So, this one was actually requested by someone, in a sense. It actually is an article that should have existed for a while, and I was surprised, searching for one like it, never existed. Since we are on the third election cycle of insufferable neolibs defending neolib candidates in the most boring and trite ways.
One such way is just rattling off this huge list of accomplishments, no matter how small and minor, and completely out of context. The point of this is an "own." Like "oh, you say Biden didn't accomplish anything? well here's a list of tons of accomplishments, checkmate progressive." And, long story short, these lists often suck. They're full of a bunch of minor accomplishments that in the grand scheme of things don't matter much, but think just being able to list them is an "own."
And I'm just not having it. A few of the "accomplishments" listed were stuff like the infrastructure bill which if I recall, was a compromise of a compromise. You gotta keep in mind, much of the left wanted a green new deal, this $1.5 trillion+ expansion (up to $3 trillion in the most aggressive plans) in government spending just being poured into redoing infrastructure and solving climate change. Biden campaigned on build back better, a framework I admittedly like better given I'm not much of a jobs guarantee guy, and I'd rather pour that money into UBI. But Biden wanted to spend like $300 billion a year on that, or 10-20% of the original idea. And then what we got was like....even less. And then we passed a $100 billion a year plan. Which is, okay, but let's face it, even by my standards this is moderate, and given what the rest of the left wanted, it's insultingly moderate.
Another thing mentioned was leaving Afghanistan. Except, wasn't that a crapshow? Didn't trump sign that deal, and didn't it just get handed to Biden and ended up being a disaster as a result? DOnt get me wrong, I approve of leaving, but still.
And then you had stuff like creating 10 million jobs or something. Like...does this person understand how economic cycles work? We had a huge recession from shutting down over covid, and then we reopened, so yeah of course he created like 10x the jobs of anyone else. But that's not a flex. Heck, by my standards, it's not even something I care about. If anything, I'm WAAAY more interested in job destruction, than job creation. yay, more slavery, more rocks rolling up hill. WHile jobs shutting down is like YAY IM FREE. If only we came up with a way to pay for people out of work...
But yeah, that's kind of the point. You can rattle off accomplishments all day, but if you actually measured them compared to what I want and what my ideal platform is, they aren't much. I MADE positive cases for biden, pointing out he made SOME progress on some of my priorities, but still, in the grand scheme of things, we're talking like 50/200 on intent, and far less in practice. So basically extremely incremental gains. So how do these neolibs think they're kidding?
I mean, let's discuss what this is. This is a rhetorical technique called a "gish gallop." It's a rhetorical technique named after creationist Duane Gish, and involves just flooding your opponent with tons of talking points all at ones, in hopes that they cannot respond to them all. After all, it takes like 30 seconds to make a claim on the internet, and like 30 minutes to refute it. I did address a couple more salient points above, but no way was I actually sitting down and responding to this whole massive list of 10 accomplishments. Because taken together, they're not that impressive, they're nowhere near as impressive as most progressives, including myself want, and while I'm not opposed to giving credit while credit is due, I WOULD ideally like someone far more progressive than Biden. Biden is kind of the bare minimum, and I do like Williamson better, which is how this whole debate started.
But yeah, the point of these arguments are to shut down progressives by burying them under a pile of BS. It's impossible to respond to all of these in real time, and that's the point. To shut the other person up by making them look unable to refute the points because let's face it, it takes a TON of effort most people would rather not expend. I did address a couple points, which is one technique used to counter it. Focus the argument on a handful of the points, and poke holes in them, putting the rest of it in doubt. And I also called it out. Which is what led to a guy telling me I should make a post about this. I didn't want to on the forums themselves, so this blog post of that.
Here's the thing. When most people go to the polls, they don't vote based on statistics. Yes, if you cite stats at someone, yes, the economy is "better", job growth is strong, blah blah blah. But...first of all, I wouldnt attribute that to Biden as it's just the natural ebb and flow of the economy. Just as I didn't attribute the expansion from 2017-2020 to trump because it was a continuation of the obama expansion, which was just a recovery from the great recession. But here's the thing, you can cite stats all day, but if people don't FEEL improvement, or notice it in their lives, they're not gonna vote on that. This is a key miscalculation the democrats made in 2016, for example. They were like "but but we recovered from the recession, what are you guys belly aching about?", while we're sitting here in our burned out rust belt cities with no jobs but oppressive service industry jobs that we hate. Honestly? I dont think centrist dems realize this, but the great recession kind of broke the illusion of this great american economy being a "land of opportunity". We kinda realize crap is rigged, crap isn't working for the typical person much, and while we may differ in solutions at times, status quo politics isnt good enough. I mean, with me, citing jobs numbers isn't gonna do ANYTHING to make me wanna vote for a candidate. because I don't value "creating jobs". Because you cant create enough jobs to solve poverty. We discussed the structural limits of that on this blog many many times. We need a UBI, we need medicare for all, we need free college and student debt forgiveness, we need a housing program. The basic incremental fixes the centrists wanna do ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH and don't really address the problems in meaningful ways.
So, these lists miss the point.
But I also want to explain a bit about why these centrist libs think these lists are impressive. I really wanna dig into their thinking and explain this stuff. Because they're coming at this from a much different perspective than progressives do.
Most progressives are working class. They are subjected to the crap side of the economy, the one that isnt glamorous, and doesn't pay well, and leaves them in precarity. We've gone through the clinton administration, we've gone through the obama administration, we've gone through the biden administration. And these solutions of theirs just don't fix the economy. People are still poor, people are still struggling, and the numbers these guys like to cite don't match our experiences.
