The saga around Vice President Joe Biden continues, as he wrestles with the issue of whether he should run for President in 2016.
Joe Biden has tried to deal with and cope with the death of his beloved son, Beau Biden on May 30, and he has said he cannot, at this point, commit himself to the energy and the “fire in the belly” needed to run for President.
But history tells us that Abraham Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge went on with their responsibilities after losing their sons in their time in office.
Also, Joe Biden is still Vice President, and has duties and responsibilities he meets, despite his mourning of his son.
And, were anything to happen to Barack Obama, Joe Biden is a heartbeat away from the Presidency, and would have to meet his responsibilities despite his son’s death.
What if Joe Biden had decided to enter the race six months ago? Would he have withdrawn from the race after his son’s passing? That is hard to imagine.
Particularly now, at a time when Hillary Clinton is losing public support in polls, is the time for Joe Biden to come to the rescue of the Democratic party brand, as his chances of becoming President are far better than Bernie Sanders, who would have great trouble overcoming his “socialist” connection, even though it is no threat in reality. But ignorant voters might think that Bernie was a “Communist”, sad to say. So Joe Biden is the best alternative at a time when Hillary seems to be in decline! So, “run, Joe, run”!
Joe Biden has authenticity, something voters are looking for. He has compassion, a crucial matter at any time. He has 44 years experience by 2016, more than ANY political leader or President or candidate in all of American history. He is a great debater and orator, and proved his debating abilities against Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, and even was said to have done better than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in 2008, although he had no way to overcome their “star” image.
And now, he is not just a young senator as in 1988, or having to compete against a former First Lady and a new Senator who had great public appeal, as in 2008. Instead, he is VICE PRESIDENT Joe Biden, considered the most active and intimately involved in decision making, and yet ready and willing to disagree with the President and keep Barack Obama’s respect and admiration! He is beloved by millions of Americans who think he can best perpetuate the Obama legacy, while having his own independent mind and goals!
I think that the Bernie Sanders story is about two things:
1) His authenticity in contrast to the phoniness of the Clintons, specially Hillary.
2) He is telling many Democrats what they want to hear.
Forgive me for saying it, but this is not my dad’s or grandpa’s Democratic Party. Hard to think that JFK, Humphrey, or Scoop Jackson would be cheering at a Sanders rally.
Once upon a time, a man like Sanders would have enjoyed little success as a Democrat. No way he’d be leading in polls. He would have been ridiculed by the party’s mainstream as a lunatic, a lefty, a “pinko,” unelectable.
President Clinton tried to move the party to the center. He worked with the GOP to pass welfare reform and signed free trade agreements like NAFTA. Clinton understood that the party had gone too far to the left and was losing the middle class.
Perhaps V.P. Biden can put the party back in the middle. At the same time, how can he please the Sanders vote if he does that?
Ariel, I think you probably are right about Sanders, if this had been 50 years ago.
I hope Joe Biden could bring the different elements of the Democratic Party together, as I want the Democrats to win in 2016, and fear Hillary cannot do it. We shall see if Joe runs.
However, I will support her if she is the Democratic nominee, as preferable to any Republican, although John Kasich is, as I have stated before, the best of their group of candidates.
New poll shows Hillary still holds the majority, despite the email controversy.
http://www.msnbc.com/up-with-steve-kornacki/watch/poll-shows-clinton-holds-majority-dem-support-524570179889
Like the Professor, I will still support her if she’s the nominee. She’s more preferable to what the GOP is offering.
From what I’ve heard, the black voters in the South – a key demographic for Democrats – are connecting more with Hillary than they are with Bernie.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/12/politics/bernie-sanders-african-american-black-lives-matter/
As that CNN article points out, the South is the most conservative and religious region of the country.
My neck of the woods is conservative and most Democrats you’ll encounter will be Blue Dog Democrats
I’m wondering if Jeremy Corbyn’s victory as the British Labour Party’s leader, this past Saturday [09.12.2015], may bode well for many with the same feelings and viewpoints in the United States’ Democratic Party. That they would actually be willing to vote the party’s 2016 presidential nomination to Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
I’m not, frankly, motivated to see Vice President Joe Biden, of Delaware, for the party nod. I would vote for him, easily, if he ended up the nominee. But, I’m not intending to vote for him in the primaries. And I’m not intending to vote for any of the other Democrats the party supposedly is looking at to serve as Alternatives To Hillary Clinton. The message, the platform, are important. Right now, the best one seeking nomination, and the presidency, is Bernie Sanders.
