@corruptian i think the US could do way better than biden (he was at/near the bottom of the candidate pool for me when he won the primaries), but this doesn’t seem like a promising upgrade

@sabbatical

I think a lot of what got him into office was name recognition. Few actually stand out, and maybe that's just charisma or visibility.

@corruptian and i think he was squarely in the old school camp that the main groups of democratic party elites knew was safe for their interests, vs sanders or warren for example

@sabbatical

Good point. He was least likely to break anything big, also.

@corruptian yeah, that's the generous version of what i said... haha. i think there were other candidates who couldve claimed that too, but as you hinted at, he had also been VP for one of the most popular presidents ever.

@sabbatical

He picked a nice middle of the Democrat big tent.

Many people voting for him were afraid that Trump or Clinton would actually break something.

@corruptian huh, clinton eh? i would’ve thought she’d be similar to him in terms of that

@sabbatical

Hillary seems more radical than Bill was. Beyond that, it's hard to tell, you're right, but she did seem to be a bit more strident in her messaging.

@corruptian to me it felt more like personality differences (and maybe campaign design differences) than real policy differences, but it’s been a while

@corruptian i try not to say so too loudly since i don’t want to be that guy, but i bet bernie would’ve won against trump and ended up a super impactful and popular president

@sabbatical

I saw East Germany, so anything too close to Communism is off the table for me. Same with the Moral Majority types. I am not sure they are actually opposite extremes, probably the same extreme.

Biden won out because he was able to be in the middle of a number of groups and get them a compromise. This seems to be how politics works to me, but you'll want to ask an expert...

@corruptian you thought of sanders as close to communism? "we should be more like scandinavia in some ways" doesn't really count to me. he seems less authoritarian minded than trump or clinton from where i see it. (though i've never been under communist dictatorship, as a kid i did live in bangladesh during their pro-western military dictatorship and it was still much better than communist countries were at the time, i'd say.)

@sabbatical

Yes, I think he's well-intentioned but the worst human outcomes arise from good intentions. He clearly wanted a massive permanent wealth tax, and there's no way we wouldn't get a superstate out of that.

Interesting about Bangladesh, especially since they are in the news today. I have no experience with military dictatorships but I am afraid of theocratic dictatorships or juntas.

@corruptian well it was a junta in bangladesh, just not an extremely oppressive one (as long as you weren’t a journalist or socialist and had money for bribes you were prob ok). i was a kid during the student uprising that brought down gen. ershad, and i remember watching a street gun battle between political party supporters from the roof of our church building in chittagong. and a house across the street from ours was burned around the same time bc a naval officer connected to the gov lived there. it was a more relaxed time for us though since there was less chance of foreigners/christians being lynched (vs during iraq war just before)

@sabbatical

That sounds rather exciting, in the "may you live in interesting times" way.

Still, it's weird how many places manage to be okay with governments that scare us in the West.