I want to add onto the technocratic style of leadership thing and how that can lead to being bad long-term even when they do good things short-term. The two major examples I can think of are the piecemeal means-tested student loan forgiveness with the overly technocratic way they tried to do a mass forgiveness (with Covid emergency powers or something dumb like that), and the way Biden and the Dems handled the train workers strikes. I’ll focus on the latter as I remember it, because it was harder to explain to people why I didn’t like it, but your post is a good lead-in.
For the strike, Biden, with the aid of sucky Dems in Congress and the always evil Republicans, shut down the strike without giving them any of their demands by splitting the bill into two parts, one that shut down the strike and one that gave them what they want. Of course only the first one passed.
Later, liberals would bring up the fact that Biden helped some of the unions by later doing backroom deals with the companies to try to give them some of the sick days and stuff they were asking for. This succeed, but I would argue is still an extremely anti-working class and terrible way to do this. Long-term, it continues the Reagan precedent of destroying union power, sucks up that energy and transfers it to technocratic Dem politicians. It removes negotiations from the public sphere, where all the workers can participate, and puts it in smoke-filled back rooms and golf courses where only politicians, business owners, and corrupt union leaders can participate. It continues the feeling of “we, the elite, give you things because we are kind, not because you demanded anything”, which is terrible mindset to keep the populace in when you’re trying to organize popular resistance to things. If that strike had gone into the holiday season like it looked like it was going to do, people would have realized how much they needed the workers, and it would’ve helped the workers themselves a realize their own importance and power. But instead, it was cut short and everything resolved itself quietly in the background. Overall, it just sets an awful precedent future fascistic leaders can build to on.
It was so hard to explain this to liberals as well. Ya, I guess he did a couple good stuff for some of the major train unions, but yes I’m also still annoyed as hell. A few sick days does not override destroying popular energy, because guess what, we’re going to need that to ask for more stuff in the future. Godamn I’m making myself mad just remembering all these arguments again lol.
I want to add onto the technocratic style of leadership thing and how that can lead to being bad long-term even when they do good things short-term. The two major examples I can think of are the piecemeal means-tested student loan forgiveness with the overly technocratic way they tried to do a mass forgiveness (with Covid emergency powers or something dumb like that), and the way Biden and the Dems handled the train workers strikes. I’ll focus on the latter as I remember it, because it was harder to explain to people why I didn’t like it, but your post is a good lead-in.
For the strike, Biden, with the aid of sucky Dems in Congress and the always evil Republicans, shut down the strike without giving them any of their demands by splitting the bill into two parts, one that shut down the strike and one that gave them what they want. Of course only the first one passed.
Later, liberals would bring up the fact that Biden helped some of the unions by later doing backroom deals with the companies to try to give them some of the sick days and stuff they were asking for. This succeed, but I would argue is still an extremely anti-working class and terrible way to do this. Long-term, it continues the Reagan precedent of destroying union power, sucks up that energy and transfers it to technocratic Dem politicians. It removes negotiations from the public sphere, where all the workers can participate, and puts it in smoke-filled back rooms and golf courses where only politicians, business owners, and corrupt union leaders can participate. It continues the feeling of “we, the elite, give you things because we are kind, not because you demanded anything”, which is terrible mindset to keep the populace in when you’re trying to organize popular resistance to things. If that strike had gone into the holiday season like it looked like it was going to do, people would have realized how much they needed the workers, and it would’ve helped the workers themselves a realize their own importance and power. But instead, it was cut short and everything resolved itself quietly in the background. Overall, it just sets an awful precedent future fascistic leaders can build to on.
It was so hard to explain this to liberals as well. Ya, I guess he did a couple good stuff for some of the major train unions, but yes I’m also still annoyed as hell. A few sick days does not override destroying popular energy, because guess what, we’re going to need that to ask for more stuff in the future. Godamn I’m making myself mad just remembering all these arguments again lol.