Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.
The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.
With just more than three weeks of his single-term presidency remaining, Biden’s reported rueful reflections are revealed in a Washington Post profile that contains the clearest signs yet that he thinks he erred in withdrawing his candidacy in July after a woeful debate performance against his rival for the White House, Trump, the previous month.
Oh right youre australian. I see that Australia has a center left and a center right party. Nothing but centrists huh, neat.
And you say:
Well that desire to “talk down to” and the fact that both parties in Australia are centrist certainly explains the tone of your comments. I’ve often decried to my friends, “But who will speak for the political tourists who want to do drive-by pearls-of-knowledge droppings???” Its a big concern thats seldom addressed. Its right up there wih, “But what do the fascists all think? How can we be truly centrist and bipartisan if we dont understand what they want?? who speaks for them? can we get them a seat next to Harris maybe? Maybe they can campaign together even!” I’m super concerned to know the details of the fascist plans so I can set my own agenda to be just to the left of theirs, as is proper. If the fascist dont tell me how to think, then I lack any guideposts at all, right. Centrism aint easy. So much strategery involved.
So you’re just here to (in your words) “talk down to” people in a system you’re not a member of at all, and you bring with you a profoundly inbred sense of centrism. So glad you’re here to school us americans with your keen insights on american culture. Read some blogs about America, did you? cool. So let me guess what your advice would be here, ‘we need a stronger sense of centrism in the US and everything will be OK’, am I right?
Sorry if I stole your thunder, mate.
This obsession with “centrism” is so tiresome.
Left, right, and centre is subjective. Any country with a two party system is going to have a centre left and centre right.
If you’re a major party in a two party system the only way possible way to attract enough votes to form government is to have policies as close as possible to your opponent whilst simultaneously differentiating yourself so as to be identified as “the best option” to any voters on your side of the political spectrum. This dynamic of political science is well established, and patently obvious to everyone but a handful of 16 year old idiots who think they’re the first generation in the history of the world to want things to be better than they are.
Your big "I see that Australia has… " reveal sadly says more about your very limited understanding of politics in your own country than it does about my perspective.
This is absolutely hilarious stuff, thank you.
Ah yes, hilarity. The classic resort of a child when confronted with a concept beyond their comprehension.
It’s very much not a basic tenet of politics, simply the philosophy that centrists continually push because it’s the philosophy that promotes centrists. This election was the perfect test case. Harris couldn’t be more centrist, even putting a lot of effort into courting actual Republican voters, while Trump leaned into the far right. Your naive political philosophy was soundly disproven.
Elections aren’t a static population of voters on a line, they have diverse opinions and different priorities, and elections are often won or loss on turnout from voters in the party base. Trumps turned his out, Harris didn’t. It had nothing to do with who was best able to represent the center.