Going Big-- In Biden World

Summarizing a Jonathan Martin piece about Democrats wanting Biden to go big in Saturday's NY Times, This Week's Tim O'Donnell noted that conservative Texas Democrats Marc Veasey and Filemon Vela think "now is the best time" for a Democratic presidential candidate to win Texas "since Jimmy Carter" and that the state is "very winnable." Georgia Democrats want Biden, to ramp up his effort in the state, too. "But while polls indicate Biden may have a chance to flip those states blue, his campaign is taking it easy for now... Biden's aides reportedly consider it too early to switch up their strategy and go for an electoral college route by investing millions in states like Georgia, Texas, and even Ohio while surefire swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania remain up for grabs. 'When you look under the hood, we are ahead in the majority of the battleground states, but we expect them to tighten because these are battleground states in a pretty polarized electorate,' Biden's campaign manager, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, tole The Times. O'Malley Dillon is also trying to make sure Biden doesn't lose vulnerable traditionally Democratic states like Nevada."

The thought is that "of course, this doesn't mean Biden's camp won't grow more confident and eventually pour more of their resources into other states because while presidential candidates only need 270 Electoral College votes to win... some Democrats, like Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), believe a more convincing victory would allow Biden flip the Senate and move his agenda more easily in office."

What agenda? Dying in office and having "president" on his headstone? Sure, Democrats say they want Biden-- a team, not a senile old man who is the front man for that team-- "to seize what they believe could be a singular opportunity not only to defeat Mr. Trump but to rout him and discredit what they believe is his dangerous style of racial demagogy. This election, the officials argue, offers the provocative possibility of a new path to the presidency through fast-changing states like Georgia and Texas, and a chance to install a generation of lawmakers who can cement Democratic control of Congress and help redraw legislative maps following this year’s census."

But it should not surprise anyone who has followed Biden's limp-dick career to see that they are "so far hewing to a more conservative path," in Jonathan Martin's words. As for "go big"... if they don't have the balls to at least try to pick states like Georgia and Ohio off the relatively low-hanging branches, how are they going to "go big" where it really counts-- policy. I'll laugh my ass off if Roger Stone and Javanka persuade Trump to get to Biden's left on marijuana legalization and Trump beats Biden on that, in effect, destroying the United States of America because the Democrats were too stupid to nominate someone who had moved out of the 1970s and '80s.

"Going Big" isn't about buying Facebook ads targeting voters with pablum in Dallas and Cincinnati; it would be, for example, explaining to voters what the Green New Deal means, something Biden has not a clue about. At beast, in fact, Biden could maybe understand and work towards undoing the damage Trump has done. Not what I would see in the kind of transformative presidency that should follow a Trump regime but... the Democrats are so horribly spineless and suck so badly that Biden is all they could come up with. As Time's Jeffrey Kluger wrote last week, "Trump has smashed a lot of environmental china in four years [and] no one can deny the unprecedented sweep of Trump’s policies. Data from Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program and Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law show that the President has signed more than 100 administrative rules, Executive Orders and acts of deregulation, 66 of which have gone into effect."

CBS News poll shows Biden voters hate Trump, don't give a shit about Biden. Maybe he should give them a reason to want him that's more persuasive than just that he's the lesser evil

Biden has indicated he will get the U.S. back into the Paris accord-- Trump's withdrawal doesn't become official until July, 2021-- but that is hardly what a President Bernie would have had in mind as his be-all and end-all agenda on Climate. "Nobody," wrote Kluger, "expects a Green New Deal out of a hypothetical Biden Administration. Freeman believes Biden will look to environmental laws now on the books like the Clean Air Act of 1970 and apply them more strictly to advance a green agenda. On June 30, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis did unveil an ambitious plan for the U.S. to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050–something Biden could embrace, though its chances would likely depend on the Democrats’ holding the House and flipping the Senate as well. Biden could also, [Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program Jody] Freeman says, attach climate policies to coronavirus-related economic-recovery bills that are likely to pass. The environment has never been Biden’s animating passion. He markets himself instead as more of a Mr. Fix-It, a President who will set right what he sees as the serial messes of the past four years and then try to move beyond them. The environment will be one of his biggest cleanup jobs of all."

So how can Biden possibly win? He can't... but he can be there when Trump loses. Nancy Ohanian's latest drawing demonstrates exactly what a Biden "victory" will look like:

Murder/Suicide by Nancy Ohanian