Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.

The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.

Harris’s ascent to the top of the ticket led to a surge of enthusiasm and improved poll numbers but ultimately ended in a decisive electoral college and popular vote defeat.

  • Floon@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    31
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    6 days ago

    Age caught up with Biden.

    He did a massive amount of good for all the disaffected angry voters out there, far more good than any president of the last 40 years. Inflation was bad, but not as bad as elsewhere, and we didn’t go into a recession when everyone predicted we would. His programs were most targeted at the working class, whose wages rose more than under any other recent President. All the lip service pols give about helping the middle class, none of them have done it except ol’ Joe. Most other Dem pols have a strong neo-liberal streak, but Biden is an old-school union Dem.

    So many GOP pols taking credit in their districts for programs funded by Biden policies, but which they voted against. So many angry voters who are so much better off because of Biden policies voted for the guy that’s going to rip it all up. Truth doesn’t matter, propaganda wins, “throw the bums out, I’m cranky” is as far as most voters get in their thinking, and it’s going to destroy the country.

    • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      6 days ago

      when did age catch up with Biden?

      he was supporting segregation policies way back when and has always supported nonprogressive policies and based his thinking on Catholicism

      wtf did he do that deserves any kind of praise?

      being vice to Obama and having Harris as a vice and supporting outdated nonmodern religious right leaning policies does not make him a savior to anyone

      • Floon@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        He’s been around a long time, and has negotiated a lot of deals between the Dems and the GOP. Someone willing to compromise with half the country isn’t someone to hate on, it’s someone who wants to get some good done.

        Look at all the labor union success under Biden, compared to the phenomenal downward trend of labor power ever since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Decades of failure of union power until Biden. Under Biden, the autoworkers got their first major win in decades, railroad workers got a better deal than they were originally asking for due to Biden’s negotiators (after he had ordered them back to work), unionization at Starbucks, Amazon… none of this happens without Biden, the first POTUS to walk a picket line. You want to hate on neoliberalism, I’ll join you, but Biden is not that guy.

      • spongebue@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        6 days ago

        wtf did he do that deserves any kind of praise?

        Inflation reduction act, chips, a pretty decent student loan forgiveness program (best he could do with SCOTUS), pardoning federal marijuana convictions come to mind…

        • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          6 days ago

          food/housing costs/insurance rates/taxes are still astronomically high but hey sure that Biden and the billionaires that own our government got reduced inflation

          yes he helped someone open up a chip factory

          barely anyone got student loan forgiveness

          he did nothing for cannabis convictions or the movement since he started being a politician over half a century ago and instead helped incarcerate a shit ton of people but then again, he would have had less people voting for him if he had not helped lock up so many people

          fuck Biden for helping to sell our potential to the highest bidder

          • spongebue@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            11
            arrow-down
            5
            ·
            6 days ago

            You asked what he did, and I told you. There will always be problems. The fact that we’re recovering from a historic pandemic and other countries are feeling the same things (often worse) should tell you there isn’t a magic lever the president can pull to reduce costs over 4 years (2 considering the house flipped halfway through)

          • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            9
            ·
            edit-2
            6 days ago

            food/housing costs/insurance rates/taxes are still astronomically high but hey sure that Biden and the billionaires that own our government got reduced inflation

            Neither Biden nor any other US president has control over the costs of food, housing, or insurance rates. Not sure what specific taxes you’re complaining about.

            Also, you might want to check out what happens when you spend a year and a half pumping out $600 checks every week to unemployed people across the country to entice them to stay home, causing labor costs to skyrocket. Or did you not notice traditionally minimum-wage employers like fast food joints and supermarkets start offering $19/hr+ just to get people in the door. What did you think was going to happen to labor costs? Did you think corporations were just going to absorb those costs at the cost of their own profits? LOLOLOLOLOLOL. What about the people who were making $19 before the pandemic and saw the equivalent of Walmart greeters suddenly getting paid the same amount? You don’t think they demanded raises too? The ripple effects of those checks absolutely caused labor costs to permanently skyrocket up and down the food chain, and of course those costs are going to be passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices.

            And do you know what happens when you just magically print money out of nowhere (the entire costs of those unemployment checks were simply tacked on to the national debt.)? Huge spikes in inflation. This is pretty much economics 101.

