Completely agree.
And:
also a good assessment here. For one thing: while awaiting action on BBB, Biden has (and continues) to put a freeze on student debt, which though it doesn’t do the same thing as forgiveness, does take it out of front-of-mind for voters, or at least significantly lowers it on the ladder compared to ol’ inflation.
Theoretically that youth vote who were just so close to remembering to participate in Democracy but oh jeeze The Voice was on, ya know?
I woulda thunk The Voice was a thoroughly GenX phenomenon. I see your point though. It’s more “get butts out to the polls” and not “change their votes.” CTV strategy nets you two votes for every voter though and GBottP only gets you one. And given how horribly regressive SLF is, I still prefer “give money to people” along with “means test it if you have to” and “label it opportunistically to shore up your weaknesses”.
OTOH, I do like it when people get relief. I just think the folks living in tents in San Diego’s eastern downtown should get priority over people with college degrees. OTOOH, homeless people don’t vote.
If you frame this as “giving money to people to buy votes” you’re literally using a Republican talking point. Education used to be free or nearly free – now it locks people into debt that they spend a large part of their working life paying. Democrats have the power to start fixing this right now. Young people are very aware of this, and they’re also aware that the Democrats have had no trouble giving ever greater funding to other groups like the military.
Unfortunately, right now partial student loan forgiveness is fairly popular, but not full student loan forgiveness. And then: partial student loan forgiveness won’t move any votes, and full student loan forgiveness by executive order probably creates more political issues than any material number of votes it changes.
Then why did the president promise full student loan forgiveness?
This discussion is like the problem with the Democrats, once you put them in office they have a million excuses for why they can’t help. This isn’t a problem of messaging, it’s a problem of action.
See a couple of posts up. He did not. :)
Student loan forgiveness is very popular with one segment of Democrats. It is not popular with another segment, however. That is why the only way Biden wants to do it is as part of a package with elements that appeal to both of those factions, so that both stay happy. Because that second group that isn’t crazy about full student loan forgiveness is a group that is clearly extremely important to Democrats and the President especially.
(Interestingly, He may now have the political capital to reneg on his promise not to forgive student debt by executive order with that other faction within his voter base. But that’s complicated too, because it’s going to signal the final shovel-ful of earth onto BBB if he does it that way, and I think he and some of the Democrats in Congress are still holding some slim hope that a deal and passage right after the summer recess might give them a bump at the polls. Probably not – and they’re realistic about that probably not part – but with student debt frozen until August 31 anyway – and another freeze an easy enough thing to do also – might as well give it a shot.)
The folks with student loans who might stay home otherwise because government does nothing for them.
And yeah, it’s buying votes basically, but that’s what political parties do, the Republicans do it even worse. I don’t care, I want the the Republican base to lose power.
Look at my post above that, from his website, that very plainly states that that he will forgive federal student debt. There’s no asterisk there that says “but refer to his speeches, he doesn’t want to do this himself with his executive power.” Voters don’t like a smug “well actually” from the elites.
And this isn’t isolated. We also saw the Democrats fail to get a $15 minimum wage because of that thing with the parliamentarian. It’s another excuse.
Meanwhile, Biden just opened up federal land for drilling (breaking a campaign promise), he’s proposing giving billions more to police, and Democrats just gave even more money to the military. There’s plenty of money to go around but not for the ordinary people who need it. Voters staying home and not voting for a party that does nothing for them is a rational decision.
Because Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same and produce exactly the same policy outcomes?
I get not voting as an emotional response, but it’s only a rational response if you live in a different reality.
That said, I truly truly wish that policy was actually effective at producing electoral outcomes. It’s not and never has been.
Sure it’s rational. Getting a sitter for your kid, or somebody to cover your shift, may not be worth it to somebody who doesn’t think this choice will make any difference to their lives. Politicians need to earn votes, they can’t rely on being a default choice because “have you seen the other guys”.
Yeah, I can’t accept that what a politician does in office doesn’t matter. You can win votes by making peoples’ lives better.
One thing I’d like to highlight here is the issue of perception as opposed to cold hard policy outcomes. I believe the strongest motivating factor for a lot of voters, including in particular those voters who swing from party to party, is a perception that the candidate is fighting for what the voters want. So in that light, the Dems really want to not just help voters but be perceived to be fighting to help voters.
And on the issues that appeal to a lot of younger voters, I do feel there is a perception the Dems are not fighting for them. (I don’t believe this is a completely true and fair perception but it’s definitely there IMO. Perceptions don’t have to be accurate to be influential.)
So on the one hand, I do think the lack of action on student loans is creating a perception that hurts the Dems.
BUT. The folks wanting the Dems to eliminate student loan debt also need to be aware that perception is a double edged sword. For example, the way things are, Biden can (at least arguably) eliminate student debt for folks who went to college using an executive order. But there’s really no way for Biden to help non-college Americans in a similar fashion. So the perception will be help to the college folks and no help to the non-college. That’s a dangerous perception to catalyze in the current environment.
All things considered I favor Biden doing a limited student debt relief using executive power right now as I do feel it is needed as a policy and will help politically but it probably has to be small, like say $10,000 of relief for folks making under $100,000 a year or something like that. But honestly the perceptions are going to be both strong AND also cutting both ways. There’s no good solution, without a Congress that can actually do things.
Of course, Biden needs an act of Congress to send people money, while he arguably doesn’t need an act of Congress to forgive a lot of student loan debt. I think he’d send people more money in a heartbeat if he could — it was always part of his bill, the one Joe Manchin killed.
Edit: Ah, just saw that @Sharpe said it better than I did!
It’s pretty hard to imagine the hypothetical voter who can’t grasp the difference between ‘bad’ and ‘far worse’, even if one wants to pretend that Democrats are actually ‘bad’. Not voting is fundamentally an emotional reaction to the situation.
It’s a mid-term election which means lower turnout, which in turn means the GOP will already have some advantage as the party out of power. Add to that the fact that many voters absolutely will vote this time because of inflation — which means they’ll be voting for the GOP — and it’s clear we’re going to get killed. The only things that could mitigate that are either Biden manages to get some relief to people in some form, or people are frightened enough of the GOP in power, or both.
Unfrotunately, one person wins votes by making other peoples’ lives worse and that works even better for them.
The problem is bad and worse makes folks believe it doesn’t matter, and they stay home. Also folks don’t get scared enough of the GOP, I mean, Trump ultimately didn’t ruin a majority of lives, just folks who most white folks don’t see.
Just look at how folks underestimated COVID risk (folks here might argue I did this myself, and I respect that arguement).
At this point, I’d risk nuclear war to avoid another period of full Republican power. (this is partially why I want Biden to try and humiliate Putin)
This is a wild take.
There are all sorts of things that Biden could do now, by executive action, that would make the lives of ordinary people better. The progressive caucus has recommended a slate of possible actions: Congressional Progressive Caucus Issues Executive Action Agenda for Biden Administration | Press Releases | Congressional Progressive Caucus
I think it’s very telling of the modern Democratic party that nuclear brinksmanship seems like a more realistic strategy than expanding access to overtime pay or reducing healthcare payments.
Talk about your broad brushes! Maybe take up some other occupation than painter?
Also, the actual list of proposed executive actions contains a lot of stuff that doesn’t look to me as if you can do it through executive action. Things like e.g. building government-owned drug manufacturing facilities, which would surely take an appropriation by Congress to fund.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t good stuff on the list.
Did you seriously just take a post by Alstein and equate that to “the modern Democratic party”? Or did I totally misread you here?
