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Time to review the first week of the Biden Administration from my leftist perspective. This will be idiosyncratic as I do not listen to the YouTube Left and I'm not gonna get cute and say "time for some" you know what. I'm gonna lead with this, Biden is not Clinton or Obama 1/?
Biden has definitely come out swinging in some ways to show that unlike the last two Democratic Presidents, he's not actually going to waste time on bad faith Republicans in his government. He fired the Trumpists at VOA and the NLCB. He's not playing the "norms" card 2/?
So far, Biden's executive actions have been signing a bunch of shit undoing the shit Trump did and making EOs that deal with the ongoing COVID crisis that Trump criminally mismanaged and signing a waiver into law for Lloyd Austin to be SecDef. I have feelings about this 3/?
Let's not deny that Austin is a historic choice as Secretary of Defense. That matters to a not insignificant number of Democratic voters. Of course it can smack of "more women prison guards" cheerleading, but Austin was the most dovish of those Biden was looking at 4/?
Austin also has the most operational experience of those considered, which really fucking matters if we actually want to withdraw safely from Afghanistan and at large, The Forever War. We're certainly seeing very clearly that our coming on 20 year war has a home front 5/?
And speaking of long term unsolved problems, let's discuss Biden's mixed performance on immigration. He restored DACA, and proposes a pathway to citizenship, which is more progressive on this issue than European countries. He has not yet freed the kids from cages 6/?
And yes, that's frustrating to me. We should also remember that DHS is still a den of villainy full of Trumpists and Biden doesn't have his people in that department (one that I'd prefer to see abolished along with the Patriot Act). Doing it right rather than fast matters. 7/?
I hope that is what Biden is thinking. He's signaled that he's gonna put a pause on deportations and undo Trump's monstrous "Remain in Mexico" policy. Texas is already suing him to delay this so I imagine that Texas will also sue to keep kids in cages. Fuck Ken Paxton! 8/?
As far as economic stuff goes, Biden has come out swinging for the $15 an hour minimum wage (the YouTube Left seems to think he's against the Fight for 15) and people have a weird semantic hangup over what $2000 checks really meant when we already saw what the plan was 9/?
I mean, come on, the plan was to substitute $2000 for $600. We got the $600, and now we're getting the rest that we are owed. Biden will do budget reconciliation to get us our $2000 if he has to (it would be my first $1400 because of the quirks of the law). 10/?
I also hope Biden offers a skinny minimum wage increase bill. Use the bully pulpit to make the Republicans have to answer to their voters why they won't give that an up and down vote (because the minimum wage is popular. More popular than Democrats!) 11/?
Minimum Wage wouldn't survive the Byrd Bath so if reconciliation is how we're gonna get shit done, we gotta come up with backup plans to make obstruction as painful to Republicans as possible. Moving on, Biden is putting quite a bit of Warren people in finance regulation 12/?
Wall Street may be in for a long overdue rude awakening as they find out that the Biden Administration is not staffed with toadies like Clinton and Obama had. Janet Yellin is also very hawkish on fighting for full employment so Treasury could build Keynesian back better 13/?
Biden is also putting together a Transportation dream team with the exception of Mayo Pete, and the Mayo guy seems like he might actually lean into the nerdiness rather than be a sleazy "Uber uber alles" policy guy. Biden's environmental team also is gonna rock. 14/?
Biden has also made it abundantly clear that he's gonna be laser-focused on rooting out white supremacy and his Administration seems very ready to move. Whether or not we'll see results remains to be seen. White supremacy is a problem that goes very deep into our system 15/?
And of course silly season has already begun with the NY Times showing its ass yet again with whinging over Biden wearing a really good and expensive watch. I don't fucking care and neither should you. The inauguration itself was fun. We should celebrate when we win. 16/?
Of course with liberals there is always cringe and we got some with entirely too cute videos about kids trying to fill in where government fails and liberals say "dawww how cute" rather than "grrrrr....system utterly failed. I'm pissed". But now we can start fixing shit. 17/?
Conor Lamb, who is definitely a moderate, at least has a really good quote. "We want this government to work more than they want it to fail". Yes, every Democrat wants our government to work and it will be difficult to get things working again but we can and must. 18/?
So far, Joe Biden has made some good first steps towards making government work for the people again. He hasn't been perfect but he's surprised me by being better than I expected. I may feel a need to take him to the woodshed in the future. But right now, we're winning 19/?
To close this review of Biden's first week, let's remember to continue to push Biden for what we want, praise him when he does good things, and to avoid hero worship because politicians are not superheroes, they're somewhat lovable jerks that work for us. Thanks 4 reading. 20/20