            And everything else can pretty much be chalked up to greedflation. Supplies increased by (made up number for explanatory purposes) 10% so of course they shot their prices up by 15% and just blamed supply chain issues.

            Who started sending those $600 checks out? Oh, that was Trump. Because “throw money at it” is his answer to everything.

            yes he helped someone open up a chip factory

            Actually, there’s about a dozen of them being built across the country. Might wanna take a look at all the jobs created by the Inflation Reduction Act.

            barely anyone got student loan forgiveness

            And that’s thanks to SCOTUS gutting 90% of his plans.

            he did nothing for cannabis convictions

            Except for the two proclamations announcing pardons for federal cannabis convictions.

            or the movement since he started being a politician over half a century ago and instead helped incarcerate a shit ton of people but then again, he would have had less people voting for him if he had not helped lock up so many people

            Exactly what “shit ton of people” did he incarcerate?

            fuck Biden for helping to sell our potential to the highest bidder

            That bidder was Trump, and fuck you for helping him return to power.

            • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              6 days ago

              pushing and advocating for living wages that all states have to follow would help and the DNC quit advocating on this

              not every business Walmart and Mcdonald’s included are paying $19 an hour everywhere and in the south people are still making less than $15 an hour even with construction jobs pay is abominably low

              not all those jobs will include living wages with worker rights included

              Democrats always have a scapegoat

              again that amounts to nothing especially considering how much damage him and the Democrats have caused and continue to do so

              Biden helped craft laws that put a lot people in jail that either should not have been or should not have been as long of a sentence which to me amounts to rigging the election by keeping people jailed

              Trump is just another puppet like Biden is

              • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                4
                ·
                6 days ago

                pushing and advocating for living wages that all states have to follow would help and the DNC quit advocating on this

                Because they got what they wanted. What you fail to take into account is that companies and corporate landlords simply responded by jacking up prices and rents which basically nullified the benefits. What do you think is going to happen if wages got jacked up to $25? The same thing. Corporations and landlords would just jack up prices even further to increase their profits and nullifying the gains that the increased wages bring. And the cycle continues and continues.

                If you want to break that cycle, start dragging corporate CEOs into hearings and making them answer why their profit margins skyrocket faster than inflation. But if all you’re going to do is demand increased wages while doing nothing on the other side, you’re just going to ensure that the cycle will continue forever. No amount of wage increase is going to actually improve anybody’s financial situation if they’re going to do nothing about corporations simply raising prices and landlords raising rents even further in response.

                People could demand that government raise the federal minimum wage to elevety billion dollars an hour. Won’t matter so long as corporations continue to respond by increasing prices by eleventy trillion just because they think they deserve more profit.

                not every business Walmart and Mcdonald’s included are paying $19 an hour everywhere and in the south people are still making less than $15 an hour even with construction jobs pay is abominably low

                This is a fair point. I live in New England, and that’s where rates are right now. My daughter works as a greeter at a Chuck-E-Cheese and makes $17 an hour. To stand there and stamp kids’ hands. If you expect quality workers who will actually stick around for more than a few days, you need to start at $20. Minimum. That’s just the reality around here. And for what it’s worth, it really doesn’t matter. Corporations and landlords just jacked everything else up in response when the wages started rising. Apartments in the shitty parts of town that used to go for $600 a month are now in the $1500-$2000 range. Plenty of people around here were better off when wages were half of what they were now simply because those wages at least went further. I’m not saying that they were good by any stretch of the imagination, but a person making $10 an hour ($400 a week, $1600 a month) and has $1600 in expenses is still doing better than someone making $3200 a month but has $3500 worth of expenses. And that’s pretty much where we are now.

                not all those jobs will include living wages with worker rights included

                $15 an hour was a living wage before the pandemic. The problem isn’t the wage. It’s that the cost of living just went up even faster, and our government is unwilling to start hauling CEOs before Congress and demanding that they justify their inflated profit margins. Haul a few CEOs before congress, make them explain themselves (especially now, with the looming threat of someone else going full Luigi on their ass), and watch greed-flation suddenly become passe.

                again that amounts to nothing especially considering how much damage him and the Democrats have caused and continue to do so

                Exactly what damage is that, and how does allowing Trump to return to power help in any possible way?

