I’m honestly pretty pissed off with the Democrats picking a candidate that’s not pro legalization.
The one alternative we have to the republicans is just doing the same crap.
The one alternative we have to the republicans is just doing the same crap.
Obama wrote a really nice article a few days ago. But when he was running things he basically did nothing to improve the situation although the issues with police were well known.
Because police laws and funding is a state matter where the federal government can't do anything, and to top that Obama was locked by a Republican HoR in 6 of his 8 years.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/19/13903532/obama-war...
Obama had absolute direct authority over drug classification. At minimum he could have moved marijuana off of schedule 1. Not to mention his direct authority over the FBI, DEA, DoJ, and other federal agencies. Even if you want to argue that an emergency declaration is unlawful, there were still numerous changes that he could have made within the confines of existing law and precedent. He didn’t and that is on him and him alone.
Obama's use of executive orders was widely criticized as "undemocratic" back then, by Republicans and even some Democrats, and that for stuff that actually made sense and was legal to do via EOs.
Trump? He can trample over legal issues and the Republicans won't even act like they'd even want to hold him accountable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_executiv...
It's a real cop-out to say his hands were tied. He had wide latitude and authority to implement changes within the executive branch.
Obama was in charge of the entire federal executive branch. The problem at the core of anti-police protests is not the FBI and not any other federal branch (okay, a bit the DEA/ICE), it is local police and sheriffs!
To make it worse, a large part of the blame lies on police unions, e.g. in Minneapolis, whose leaders are hard authoritarian/right-wing and use all powers they have including staging expensive and often successful legal battles to keep "bad apple" cops in the service instead of holding them accountable.
For some reason CGP Grey's video called The Rules for Rulers was recommended to me recently by The Algorithm. It sort of clarified in my mind all the vague ideas I'd absorbed from countless online and in-person conversations. Basically, even a dictator has to have the support of the keys to power. We can speculate that a president's hands were tied by one of those key groups. We can also speculate that another president has different key groups, and might be more willing, with the consent of core key groups, to reduce their numbers in ways not previously/recently considered an option.
your argument is that Obama should be more like Trump? Declaring a fake national emergency and raiding the military budget is dubious action. Obama was never going to do ish like that and we should all be happy about that.
Also as Obama pointed out in his medium posts, policy positions get converted into action through electoral wins.
I'm old enough to remember that Trump was elected in part due to Obama backlash.
I'm also old enough to remember the backlash when Obama said Cambridge police acted stupidly (the police arrested a Harvard professor in his own house when he had to go through a window bc he lost his keys)
I know people are disappointed Obama didn't accomplish more. Obama is such an impressive person you just assume he can work magic. But Obama was constrained by the system of democracy and that limits what is possible.
No. I even pointed out that if you were to consider that type of move to be unlawful there were still PLENTY of other legitimate actions he could have taken.
Again, the President is in charge of the entire federal executive branch. That means the FBI, DEA, DoJ, Homeland Security, ICE, and others. There are numerous changes and reforms he could have enacted at the federal level.
>Also as Obama pointed out in his medium posts, policy positions get converted into action through electoral wins.
Obama was elected President twice. What more of a mandate did he think he needed to feel confident enough to take action?
> Obama was elected President twice. What more of a mandate did he think he needed to feel confident enough to take action?
Obama lost control of Congress in 2010. And here's a good summary of the losses at the state level.
https://www.quorum.us/data-driven-insights/under-obama-democ...
anyway ... my point is pretty uncontroversial ... which is that there were limits on what Obama could do.
And how well did that work out for him? It took him his entire term to build about 1/5 of what he promised. And what he built isn't anywhere close to the impenetrable concrete wall he proposed.
To top it all off, if he had been facing a congress controlled entirely by the other party, he would have never gotten away with it because they would have passed a law making exactly what he did illegal.
And this was his #1 campaign promise. He spent every bit of his political capital on building a wall.
In my opinion he should have completely de-scheduled it federally. That is perhaps a little too radical. What's not at all radical would be taking it off of schedule 1. I can't for the life of me figure out any reason why he wouldn't have done that.
Well, plus the current administration outright abandoned investigations and publicly stated that it opposed the idea of investigating local law enforcement for systematic issues. It's not just an issue of neglecting an important tool of enforcement when the department now fairly overtly opposes the idea of enforcement.
But, yes, and the State of Minnesota could also investigate.
Most states of cities with police problems have very strong civil rights laws (often stronger than federal protections) -- they have the legal tools to make real change happen.
