For the Record: Joe Did That

As I was following the television coverage of the debt ceiling

... that Kevin has recognized there is no solution that will unite the GOP caucus and he has to offer something that will get some Democratic votes.

— Yas You Like It (@Yastreblyansky) May 28, 2023

I got a communication from a distressed leftist who's even older than me:

Biden never got over the fake halcyon days when Tip O'Neil and Ronnie Reagan drank together and made deals. His default position.

— Elliot Skydel (@ESkydel) May 28, 2023

I've been impressed with him as well but I can never forget the Clarence Thomas hearings and Biden rolling over for Spector, Hatch while they crucified Anita Hill. Danforth weeping his support. Some random guy from years before testifying how they had a date. He didn't show

— Elliot Skydel (@ESkydel) May 28, 2023

I'm not confident I was an ideal person 32 years ago. Or now, for that matter. I got my conclusive ideas about Biden as person in 2012, when he snookered Obama into backing same-sex marriage. That was cool.

— Yas You Like It (@Yastreblyansky) May 28, 2023

You can't see it, but Henry/Thornton is in the mix at this point—but he's not helping me out.

And yet his instinct to split every issue, even right and wrong and good and evil down the middle marks him as too weak for the times. Back to the 90s. Triangulation.

— Elliot Skydel (@ESkydel) May 28, 2023

That's exactly the kind of cliché punditthink I'm trying to get beyond. It's not even accurate in its own terms, and they're terms that shouldn't be used.

— Yas You Like It (@Yastreblyansky) May 28, 2023

I think he's the most skillful president, with the best record of progressive accomplishments, since Lyndon Johnson. I'm more interested in that aspect than in the goodness or badness of his social demeanor. I won't get invited to the same parties anyway.

— Yas You Like It (@Yastreblyansky) May 28, 2023

After a while, a major change in tone. That's something new in these exchanges!

OK thanks. I had a pretty conventionally suspicious view of him myself, negative on Clarence Thomas and crime bill and banking reform, until 2012, when he amazed me with the stand on same-sex marriage that pressured Obama into joining him, in the middle of an election year...

— Yas You Like It (@Yastreblyansky) May 29, 2023

— Yas You Like It (@Yastreblyansky) May 29, 2023

The people who chose Biden in South Carolina (Black women organizers) over your Sanders or my Warren, and elected him in Georgia and Arizona and Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Virginia, really knew what they were doing.

— Yas You Like It (@Yastreblyansky) May 29, 2023

... so Biden found himself working in particular with the French inequality economics Elizabeth Warren had brought into the debate, Piketty, Saez, and Zucman. Biden's Build Back Better framework of 2021 failed because of Manchin and Sinema, but it remains the best approach.

— Yas You Like It (@Yastreblyansky) May 29, 2023

Looks like my guy had kind of lost interest by this point, but whatever. I got sometning out of putting it together.