Jeremy Corbyn, an avowed socialist, a supporter of Hamas and Hebz’allah, a 9/11 truther, a man who consorts with Holocaust deniers, won his party’s leadership position in an overwhelming landslide.He favors re-nationalizing Britain’s railroad system and energy companies, abolishing tuition for British universities, and imposing rent controls to deal with Britain’s affordable housing problem. He’s even open to reopening the coal mines that used to be a big part of Britain’s economy. It’s essentially a throwback to the unreconstructed socialism — the real thing, way beyond Bernie Sanders — of the old-school British Labour Party, which used to be way more into the idea of the government controlling huge sectors of the economy.
Corbyn once referred to members of Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends,†and invited Hamas representatives to speak in Parliament. Here are the comments, from a 2009 speech he gave as a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign:
“It will be my pleasure and honor to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. I’ve also invited our friends from Hamas to come and speak as well. … So far as I’m concerned, that is absolutely the right function of using Parliamentary facilities.”
The Labor Party successful in making itself irrelevant. Will the Democratic Party follow the footsteps of British Labour?
Ariel, Bernie Sanders is NOT Jeremy Corbyn in any sense.
If the British Labour Party goes that far left, it is doomed for sure.
The Democratic Party will NOT go that far left, one can be assured!
Same way in my neck of the woods. Democrats are more conservative, more in the center.
Polls show that a Biden run would hurt Hillary and not Bernie.
http://www.pdafund.com/component/k2/item/167-polls-show-a-biden-presidential-run-would-hurt-clinton-not-sanders
We are witnessing the mass suicide of a major Western political party, and that isn’t a good thing. The anti-free-market fervor and louche attitudes toward totalitarianism that Corbyn’s Labour party now expresses are a danger signal for all democracies. One of the jobs of an opposition party is to be responsible, and from Spain to France to Italy there are signs that the opposition is shirking this duty. Many left-wingers are appalled at Corbyn’s victory. Under Corbyn, Labour will, in the words of one anti-Corbyn Labour member of parliament, become a “1980s Trotskyist tribute act.†Corbyn would nationalize Britain’s utilities and wants the Bank of England to print money to fund massive infrastructure projects regardless of the effect on inflation.
On even his worst days, Bernie Sanders has never engaged in the Loony Left behavior of Jeremy Corbyn, even though Sanders’s taking his 1988 honeymoon in the Soviet Union does raise eyebrows. Corbyn is highly unlikely to ever be trusted with power in Britain, but it is genuinely disturbing that a major Western political party has gone so far off the rails as to make him their Dear Leader.
Once again, Ariel is displaying his trolling rhetoric. This time it is the GOP talking point that socialism is evil.
Princess Leia: Do you agree with Corbyn’s brand of socialism and policy positions? And by the way , are you a socialist? Or if not, are there any socialist policies that you do not agree with? Just asking politely.
Putting it simply for you: Socialism = Sweden, NOT Communist Russia nor Nazi Germany.
This video helps explain why socialist Jeremy Corbyn was just elected leader of Britain’s Labour Party. While not as bad as in the U.S., the gap between the rich and poor in the UK is the widest since the Second World War.
Princess Leia: Why are you putting words in my mouth? I never once said socialism = communist Russia or Nazi Germany. So I politely ask again, are there any socialist policies you do not agree with? If not, then are you a socialist?
I don’t agree with him on everything but some of his economic and environmental policies appeal to me. His ideas sound sensible to me, not evil. http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/09/14/where-our-jeremy-corbyn
I second that Leia.
I was actually asking about socialism in general, not Corbyn is particular. This is what I was talking about. The Socialist Party USA platform. http://socialistparty-usa.net/platform.html
If a person agrees with 70% of the platform, then that person I believe is a socialist, don’t you?
We already have socialism in the United States. Examples: the US military, Veterans Administration hospitals, public schools, public libraries, police and fire departments, national parks and forests, the interstate highways, NASA and the internet, to name a few. Not so scary, after all.
Amen to that Southern Liberal!
Cough One of your posts, Ariel, equates it with totalitarianism Cough
Some of their economics and social issues I agree with. However, I split with them on foreign policy. I’m not totally anti-war. I believe in fighting as self-defense but try diplomacy first.