They don't need the DOJ to fix their problems. Relying on the DOJ makes sense if the local government is supportive of the bad policing -- like back in the civil rights/segregation era. Some states would not comply so the feds had to make things happen. You don't have that situation today.
Someone in the staff advocated for the current police contract, why not start by firing them?
Or maybe the problem is not as important to local progressive governments as it is being to made out to be?
If everyone hasn't forgotten all about this by that time, you could make police reform a major election issue. And then hold them to it.
But, odds are, everyone will have forgotten by then.
And if it's a systemic problem in the local government, both the choices of the “independent” investigators and the shopping of their remit, and the decision of whether to do it at all will be affected by the systemic problem.
> Most states of cities with police problems have very strong civil rights laws (often stronger than federal protections.
Which helps not at all when the people and institutions responsible for enforcing the law are part of the problem.
Put the reforms in the next contract. Set training and certification standards that exclude bad or lazy cops. Take the cops guns away, or whatever.
Blaming the federal government for local police problems in cities like Minneapolis does not make sense.
We have a long history of empowering and protecting police - both culturally and legally. There are limits to what that process youdescribed will allow. The police department/union will never enact certain reforms or give up certain powers willingly, so they won’t make it into the contract. The state government leadership will investigate/demand reforms/potentially file civil rights violations against the police department - but if the department is obstinate in the face of those changes - the federal government has stronger incentives to enact reforms that the community, the governor, and the legislature want.
Who is protecting them?
I mean - I’m pro-cop. I have police officers in my family, and I wish the solutions were as straightforward as you seem to believe everything they are; however, the fact that we have the same reoccurring concerns - year after year, decade after decade - strongly suggests that this is not easy or straightforward.
Here, this is not happening. The local governments that harbor bad police want police reform. I believe they have plenty of power to do that.
These and others are all things the current administration has reversed and is almost certainly playing a huge role into why things have gotten so bad.
Seems I remember Republicans going on and on about that to this day. Fast and Furious something?
The Obama admin was responsible in "the buck stops here" sense, but this wasn't about admin policy.
It started in 2006 under Bush and continued under Obama.
It started in 2006 under Bush
This information is readily seen by anyone who actually clicks the link.
Regardless, the facts are not political no matter how much you may want to make them. The initiative began under the Bush admin and continued under Obama. Arguably, neither had much to do with it as it was mostly the work of the ATF and its leadership.
Edit: Data from here: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_elect... (notably PA and WI are missing)
Maybe you could say states that transition from being safe to swing states see a turnout boost? I haven't checked. I would expect that turnout is more determined by demographics and inertia (states with high turnout in prior elections continue to do so, etc) than whether they are swing states, though.
That doesn't seem consistent with facts on the ground. I know what you're saying is that he wouldn't take firm policy stances, but neither did he gas protestors. The ability of the executive branch to control national discourse, find compromise and defuse division is important.
And we have one party that tries that, however flawed the results might be. And another the runs the government for the parochial benefit of their own voters only, basically laughing at the rest of the citizens whose needs aren't being heard.
And you can see the results. That doesn't look very similar to me.
"Republicans haven’t had the courage to take a real position for a long time. Their program is basically to run as the slightly better Democrats".
The democratic establishment has not had to deal with any thing like this. With the rise of AOC, Sen. Warren, and Sanders it seemed like the DNC was going to lose some power, but alas.
Nominating Biden for President is the same as if the GOP nominated Jeb Bush. A clear sign that change is not on the horizon.
Edit-to-add:
I guess the election of President Obama was a reaction against the DNC somewhat and even Bill Clinton as well. But, in the end neither moved the needle.
[EDIT] I mean the messaging concerning him and his prominence before he announced a Presidential run. It's no accident that there was a lot of chatter about him well before that on national media, all the sudden. Felt like official party grooming via the media.
I know that. And that’s what gave us Trump. Both parties have to pretend doing something for the little guy while being dependent on pleasing their big money donors. That’s why they can’t take a clear position.
Trump just upped the game with his rhetoric. Most Trump voters I know like him because they think he isn’t part of the corrupt establishment. You can argue whether that’s true or not but that’s what people think.
The whole "both sides are the same" needs to stop. The entirety of the GOP's governing philosophy is based on conspiracy. The hardcore Trump cult itself is completely disconnected from reality, thanks to 30+ years of scams and conspiratorial media that has demonized everything that made the country they claim to love what it is.
The contrast between the Dems and GOP should be stark for anyone who actually cares to look:
https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/2kaubu/just_a_remi...
I don't know enough to judge if he was right or wrong, but it's pretty clear that was his #1 baby.
