Biden thinks he’s well positioned because after the shock of the Trump years, people want to go back to where we were. Wrong.
By Hamilton Nolan
The Guardian (4/30/19)
You cannot understand politics in America until you understand that in the Democratic party, which ostensibly represents the left side of our nation’s political spectrum, there are a significant number of people who genuinely believe that Joe Biden is the best possible presidential nominee. Their belief is not cynical, or at least not wholly cynical.
His constituency is real. It is not illuminating to think of them just as centrists, arguing for the gentlest sprinkling of sugar over the top of America’s poison. It’s better to think of them as zombies: the product of three decades of self-serving, triangulating brainwashing. They are the Democrats who had their eyelids propped open and were forced to watch the Clinton era, year after year after year. It is not so much that they do not, deep down, harbor a vague wish for a better world; it is that, like stray dogs dining exclusively on garbage, life has taught them that this is the best that they will ever get.
Good luck on the campaign trail, Joe. You’re about to meet an America that has already left you behind.
Consider what it says about the state of America’s political system that in the left party, the presumptive frontrunner for the presidential nomination did not think twice about kicking off his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by the founder of a union-busting law firm, days before appearing at a major union-hosted rally. And why should he? He gets the money, and then he gets the union support. He knows his audience well. This is how Democratic politics has been done in Joe Biden’s lifetime. This is how it works.
Insurance industry cash
It is not remarkable in the least for Joe Biden to come right out of the gate by filling his coffers with money from telecom and health insurance executives. Who is going to tell him that he shouldn’t? The lobbyists advising his campaign? The zillionaire media executives feting him in a Hollywood mansion? The superstructure of Obama administration functionaries who see him as the most established of the establishment brand names? For the people who matter, Joe Biden is doing just what he is expected to do.
And that is just it. Millions of people – including, most importantly, Joe Biden himself – have yet to see any evidence that he is not playing the game exactly as it should be played.
We are talking about a person who built his career as the credit card industry’s man in Washington, while simultaneously cultivating a reputation as a down-to-earth everyman. …
- Understandable That Joe Biden Wants Us To Forget His Past. We Won’t — As times have changed, Biden’s expressed retrospective misgivings about some of his earlier actions and stances. That’s not enough… Read the Rest
(Commoner Call carton by Mark L. Taylor, 2019. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommnercall.org )
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Examining Biden’s Foreign Policy Record: Fluent In The Empty Rhetoric Of Democratization, Privatization & Personal Wealth
As the ultimate Washington insider, Biden long ago had learned to make friends with the military.
By Jeremy Kuzmarov
Counterpunch (4/29/19)
Since Joe Biden has entered the race for the presidency, some media outlets have been pointing to his atrocious legislative record as a Senator, including his support for tough-on-crime bills, loose gun control measures, opposition to school desegregation, and his vote in favor of the Iraq War, among other things.
Greater scrutiny, however, should be placed on Biden’s role in supporting dubious foreign policies during his tenure as Vice-President under Barack Obama.
Biden’s son, Hunter joined the board of one of Ukraine’s most profitable and corrupt energy companies, Burisma, which gave the potential to the Bidens of becoming billionaires.
In Iraq, for example, where he took the lead on foreign policy initiatives, Biden curried favor with the corrupt Nouri al-Maliki whom locals considered to be a “Shia Saddam.” After Arab-Spring style protests erupted, Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry quietly worked to help install Haidar al-Abadi who was committed to privatizing Iraq’s economy in line with the original goals of the 2003 U.S. military invasion.
On Afghanistan, Biden was the supposed dove of the administration; however, his blueprint called for heavier reliance on Special Forces, air power and drone strikes. He ultimately sided with military commanders in authorizing a broader mission that came to assume many parallels to the Vietnam War.
As one who came of age in the 1960s and opposed the Vietnam War during his first run for Congress, Biden should have known better.
Ultimate Washington insider
However, as the ultimate Washington insider, Biden long ago had learned to make friends with the military and to master the rhetoric of framing overseas military interventions in a liberal humanitarian rhetoric.
Following the ouster of Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi in the Operation Odyssey Dawn, Biden bragged …