Meanwhile, most die hard neolibs who actually LIKE biden are professional class. They're the kinds of people who don't have much skin in the game on the economy, and their goals with the economy are more keeping things as they are and not rocking the boat. They make good money, typically $75k a year up well into the 6 figures range, and are the kinds of people Biden is trying to appeal to when he says he won't raise taxes on anyone making under $400k. What percentile is $400k you ask? On individual income you're talking literally the 98% mark. In household income, the 97% mark. So, these guys are affluent. They work as doctors, lawyers, middle managers in some big office building in some major city somewhere. They climb the corporate leader. Live nice easy lives playing the game, living in their fancy suburbs with their fancy cars, without a care in the world. A generation ago these guys were republicans, but as the democrats got more moderate, and the republicans more crazy, they're now democrats who just want everything to be steady and stable. Politically, their goal is to just keep things as they are. Maybe have mild incremental changes. They're conservative in nature. They dont like change, they dont want the boat rocked. They think change a la sanders or even yang would be a disaster for them as their taxes would go up and that would pinch their lavish living standards. And despite being some of the most privileged people on the planet, they still see themselves as struggling because their spending habits match their income. WHile for us, they have more money than we'd know what to do with, for them, they go through it quickly, while then lecturing us about spending habits like "buying avocado toast" or "skipping that latte at starbucks", as if we don't already do such things.
I mean, they're out of touch. THey're the kinds of people in corporate offices yelling at REAL working class people over the phone as they're the ones assigning the grunt work at the locations where the REAL work is actually being done. I would know because I've dealt with these kinds of people my whole life. Any time you have a job in an actual working class environment, look at where the corporate offices are and who are the ones pulling the strings, it's these people. And they just dont understand how most people live, and they dont care. They're there to boss everyone else around, and collect a big fat paycheck for it.
And here's how they think about politics and elections. They think about them as job interviews. What do you do in a job interview? Well, you build your resume, talk about your skills, your accomplishments, blah blah blah, and then you take them to a prospective employer, dazzle them with BS, and get hired. And these guys, living the american dream, REALLY live for this crap. They're the ones going on linkedin posting their stories about hustling and living for the grind and blah blah blah. You know, middle management types who really buy into that whole culture, and they build their sense of value and self worth around their jobs and their accomplishments. ANd when they look at candidates, they treat it like an interview. Which is why for them Hillary made sense. After all, she was the one who put in her years with the democratic party. She had the experience, she had the accomplishments. Basically, she had the ideal resume to be president. She was ambitious (in a personal sense), she was accomplished, she was their kind of person.
But I have to ask, as an outsider to this, "their kind of person TO DO WHAT?!"
For me, politics is about ideas and policies and ideologies. I don't care about the team, I dont care about experience, beyond the basic qualifications to do the job. I care about vision, I care about what people want to do with the power. I don't think these guys care. Because they dont have a grand vision for how society should work anyway. They're not exactly philosopher king types, which is my ideal kind of leader. They just want someone with experience to fill the position and batten down the hatches. Dont screw up, don't change much, maybe make improvements here and there, but don't rock the boat.
Which is why our government is so useless at doing things. Andrew yang kind of talked about this in Forward with the term "constructional institutionalism". I mean, these are the guys who will hold summits virtue signalling about the problems, but they never actually do much to solve them.
And as such, when a president accomplishes anything, they'll jump onto that as any win. It doesnt matter if the change actually matters in the grand scheme of things, all that matters is the accomplishment happened. Because for them, they care more about superficial accomplishments, than they do about actually changing things.
I mean, for them, politics is a team sport. it's better to be on the right team and to signal the right virtues than it is to actually fix anything. So when a president like clinton or obama or biden passes anything, it's a huge success and how dare you not be grateful. Doesn't matter if the change makes our lives better in practice or not, the numbers say things are better, so therefore they are better. Never mind that those numbers aren't even measuring the right things in the first place or they're measuring them in the wrong way.
As such, these guys are just in their own little world. No, for those of us who want our little ideal philosopher kings who actually want to use their powers to change the system for good in rather drastic ways, these changes aren't good enough. maybe they do make things better. I've been trying to be fairly even handed on Biden on this blog lately as we go into election season, recognizing what he's done, what he's wanted to do, while also noting the obvious limitations. Quite frankly, I could see my articles, like everything else, pissing off both sides of the aisle, with progressives disappointed i defend biden at all and the biden bros still thinking im some crazy socialist or something despite the obvious nuances in my politics.
But yeah, that's how i see it. Not only is just listing accomplishments a gish gallop and kind of a sleezy underhanded technique intended to suppress debate, but if we did look at the grand scheme of biden's accomplishments, they really aren't much. I mean, I have attempted to measure them somewhat, and I'll likely be measuring candidates by more metrics as we get closer to the actual primary. I love my metrics. What can I say? But yeah, they're not much. I mean, I call the dude "Bare Minimum Biden" for a reason sometimes. Because he literally does the bare minimum.
Look, if you're a centrist neolib type, and you like Biden, that's fine, that's your ideology. But, progressives kinda care about issues, and tend to have standards that might not be particularly...accomplishable in the current political environment, but our goal is ultimately to change the environment to get the progress we want. And that's why we run progressive candidates. That's why we like our Bernies and our Yangs and our Marianne Williamsons. Because we want candidates who actually want to do things with their power to accomplish the kinds of change we want to accomplish. Biden just isnt good enough, I'm sorry, he's not. He does literally the bare minimum. And often times fails to even accomplish that due to congress and the courts. While I'm not opposed to being fair and even handed toward the guy and recognizing what he did do, honestly, anyone who follows this blog knows that my standards are a lot more ambitious. So I'm not gonna like biden, i'm not gonna be impressed by his accomplishments, and if that's your thing, go ahead and like it, but don't be surprised when others don't think the same way.
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