As President Trump’s consolidation of autocratic power gains steam, it’s often been argued that the failures of liberal governance meaningfully helped to bring us to this moment. In this reading, the Biden administration—and other Democratic leaders in recent years—allowed well-intentioned caution and respect for parliamentary safeguards and procedures to hobble ambition, frustrating voters and making them easier prey for demagogues peddling authoritarian governance as our civic cure-all.
This reading has now picked up the endorsement of a surprising group: A large bloc of former high-level members of the Biden administration.
The left-leaning Roosevelt Institute is releasing a major new report Tuesday—with input from nearly four dozen former senior Biden officials across many agencies—that seeks to diagnose the administration’s governing mistakes and failures. The report, provided in advance to The New Republic, may be the most ambitious effort involving Biden officials to determine what went wrong and why.
In the report, Biden officials extensively identify big failings in governing and in the execution of the politics around big decisions—but with an eye toward creating the beginnings of a Project 2029 agenda. The result is a kind of proto-blueprint for Democratic governance to show that it can work the next time the party has power.
“We must reckon honestly with how we got here and why the American public has been so frustrated with these institutions for so long,” Roosevelt Institute president Elizabeth Wilkins writes in the report’s introduction. “The rising authoritarianism we see today shows us the stakes.”
Talk about too little too late.
This is a little vague but could be partly correct and is a good critique of Obama. Its also missing some points like billionaires ammassing too much monetary wealth.
I do think not attempting to break up media companies is a problem but taxing billionaires would have stopped a lot of this.
Typical. They ignore their members who are screaming “grow a spine, we’re losing because we aren’t fighting!” Literally for decades, then after they lose it all, contritely act like there’s something nobody could have seen coming they now have to learn from.
What, you didn’t see the consequences of letting the senate leader block a supreme court assignment for a fucking year? It never occurred to you they’d turn right around and seat the Republican assigned one within 24 hours?
Unprecedented? Really? You have a house election victor who still hasn’t been seated after a month and the Republican ones were seated within 24 hours. I haven’t seen one iota of fight in you fucking dweebs. They stop you when you have the majority, but you can’t do fucking anything when they have control. You guys fucked us over more than the Republicans did. At least we knew what they were doing. We expected you to fight for us and you fucking folded every single time, while telling us you would stand up and fight.
Now the only way were getting those Nazis out is full on military uprising, and anybody with a fucking clue knows it.
When Biden was like “we have too much respect for the country to pack the court” and privately they were saying “the polling doesn’t look good for us” I lost hope and realized we were going to lay down right in front of a steamroller. Mad frustrating.
What exactly does “fighting” look like to you in this context? You keep repeating that word without explaining what you mean by it. Because I kind of feel like this is what it looks like: Making plans to regain control of the government and try to stop this sort of situation from ever happening again. It might seem boring and too little too late, but it’s exactly how the Republican party got where they are. They spent decades planning and scheming and stacking the deck in their favor. You can’t undo that overnight.
Do some of the same shit the Republicans have been doing for ages any time THEY are in the minority.
There should be a daily press briefing with Pete B, Bernie S., or Alexandria O.C. that’s covered by every journalist who’s been kicked out of the white house. Call that shit “The American Way” briefing and compare the events of the last 24 hours of trump BS to the constitution and the declaration of independence.
Obstruct every last piece of illegal garbage the Republican Nazis are trying to get away with loudly and publicly.
Put themselves OUT THERE in the public eye as AGAINST FACISM and go full-on captain America on those Nazi Republicans.
you definitely can, just take out their funding. the majority are roaches in it for a paycheck. no paycheck and they go back to running scams in their hometown
It’s rising because of the American public’s complacency and ignorance.
It’s the same thing that happened in 1930s Germany. An authoritarian government steps in, the people think it won’t be that bad, they allow it, they support it, they put up with it, they think government checks and balances still work … then when its all too late, people suddenly want to act.
If Americans don’t know what to do right now … they won’t have a chance to do anything later.
People don’t feel like there’s anything they can do, outside of the ordinary [eg voting]. There is no real intermediate step between peaceful protest and targeted violence. And people understandably don’t want to target their local authorities, who may not even be complicit.
