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| Hillary 2.0 |
Joe Biden is basically Hillary Clinton with shorter hair and a longer voting record; I believe he will be just as easy for President Trump to beat. But in the highly unlikely case he were to win the presidency, we Republicans shouldn’t worry. His policies aren’t really that different from Republicans’, and in fact he brags about his good working relationship with his pals in the Republican majority.
Joe is also a friend of the military and the corporations connected with it. He supported the Gulf War of George Bush Sr., the Iraq War of George Bush, Jr., and supported huge increases in Pentagon spending during those years. He was very supportive of President Barack Obama’s drone warfare campaigns in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan that, while killing a lot of civilians, none-the-less wereeffective (heck, as Rummy used to say, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs). It was also very enriching to the manufacturers of those weapons.
Mr. Biden has never favored affirmative action or unnatural, forced desegregation. He opposed busing and even sought the help of segregationists in his efforts. He votedagainand againfor the unsuccessful amendment of his good friend, Jesse Helms, which would have stoppedthe Justice Department from defending busing in court.
Joe worked with Bill Clinton on many Republican priorities in the 1990s. He authored harsh drug laws that resulted the incarceration of huge numbers of people, which made our cities much safer (liberals complained that most of those locked up were people of color, but that’s only because they were poor and crack cocaine was cheap). He also worked Clinton to end welfare as we know it, throwing many takers off the public dole (again, against the protests of namby-pamby liberals who complained it adversely impacted poor people. Well duh.).
Guided by his Christian faith, Biden leans right on abortion,. He has repeatedly voted for the Hyde amendment, which bans federal funding for elective abortions for Medicaid recipients. Biden said in 1994, “As you may know, I have consistently — on no fewer than 50 occasions — voted against federal funding of abortions.” He once said Roe v. Wadewent “too far” and voted in 1982 for an amendment to allow states to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision; but he changed his mind and voted against the same bill in 1983. Biden voted for a ban on partial-birth abortion, despite the fact “It did not, as I would have liked, ban all post-viability abortions,” Biden later said. “I was and still am concerned that in banning only partial-birth abortions, we do not go far enough.” He’s a flipper and a flopper, but he certainly won’t win the femi-Nazi vote.
Joe is a huge fan of globalization and a friend to banks and big business, many of which are chartered in Delaware. He has consistently supported bank deregulation as well as banking laws that made it difficult for people, (but not corporations, thankfully), to file bankruptcy. He has opposed a public option in healthcare as an impediment to the great profits to be made by hospitals, insurance companies, and big pharma. And let us not forget, Joe voted withRepublicans on Nafta, on GATT, and on other international trade issues. Joe is no friend of labor unions.
While Joe didn’t vote to confirm Clarence Thomas for the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991, he really hammered Anita Hill (the Blasey Ford of her day) during the hearings, and allowed the other men on the panel to do the same. That was probably the reason Thomas was ultimately confirmed, albeit by the narrowest of margins.
Finally, Joe really isn’t too concerned about climate change and like many Republicans thinks we should further study the issue. He prefers a go-slow, business-friendly approach to putting off dealing with it, much as we have been doing since James Hansen’s hysterical raising of the issue 30 years ago. Joe does like electric cars and thinks people should recycle. We can live with that.
In sum, aside from a few minor social issues, I think Republicans could easily live with a President Joe Biden.
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