Southern Liberal: Those are not examples of a socialist organized economy and society. Let’s see what the socialist say: Central to the meaning of socialism is common ownership. This means the resources of the world being owned in common by the entire global population. Production under socialism would be directly and solely for use.
The old slogan of “from each according to ability, to each according to needs” would apply.In socialism, everybody would have free access to the goods and services designed to directly meet their needs and there need be no system of payment for the work that each individual contributes to producing them. All work would be on a voluntary basis.
– See more at: http://www.worldsocialism.org/english/what-socialism#sthash.zQSDhYGU.dpuf
Southern Liberal is correct.
Rustbelt: I was talking about Corbyn’s brand of socialism. I believe even the Professor would say it is extreme.
He seems pretty extreme to me. http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/142144/the-key-questions-jeremy-corbyn-must-answer
Socialism is taxpayer funds being used collectively to benefit society as a whole, despite income, contribution, or ability.
http://bigcorporationusa.blogspot.com/2011/07/we-people-75-ways-socialism-has.html
I agree with Leia. His foreign policy is not to my taste but I agree with some of his economic and environmental policies.
Exactly Pragmatic!
Good grief. Seriously people. Please grab a book. Read Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkeimer, and Wilhelm Reich, at least to get an idea of what modern socialism is! You realize that even the Romans collected taxes for the army and infrastructure! Would that make them socialist? I don’t want to offend but seriously!
WOW, I was away for a couple of hours and suddenly an explosion of comments!
I can say that I totally disagree with Corbyn on foreign policy, particularly as a Jew on the issue of Israel. Some of his domestic policy also is unrealistic and extreme.
I do not support Netanyahu, but I still support Israel’s right to exist, and Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups, and Corbyn wanting to deal with them is unacceptable.
Corbyn is much too extreme in many areas, and thank goodness, Bernie Sanders is not like him, because if he was, I would repudiate him.
It’s the same way with that Socialist Party USA. Their foreign policy is too extreme for me. Their domestic issues, I’m split 50-50.
That’s the way I am too Rustbelt.
Thank you Pragmatic! That’s an excellent blog!
Ariel, the Oxford English dictionary defines socialism as you do, but then adds, “Now also: any of various systems of liberal social democracy which retain a commitment to social justice and social reform, or feature some degree of state intervention in the running of the economy,” which fits fairly well with the definition used in that blog. In the US, this second definition is probably the most commonly understood meaning of “socialism.”
Rustbelt is correct. Most Americans associate socialism with the second definition.
This is also an excellent blog that explains in detail about why we liberals and progressives here stand up for government.
http://www.governmentisgood.com/articles.php?aid=6
I’ve seen participants on the boards at Commondreams.org, Alternet.org, and many other piopular progressive online media sites use Corbyn’s anti-Israel stance. If you challenge them about it, which I have done in the past, they will label you as a fake progressive and even have you banned from the boards.
Well, Southern Liberal, I am with you on support of Israel against terrorists, while not always supportive of Israel’s government.
A progressive or liberal who is anti Israel and pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah is NOT a progressive or liberal!
Rustbelt: Even if we take the second “definition” of socialism based on a ” liberal social democracy” our constitutional system is not in any way shape or form a “liberal social democracy”. We are a federal republic with indirect election of our President via the electoral college. Our system is based on the “classic liberal” definition of government, not on the liberal social democracy system. As a matter of fact our constitutional system does not recognize any “social’ rights at all. Because of the simple fact that term “social rights” is an invention that is incompatible with our system based on the recognition of inalienable individual rights. For that you have to look to France etc., not the USA. We don’t have 50 provinces under the control of a central government. We have 50 united states.
Therefore in essence even that understanding of “socialism’ is incompatible with our constitutional system.
Ariel – You are trying to tie the “socialism is evil” rhetoric in to the Democrats by saying “Will the Democratic Party follow the footsteps of British Labour?” and “On even his worst days, Bernie Sanders has never engaged in the Loony Left behavior of Jeremy Corbyn, even though Sanders’s taking his 1988 honeymoon in the Soviet Union does raise eyebrows.”
Ariel – Definitions of things like that change over time. Get that fact through your stubborn mind.
That’s correct. Just like the Constitution is not a rigid document.
That’s another reason why I suspect Ariel of being a GOTea. Conservatives and Libertarians use the term classical liberalism to describe their belief in the primacy of individual freedom and minimal government.