The american public has been told for the last 30 years that voting for democrats would prevent something like this
It’s democratic complacency that this report is pointing to that is at fault.
I fear you are correct. As much as I mention I kind of like the counter protestors as it shows how small a group it is relative to people fighting facism I also have verified to my satisfaction that in some cases they are not paid shills and they seem to be able to be blind to everything for the sake of their side winning. I mean we have masked unmarked paramilitary killing, injuring, destroying property, and invading private residences. Its crazy they can ignore that.
This article lacks material analysis. Fascism is on the rise because it is the tool that capitalists use when workers gain class consciousness and start to demand more equality. The second Bernie became popular, a backlash like this was inevitable.
I dont think it was bernie that lit the fuse, i think it was having a black man as president. It made so many people unreasonably angry, they just couldnt accept it. Thats when the temperature started rising.
i’d argue it was more having the first black president running on a campaign of HOPE AND CHANGE
then…doing absolutely fuck all but furthering the status quo, completely unjustified warmongering, unsustainable ratfucking etc.
This article lacks material analysis
? It’s based on a report that was just released. It examines and critiques real life examples of mistakes within the previous administration. Building a More Effective, Responsive Government: Lessons Learned from the Biden-Harris Administration
One of its most compelling conclusions is that the Biden administration seemed reluctant to engage in “picking the fights worth having” and sometimes took refuge in incremental policy gains due to a self-limiting “risk aversion.” One senior official is quoted suggesting the White House didn’t give adequate support to agency leaders who thought they had a policy stance providing an opening to “have a fight and show who you’re for.”
Not standing up for the values that are supposed to be at the party’s roots, and acknowledging that doing the most basic wasn’t enough to lead the country where it needed to go, seems like a pretty perfect summary of why most people dislike establishment Democrats.
The second Bernie became popular, a backlash like this was inevitable.
No the second we became ok with normalizing executive overreach, ignoring checks and balances, and unilateral decisions by the president, it was inevitable. It’s not a backlash when every president in modern history basically paved the way for it to happen.
Material analysis is not so much concerned with the actions of individuals or even entire administrations. It is more so a lens to view an entire society. When I say that the backlash was inevitable, I am talking about the rise of fascism generally, not just the rise of Trump. So yes, the policies of previous politicians did “pave the way” for Trump, but that didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened because the capitalist rulers saw that their position was at risk, so they exerted pressure to consolidate more power (i.e. fascism).
The second Bernie became popular, a backlash like this was inevitable.
A material analysis of Bernie Sanders would rule out a backlash because he’s never held power or set policy.
But even if you rate effectiveness by how much they aggravate the right, politicians like Pelosi prove that being effective is more threatening than being left. Politicians like Obama prove that being black is more threatening than being radical.
I think you’ll find Bernie Sanders rates far higher in MAGA circles than Pelosi or Obama. Because he doesn’t represent any threat to them. (check out his defense of Trump’s immigration policy)
Reactionaries don’t need the actual existence of revolutionary power to pull the fascist card, they just need the threat of it. I use Bernie as an example of rising class consciousness, not because he is some Great Man who is the epicenter of history.
As President Trump’s consolidation of autocratic power gains steam…
with an eye toward creating the beginnings of a Project 2029 agenda. The result is a kind of proto-blueprint for Democratic governance to show that it can work the next time the party has power.
…How cute, they think there’s going to be another administration after this one… :/
Why is it rising?
Because that was the fucking platform he ran on. The “you won’t have to vote again” platform. I know that the orange turdsack has more shit leave his mouth in an hour than he deposits into his Depends in a day, but ffs, did everyone just forget this slip?
He’s bringing what he promised. Anyone claiming they didn’t know this was coming are either room temp IQ in Celsius and shouldn’t even have the right to vote, or are lying through their teeth. People have been warning about this since 2015, but nobody took it seriously, and well… Here we fucking are.
