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.”
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.