Modern liberalism, or social liberalism, is the ideology of us progressives and liberals here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism
Modern liberalism in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States
Leia – I think it’s as we suspected previously. The same old one, just using a different name.
The Constitution is not a rigid document? Who said it was? The Constitution has an amendment process so it can adapt to different circumstances. It is clearly spell out in the Constitution itself.
Article V US Constitution:
“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress;”
Didn’t you know that?
Rustbelt: Even the Professor agrees that Corbyn’s brand of socialism is extreme and radical. And unfortunately he is taking the Labour party down that radical road. Is siding with Islamic and Palestinian terrorist not evil? This isn’t rhetoric but fact. That said, I also clearly state that even Sander’s in his “worst” days doesn’t go that far. As for socialism being evil, well lets say I believe it is clearly incompatible with our constitutional system to say the least.
Yes, Ariel, but the Supreme Court also interprets the Constitution, and Congress can expand federal power, as it has done under both Republicans and Democrats since 1933!
Princess Leia: Are you saying that our constitutional system is not based on the primacy of individual rights and that it did not establish a federal government with limited and defined powers?
The federal government’s role has changed over time as society has become modern. Your dream of limited government WILL NOT WORK with today’s society.
Your dream of limited government will not work in today’s society.
Ariel –
Most modern nations have a mix of capitalism and socialism. The US hasn’t been purely capitalistic since its early founding, and the “robber baron” era of the 1880s showed all the ways that capitalism can go wrong: frightening gaps between rich and poor, 80 hour work weeks, child labor, monopolies, etc. Regulation is needed to keep things in check
Additionally, some things just work better under the socialist model. Would fire protection and police protection work well if they were privately billed? What would happen if someone’s house caught fire and they hadn’t purchased fire protection service? Would firemen be forced to let a house burn down, and risk the fire spreading worse? Would you prefer it if every single road that you drove on was a toll road?
Capitalism is still a good thing in many ways. Market forces do drive innovation and efficiency. A mixed system works best.
I agree with you, Princess Leia and Rustbelt Democrat!
Rustbelt: I was talking about the primacy of individual rights and a federal government with limited and defined powers. Yet you come back at me saying that modern nations have a mix of capitalism and socialism? Are you saying that for capitalism to exist there must be a primacy a individual rights and a federal government with limited and defined powers but that nowadays we cannot have that because modern nations have a mixed economy? Correct?
What does having a police and fire department and roads have to do with socialism?? Please be serious!
Ariel, individual rights do NOT include the right to exploit, steal, lie just to make for satisfaction of one’s greed and selfishness and lack of concern for they fellow man and woman, as happens with unbridled capitalism.
We are NEVER going back to the greed of the Gilded Age in the late 19th century, NEVER, so get over it!
Ronald, why are you putting words in my mouth? Who is defending cheating, stealing and lying ? Stealing is a crime by the way, you do know that? It’s been a crime for centuries and news flash , and socialism had nothing to do with it being a crime.
But when one is unconcerned about anything but acquisition of money for its own sake, yes, that is unregulated capitalism!
And when corporations avoid taxes, and some pay none, that is stealing,lying, and corrupt!
Ariel – Your ideas are stuck in the past.
Ariel – Individual rights as well as collective rights and strong national government is what we progressives and liberals here are for.
Exactly Pragmatic! Ariel’s small government fantasy would make our national government weak.
Ariel – The point I made about socialism is that we’ve had it in this country for decades and it hasn’t hurt us one bit.
Ariel would be an anti-federalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalism
Ariel and his Tea Party views of the Constitution are wrong. https://consortiumnews.com/2011/09/18/tea-party-gets-the-constitution-wrong
They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. http://www.examiner.com/article/tea-party-constitutionalists-anti-federalists-sheep-s-clothing
Why do some of you confuse strong federal government with a government with unlimited powers? Did the US have a weak government before the New Deal?
Federalist were in favor of a strong federal government but within the limited and well defined powers established by the Constitution.
Where do you find these so called “collective” rights within the Constitution?
