Like so many millennials, my nephew wants it all now, medicare for all, living wages, equality of the sexes and races and so much more. He points to the Democratic party and sneers. They don't understand and are just the flip side of Republicans he says. You can't trust either party, so he pronounces a pox on both their houses and will vote for some true believing radical with zero chance to get his agenda put into legislation.
I get the anger and frustration. The Obama years were frustrating for all of us who endorse liberal positions. The first black president had to govern with republican majorities in the House after 2010 and the Senate in 2014. He used most of his political capital on a Rube Goldberg healthcare program which included for profit insurance companies because the right wing of his own party threatened the entire program. Any democratic president is constrained by the most conservative members of his party. Joe Manchin will have more influence in a Biden administration than Elizabeth Warren precisely because his vote will have to be bought with changes to any liberal bill brought before the Senate.
Joe Biden is not my choice for president, but in this moment in history, he may be the only thing separating America from a slide into authoritarianism. I will hold my nose and vote for the man who will bring us back from the brink and in the process may well surprise many who feel he has no feeling for a majority of Americans. FDR and LBJ were no liberal firebrands, but they ushered in two of the most progressive eras in our history. Let's give him a chance Robbie.
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