And this will only ever get worse. Mango Mussolini has entrenched himself as Glorious Leader, and even in his death, there will be people to take over. MAGA won’t even matter anymore because they’re building out the framework of never giving up power, right in front of your fucking faces, you flag-shagging, “freedom”-loving, burger munching morons who voted for him or didn’t even bother to get your fat asses out of your couches. This is on you all. All the ones who went “but I can’t vote for Harris”, fuck off. You couldn’t hold your nose to at least preserve the semblance of democracy, and now the whole world has to suffer your insufferable arrogance. Fuck you all, seriously.
Because see, I’m not a US citizen nor do I live in your third world shithole country. Yet your moronic “cleanliness” political ideology is affecting me, without me having a say. You couldn’t be bothered to do against fascism because it wasn’t convenient. Well tough titties.
My only hope is that the US collapses as the house of diarrhea-soaked cards it is, and whatever emerges from it will learn from the mistakes made.
Tough talk for someone not living here. Everybody wanna fight fascism until it’s your ass on the line. You have no idea what it’s like in the US. It’s not like most votes matter or there is any real organization on the left. We also have jobs, health insurance, families and other responsibilities than whatever bullshit goes on in Washington.
This right here. This whole attitude is why the world thinks us Americans are getting what we deserve. It’s your own fucking responsibility to save yourself asshole, and if you weren’t bugging every damn person you know to vote last November then, well, this is why the world thinks we’re getting what we deserve. Way too fucking many Americans refuse to take responsibility for their own disengagement from civic duty. It is literally your and my goddamn duty as fucking citizens to be informed educated and engaged with the civic process. We collectively fucked around and are now finding out. Own your part. I own mine.
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Ah so fuck the world because you can’t be arsed to vote after you established a system that does precisely this?
Typical murican. Fuck everyone else, I’m tossing TNT into my cesspit, and even if half the neighbourhood is covered in my shit, I’ll just blame someone else for not stopping me.
You give a shit about our politics
We don’t think about you at all.
I’ll get right on that whole convincing 100 million Americans what to do and vote in a gerrymandered and electoral college rigged system. While working ten hour days, fighting my employer for basic rights and trying to have a life outside politics. Also having zero resources compared to any corporate influence in Washington.
Sorry I don’t live in some idealistic European utopia.
Holy shit, dude.
The wealth of the USA is much more from colonial extraction and market manipulation than the mythology of productivity would have you believe. The dark waters of American imperialism have flooded the globe for nearly a century.
So yeah, you, as in the polity, think about the rest of the world all the time, but more like buffet than neighborhood.
But more to the point, examine the defeatist viewpoint that is part of the democracy-suppressing ideology that is prominent in many countries, and results in low civic participation, the hero complex: “I’ll get right on that whole convincing 100 million Americans what to do and vote”.
No, just no. No-one asks that.
What we ask is just resistance in the form of what is possible. For those ground under the millstone, it may just be educating yourself with documentaries or a study buddy, so you can better see how to build the society you want, and represent that in speech and action. Every act of resistance counts, it really does.
But essentially, just help organize. Volunteer 4h a month at first. In a sea of 400 million people every drop counts, because you only have to sufficiently organize about 20 million for real change to kick in.
Don’t second guess too much what is effective, that requires massive data, and there are all kinds of unexpected wins and losses. I have had some successful activists tell me that I made a difference in their chosen directions years ago, and I had no idea. Sometimes it’s just a comment that leads to a lot of convincing.
We don’t think about you at all.
Yet your shit keeps falling into my backyard and fucking it up.
Would your fuckup not affect the rest of the world I’d be making popcorn by the bucket watching you melt down.
Sadly, you DO affect other countries. So please shut the fuck up and fix it.
Is the answer because Democrats allowed their rise, partnered with the same billionaires the reps did and the public went along with it all because comfort means everything is great for everyone?
the whole dnc this year exemplified and was iconic of the democrat party and had their full face shown mask off
but in full on football politics fashion democrats just like republicans get blindly straight color ticket voted on using voting machines that are the property of some unknown company without a wikipedia page to do it with
and the information that got them to cast a blind vote for red or blue came from media that is owned by the same groups that own the voting machine
and citizens are taught how to interpret data at schools which use materials that are owned by the same ones control the media and the vote machines
democracy is dead
