The Biden stay/go camps don't divide neatly by left/right. Progressives and neoliberals both want Joe gone; the ones sticking with him, or at least the ones he's appealing to for support, are the unions and the black caucus, which you can think of as the political machine wing of the Democratic party.
That's just political machines doing their thing. It's the same dynamic as the Soviet Politburo propping up Brezhnev long after he'd started drooling on himself on TV.
Yes, the campaigning equivalent of a slow shuffle is realistically what "giving his all" means for Biden at this point. The problem is his insistence that this is also better than what anyone else could possibly do.
Seems like the interview didn't go bad enough to force Biden out, but also not good enough to reassure anyone who had doubts about him. The Biden campaign death march continues.
No, if it was just a matter of having a well developed economy whose fruits are distributed poorly, then their GDP per capita (literally economic output divided by people) would be high.
But it's not. It's among the middle-income countries, just below Malaysia. Which seems about right in terms of the quality of life of the average citizen.
Yes. That means Chinese households actually consume less than this graph indicates. In other words, because China's economy is more manufacturing heavy, this graph makes it look more "developed" than it actually is.
Their economy is literally less developed. Country size has nothing to do with it; India is on track to surpass Japan's GDP but no one would dispute that it is much less developed than Japan or any other OECD country.
why kick that beehive before it's ACTUALLY necessary?
Because by the time it's actually necessary, you're fucked. Case in point, if Sotomayor had resigned last year, her replacement would have sailed through, and there could be a 40 year old solidly liberal justice in her place, penning equally liberal opinions and poised to continue doing so for decades.
But she didn't, so if she acts now, her replacement would get caught up in "senate can't nominate in election years for reasons" BS. Big political fight, but one that's winnable since Dems ultimately hold the Senate.
If she puts it off yet further, she would have to continue for the next 4, possibly 8+ years. And maybe by that time the democrats don't have both the presidency and senate anymore, so her replacement is a less liberal consensus candidate.
Failing to think strategically is an extremely bad idea when it comes to institutions like the Supreme Court.
SC justices are appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate. Both are currently held by the democrats, the latter narrowly. Both are likely to flip next year. Sotomayor is over 70, diabetic, and travels with a medic.
If she wanted to do the right thing for the causes she believes in, she should have resigned during the past one or two years. Biden would have been able to replace her with a younger, equally liberal justice. But she didn't and probably won't, so if she dies anytime in the next 4 years (or 8 years if the Rs win the presidential election after that) then the court goes 7-2 and will remain conservative-dominated for decades.
If she's so concerned, she should resign. Let Biden nominate her replacement.
By staying on, she's basically signalling she doesn't care about the court going 7-2 after she drops dead during Trump's second term. No lessons learned from the RBG fiasco. What's the point of writing these long eloquent dissents that never end up swaying anything?
The Biden stay/go camps don't divide neatly by left/right. Progressives and neoliberals both want Joe gone; the ones sticking with him, or at least the ones he's appealing to for support, are the unions and the black caucus, which you can think of as the political machine wing of the Democratic party.