebcc-2539-11eb-8672-c281c7a2c96e_story.html
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Republicans raise Warnock's 2002 arrest as Senate runoffs heat up
The short of it is that Republicans (including Sen. Tom Cotton and the Loeffler campaign) are attacking Warnock over an arrest 18 years ago. There was a police investigation at a camp run by the church he was working at and Warnock intervened to protect "the rights of young people to make sure they had a lawyer or a parent when being questioned". He was charged with obstruction, but the charges were dropped and the investigators apologized, blaming miscommunication and saying he was "very helpful".
Now Republicans are seizing on the arrest and the investigation (which was into suspected child abuse at the camp) to make it seem like something shady was going on.
Is Trump himself the biggest threat to Secret Service agents' health and safety? And if so, has that ever been true of any other president?
Wow. Go all MLK comparisons on their asses, Warnock campaign. Turn their attempted smear job into an invitation to invoke the unofficial patron saint of civil rights.
Edited by Ayasugi on Nov 13th 2020 at 2:21:33 PM
He needlessly exposed and still exposing them, to a raging pandemic on a daily basis by holding his super-spreader events that just spread nothing but lies and to boost his fragile ego.
He is definitely cause of the endangerment for the Secret Service.
Edited by TitanJump on Nov 13th 2020 at 8:22:34 PM
x4 I always wondered why it's always the Republicans trying to find scandals to damage their opponent. If there was a scandal by the Republican, shouldn't the Dems try to uncover it as well?
Because the Republicans sold their soul to some devil and kept going deeper.
And at this point, it's unlikely their base will care as long as they keep fighting the commies. Even if their idea of that is "everyone not a fascist"
Edited by Blueace on Nov 14th 2020 at 10:44:56 AM
Wake me up at your own risk.Many on the left (and the right) assume that everyone is an ideologue with very specific ideological goals and policy objectives, with said objectives being set in a vacuum and being unchanging, because that’s what they are.
That’s what confuses a chunk of people about Biden, he really isn’t an ideologue, he hasn’t had some specific idea or issues he’s been pushing for the last several decades, he’s far more mailable than that, because his one actual ideological objective seems to be the help people and make tomorrow better than today.
Edited by Silasw on Nov 14th 2020 at 1:32:48 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Bill's audience eats up his crap if he's an alarmist.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.