Biden of America: The Return of the Democracy

A place for more serious off-topic discussion and debates.
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Could have fooled me:


From that interview, the impression I got is that the Dems have not even discussed as to what they should do on this issue at this point, even though the Supreme Court opinion got leaked a while ago and Republicans have said for decades that they wanted to take away abortion rights.

Also doesn't change the fact that when they want to have an exception to the legislative filibuster like they did with the debt ceiling in December 2021, they manage to make it happen and when they don't care they suddenly don't have any possibility to make meaningful change happen.

Oh and as an update, it seems that Biden is poised to nominate Chad Meredith, an anti-abortion judge for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge just so Mitch McConnell doesn't hold up any future federal nominations by the Biden White House. Biden is such a weak and feckless tool.


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Biden has appointed some of the most diverse judges in U.S. history. Women, and pro-choice judges and others.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f ... _Joe_Biden
https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_judges_ ... _Joe_Biden

Snopes - Did Biden and McConnell Make a Deal to Nominate an Anti-Abortion Judge in Kentucky?
In exchange, McConnell reportedly wouldn't hold up future federal nominations by the Democratic president's administration.
In late June 2022, readers asked about a rumor that said U.S. President Joe Biden had struck a secret deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY. According to the claim, Biden’s part of the deal would be to nominate Republican, anti-abortion lawyer Chad Meredith for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge in McConnell’s state of Kentucky. In return, McConnell would agree to not hold up any future federal nominations by Biden’s White House.

The news first spread less than one week after the U.S. Supreme Court‘s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which effectively stripped away women’s constitutional protections for abortion.
Biden is likely afraid of a Democrat dying (and so should be everyone else) in the Senate thus restoring McConnell and the Republicans to power over the courts and other appointments at least until the outcome of the November 2022 elections and wants to make a deal. Senator Leahy (D-Vermont) is out of the Senate, recovering from surgery after falling in his home.

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President's remarks begin 19:00 minutes in



FACT SHEET: FACT SHEET: President Biden to Sign Executive Order Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Care Services | The White House

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Go take a nap, Joe, and please don't run again in 2024. Maybe the Dems can have someone run for President who not only knows how to apply pressure to 2 Dem Senators who undermine the entire agenda but who knows how to communicate the urgency of the moment. Let Manchin and Sinema turn Republican. The Dems ain't passing anything at this point anyway but at least then the Democratic Party could more aggressively fight for its voters without having to worry about pleasing those turncoats.

The Biden administration could do a lot on the abortion issue before the mid-terms (Biden could nominate more justices to the Court, for instance, he could build abortion clinics on federal land, etc.) but everything that they communicated so far and how they approached this despite the fact that the draft decision was leaked a while back shows that they don't have a clue as to what to do with the power they have in the executive branch because they're still bumbling around like idiots trying to figure out what to do instead of listening to people like AOC who have proposed very clear ways to address the situation. The Biden administration are enablers of Republicans whose corporate-friendly approach they share, which is not what the world needs. Making deals with McConnell comes close to selling out your voters as you can get (57% of women voted for Biden).

Right-wing corporate Democrats like the Biden administration preemptively surrender in the face of right-wingers on most things while going scorched earth on leftists at every turn. The Dems could try to protect abortion pills, for instance, but there's no proposal on how to get them to red states but between the leak and the Supreme Court decision there was time to figure something out. Americans don't need further studies on abortion pills and commissions on abortion rights to push action further down the line and it's obvious to everyone that Biden's just buying time when the people who are impacted don't have time to lose.

By the way, asking for unanimous consent votes for a possible vote in the Senate on rape and incest exceptions for abortions is a tactic that allows only one Republican Senator to object. Presumably, the Democrats would want all Republicans to be on the record as voting against these exceptions but that would mean that anti-choice Dems would also be on the record, hence why they're asking for unanimous consent votes.