Southern Liberal: You post is misleading and a mis-characterization. It says “the Right has sought to impose a reinterpretation of the Constitution by revising the history of the United States and pretending that the Founders designed the Constitution as a document to establish the supremacy of the states over the federal government.” That is a flat out lie. No one is trying to establish the supremacy of the states over the federal government! Each has its own exclusive jurisdiction, there are some issues that are exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government and there are some issues that are exclusive jurisdiction of the state government. Also there are issues where we have concurrent jurisdiction. This is part of the Constitution and we do have the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the land. Also the Constitution did not create a “stronger” federal government ! There was no federal government before the Constitution was enacted! The Constitution “created” the federal government and it gave in powers that were defined and limited in Article 1 Section 8.
The Tenth Amendment expresses the principle that undergirds the entire plan of the original Constitution: the national government possesses only those powers delegated to it. The Framers of the Tenth Amendment had two purposes in mind when they drafted it. The first was a necessary rule of construction. The second was to reaffirm the nature of the federal system.
Because the Constitution created a government of limited and enumerated powers, the Framers initially believed that a bill of rights was not only unnecessary, but also potentially dangerous. State constitutions recognized a general legislative power in the state governments; hence, limits in the form of state bills of rights were necessary to guard individual rights against the excess of governmental power. The Constitution, however, conferred only the limited powers that were listed or enumerated in the federal Constitution. Because the federal government could not reach objects not granted to it, the Federalists originally argued, there was no need for a federal bill of rights. Further, the Federalists insisted that, under the normal rules of statutory construction, by forbidding the government from acting in certain areas, a bill of rights necessarily implied that the government could act in all other areas not forbidden to it. That would change the federal government from one of limited powers to one, like the states, of general legislative powers.
The Federalists relented and passed the Bill of Rights in the First Congress only after making certain that no such implication could arise from the prohibitions of the Bill of Rights. Hence, the Tenth Amendment—a rule of construction that warns against interpreting the other amendments in the Bill of Rights to imply powers in the national government that were not granted by the original document.While providing a rule of construction for the relationship between the Bill of Rights and the scheme of enumerated powers, the Tenth Amendment also affirms the Constitution’s basic scheme of defining the relationship between the national and state governments. The Founders were wary of centralized government. At the same time, the failure of the Articles of Confederation revealed the necessity of vesting some authority independent of the states in a national government. The Constitution therefore created a novel system of mixed sovereignty. Each government possessed direct authority over citizens: the states generally over their citizens, and the federal government under its assigned powers. In addition, the states qua states were made a constituency within the national government’s structure. The state legislatures chose Senators, determined how presidential electors should be chosen, and defined who would be eligible to vote for Members of the House of Representatives. As noted in The Federalist No. 39, the new government was “in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both.” Critical to this mixed system was the scheme of enumerated federal powers, which allows the federal government to operate only within defined spheres of jurisdiction where it is acknowledged to be supreme.
Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Marbury v. Madison (1803), “the powers of the [national] legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the constitution is written.” Alexander Hamilton, urging ratification in New York, recognized in The Federalist No. 33 that a congressional act beyond its enumerated powers is “merely [an] act of usurpation” which “deserves to be treated as such.” The Tenth Amendment memorialized this constitutional solution of carefully enumerated, and thus limited, federal powers.
The Tenth Amendment had limited judicial application in the nation’s first half century. No decision turned upon it, and in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Chief Justice Marshall declined an invitation to use it as a vehicle for narrowly construing federal powers. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Tenth Amendment was connected to the later rejected states’ rights doctrine of “dual federalism,” which maintained that the national and state governments were “separate and distinct sovereignties, acting separately and independently of each other, within their respective spheres.” Tarble’s Case (1872). In contrast, the Framers’ conception of the government was not one of “distinct sovereignties,” but rather of a mixed sovereignty in which states were an integral and vital part. Beginning with the New Deal Court, the Supreme Court has countenanced an expansion of federal powers far beyond the expectations of those who framed and ratified the Constitution. The extent to which those developments are consistent with the Constitution depends on the construction of the various enumerated powers. Because the Tenth Amendment is a textual reaffirmation of the scheme of enumerated powers, the modern expansion of the federal government’s role in national life has shaped, and perhaps altered, the role of the Tenth Amendment in modern jurisprudence.
Leia, Southern Liberal, Rustbelt – Y’all are exactly right!
Ariel – Give it up! We’ve exposed you for what you are!
FYI: Consortium News is a website dedicated to independent investigative journalism. It’s one of the top non-mainstream progressive news sites.
So we won’t go on about this ad nauseum, I agree to disagree that they are correct about the Tea Party.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/01/the-rights-made-up-constitution-3/
Well said, Southern Liberal!