                Biden helped craft laws that put a lot people in jail

                And exactly what laws are those?

                that either should not have been or should not have been as long of a sentence which to me amounts to rigging the election by keeping people jailed.

                Oh, come on now. This is the most ridiculous take I’ve ever heard. Not everything is political persecution or election interference. Talk about looking for a scapegoat. Stop sounding like Trump.

                Trump is just another puppet like Biden is

                Ah, yes. The both-sides-ism. Because Biden absolutely was going to enact a national abortion ban, kill off the Department of Education, gut social safety net programs, deport a bunch of brown people. And Trump is going to actually create jobs, cancel student debt, pardon cannabis users…

                Yep. Both sides are exactly the same. Yesirreee…

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              6 days ago

              So we should be kicking other Democrats out of office too? Sure I’m good with that. There’s absolutely things they can do. They just refuse to move without the approval of the Republicans. For example HUD has an authority to literally build housing. FEMA can buy containerized housing and deploy that.

              Labor costs didn’t sky rocket. That’s corporate propaganda. They got caught telling their shareholders they didn’t actually have cost push inflation, they were just raising prices. If labor costs had skyrocketed then maybe workers could still afford cereal and milk. Also, we know you can pay 20 an hour and not significantly raise prices, we saw this in pre-pandemic California.

              Honestly your comment reads like you get your news from the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal.

              • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                5 days ago

                Labor costs didn’t sky rocket. That’s corporate propaganda.

                LOL.

                Low end positions going from barely over the federal minimum and are now paying $15, but labor costs didn’t skyrocket. I’d love to meet your math teacher so I can slap them for failing you so hard. And do you think corporations are going to be benevolent and just absorb those costs if they don’t have to? If the employees are demanding a wage increase, that increase is going to come in the form of increased prices to consumers, along with a little extra bump for themselves. Whether you think that’s right is irrelevant. It’s going to happen, you can’t change that, and it’s not going to change. There isn’t a world where corporations aren’t going to increase wages and just absorb those costs out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s just not going to happen.

                They got caught telling their shareholders they didn’t actually have cost push inflation, they were just raising prices.

                Never said they didn’t. Both things can happen, you know. Labor costs skyrocketed. They just decided to make their corporate profits skyrocket at the same time and just blame the labor costs. Doesn’t mean labor costs didn’t skyrocket.

                If labor costs had skyrocketed then maybe workers could still afford cereal and milk.

                Not if the costs of cereal and milk skyrocketed even faster. That’s what happened. People got the pay raises they demanded. Corporations and landlords just retaliated by jacking up prices and rents even more. You can demand all the wage increases you want. But as long as corporations can respond with even bigger price hikes, no amount of pay will give you a living wage.

                If you want to solve the problem, the solution is to start hauling CEOs before congress and making them explain their skyrocketing profit margins to the American people. Put some teeth to price gouging laws. Put heavier taxes on corporate profits that are above pre-pandemic percentages. But if you just demand increased wages while doing nothing about what’s going on on the other end, you’re going to wonder why you can never make ends meet no matter how much money you make.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          6 days ago

          A corporate give away, a distraction, and a pardon he knew hardly anyone would qualify for while Marijuana remains federally illegal.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      6 days ago

      Wages of the absolute lowest went up. The mode of 35-40 thousand a year remained right there, while inflation tripled grocery prices.

      His programs were not aimed at the working class. Just his gaslighting.

      • Floon@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        You’re just uninformed. The absolute most that a grocery item went up was eggs, at 160%, and that has a lot to do with a bird flu epidemic. Most groceries went up ~30%, during a period of worldwide inflation. Fuck off with your disinformation.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 days ago

          Check chicken breast prices. That was literally the first one I went to. It doubled. Which is a fuck of a lot more than 30 percent, especially for a pantry staple that was previously reliable. And it wasn’t Bird Flu, that didn’t happen until 2022 and the price was already skyrocketing. And that info is from the st. Louis Fed and CDC.

          Meanwhile Biden starts taking fucking victory laps on the economy in spring of 2023, while malnutrition deaths are rising in the US. The man fucked up. The Democrats fucked up. And until that gets admitted nothing is going to change.