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The President can't build abortion clinics on federal land because Congress has not authorized that spending for that purpose. It would also violate the Hyde Amendment.


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MagnarTheGreat wrote:
July 8th, 2022, 10:08 pm
The President can't build abortion clinics on federal land because Congress has not authorized that spending for that purpose. It would also violate the Hyde Amendment.

Ok, the Hyde Amendment prevents the federal government from financing a clinic, that is true so that solution does indeed not apply. However, it does not necessarily prevent the federal government from leasing land to an independent clinic. Such questions could be explored but I doubt the current administration is doing that. At the very least AOC has talked about the need to repeal the Hyde Amendment in Congress going back as far as at least 2019 so that's something that could also be looked into: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4487 ... amendment/

Also, lets note that if it is unconstitutional for the federal government to actually build abortion clinics on federal land, the President can still appoint more US Supreme Court Justices going forward, since the Constitution does not provide for a fixed number of Justices on the SC. What's preventing him from doing that then?

Not to mention that you avoided engaging all the other points that were mentioned, including those on abortion pills. Convening commissions and requesting studies looks fine on paper and makes it look like you're doing something but it ain't changing anything in practice when urgent action is needed RIGHT NOW.

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I thought Sinema was at least pro choice. lol

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Too many voters decided Clinton (48%) wasn't their first choice and by doing so ended Roe v Wade and other precedents in 2016 by empowering extremist rightwing Judges appointed by the runner-up, Donald Trump (46%), who won the electoral college and presidency by winning states that were worth more points than Clinton did.

The current President (Biden) has done things that are within his constitutional authority: Appointing Justice Jackson to the Supreme Court (and future justices should a vacancy open and the Democrats hold the Senate), executive orders, and he would sign legislation but it's the fault of Congress for not sending any to him to sign.

The Democratic Party is far more than just the presidency though too often the left pretends all other offices do not exist and neglects them by only caring about their momentary feelings about one person in one office.

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Funny way to phrase things, since I recall Hillary Clinton losing by around a couple of thousand votes across 3 states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) in 2016, because she decided to put her effort into other states like Florida, Ohio and North Carolina instead and so taking voters for granted is kind of a rookie mistake.

We could also look at how a lot of former Obama voters decided not to vote for her due to their disappointment with the former Democratic President's decisions on a host of policy issues. Can I hence say that Obama ruined it for Dems and for abortion rights? Sorry, but Obama and the Dems could have fought on codifying Roe v Wade since 2009 and they decided not to do so, even though there are quotes by Obama saying that it was a priority and then reversing his position in 2009. Even if they had not been able to pass a law back then (though they were closer to being in that position than they are now), they could have put the blame on the Republicans but they don't like taking their Republican colleagues to task on much of anything. The end result is what you have now. We can go even further back and look at how Democrats approached the abortion issue in the 90s where they ceded ground to the Republicans with regard to the way the issue was being debated in public as something dirty, rather than as a right that women ought to have. But hey, I'm sure Clinton's anti-choice VP, Tim Kaine, would have gone out of his way to fight for abortion rights LOL. Don't try to gaslight people who have even passing knowledge of the candidate, that election and the decisions made by the leaders of the Democratic party around this issue.

It's of course easier for Clinton and centre-right Dems to blame their losses on the voters (especially to their political left) rather than on their own campaign strategies and decisions, not to mention their policy choices from 2008 until 2016. That's also why the party has never corrected course or reexamined its approach since that election because their assumption is that their voters are a bunch of dummies who know close to nothing and that they ought not ot have expectiuons of Dems. It ain't the voters' fault if they lose faith in the idea of the Dems actually delivering on campaign promises and hence don't come out to vote for them later. The Dems achieve that outcome just fine on their own. Their unwillingness to change course or even to admit that Trump represents the average Republican voter is what gets Nancy Pelosi to say 'we need a strong Republican party'. They're plenty strong now and they are getting what they want because a lot of Dems aid and abet them by holding back and punching the left instead.

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