Same with the bank bailouts. He was in an excellent position to get some real change but chose to keep Geithner who gave the banks what they wanted. And a precondition for anybody who administered the bailouts was to have worked for an investment bank.
In retrospect the Democrats' window of complete control of the federal government was going to close no matter what they did (due to the GOP's obstructionism and unity in hating anything Dems did), and perhaps they should have passed more ambitious reforms while they had the chance.
"Since 2008, thousands of police agencies had made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a Justice Department civil asset forfeiture program, which allowed local and state police to make seizures and then share the proceeds with federal agencies."
Jeff Sessions reversed this policy in 2017[0]. Eric Holder described it as an "extremist action." [1]
"A Washington Post investigation[2] in 2014 found that state and local police had seized almost $2.5 billion from motorists and others without search warrants or indictments since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Post series revealed that police routinely stopped drivers for minor traffic infractions, pressed them to agree to searches without warrants and seized large amounts of cash when there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Police then spent the proceeds from the seizure with little oversight, according to the Post investigation. In some cases, the police bought luxury cars, high-powered weapons and armored cars."
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessi...
[1] https://twitter.com/EricHolder/status/887070460306915328
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/collection/s...
I think one of the big problems with these systemic problems is that the partisan nature of American politics makes most people blind to the failures of "their team." Any failure is handwaved away, excuses are made, and nothing gets done. The only answer seems to be "vote for my team," even after decades of doing that have failed to make the changes that people want.
It’s the same with a lot of rules that Trump revoked and people are outraged about. A lot of them were put in at the end of the Obama administration’s term.
I understand an opinion that the parties are very similar on important issues.
However, the parent also said "when [obama] was running things he basically did nothing to improve the situation although the issues with police were well known."
It is up to an individual to decide if Holder's directive on civil seizure amounted to "basically nothing." The fact is an attempt was made. I know of the above, because I was paying attention at the time.
It is also worth mentioning Obama ordered the phasing out of private contractors to run federal prisons. This was also overturned by Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration[0]
I have been somewhat disillusioned in retrospect by the actual change Obama was able to accomplish, given just how good his image is broadly as a President. I have very particular concerns unrelated to LE I won't address here.
However, it is important that people know that Obama at least spoke about his concerns with the criminal justice system and that his administration did in fact do stuff in attempt to accomplish reform.
As a more material evidence of contrast between the Democratic and Republican parties regarding criminal justice, I point to a Harvard Law Review article by Barack Obama written in January of 2017, titled "The President's Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform."[2]
This essay is made up of four parts:
I. The Urgent Need for Reform
II. Reforming the Federal Criminal Justice System
III. Tools and Actions to Drive State and Local Reforms
IV. Work Unfinished
The article features citings throughout and is demonstration of the level of thought Obama had put into reform, and what he was willing to put on the record regarding his intent and where he came up short.
Six months after this essay was published, Donald Trump, President of the United States and leader of the Republican Party told police not to worry about injuring suspects during arrests. [3]
I can understand frustration with the pace of police, (or more broadly criminal justice,) reform under Obama's eight year term. However, there is obvious, enormous difference between these very influential leaders of these parties.
For me, it is not about my team or their team it is about the actual communications and actions (small or large) made by leadership of these teams. I am impatient for change yet recognize on big issues change is often gradual. (such as decriminalization and legalization of marijuana)
In the absence of successful attempts to disrupt the entire system and failure of reform candidates to break through on the democratic side. It is very important to know that there is a difference between these parties.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/obama-administration-end...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-prisons-idUSKBN1622NN
[2] https://harvardlawreview.org/2017/01/the-presidents-role-in-...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/07/2...
How can you be so spectacularly uninformed to say this?
Many other responses have pointed out the multitude of actions Obama took, yet you believe Obama "did nothing" simply because you did not put the slightest effort into finding out what he did or didn't do, and what maybe he tried to do but was blocked by Congress or courts or other government actors.
I really believe our democracy is failing in large part because of people like yourself believing farcical claims without doing the slightest bit of research or investigation to determine basic facts.
For better or for worse Obama pinned his legacy on healthcare reform, and being a symbol of improving racial justice rather than actual change. Republicans have tried to undermine that legacy ever since.
If you watched those debates - or paid close attention to the direction the Republican party has been moving - you'd understand why your argument that they are "slightly better Republicans" sounds outdated to the point of absurdity.
But watching the primary process, I still don't see it.
The big corporations backing republicans are benefitted by a smaller government, so that's what republicans advocate for.
The big corporations backing democrats are benefitted by a larger government, so that's what they advocate for.
(There are of course other non-corporate groups in play, e.g. unions, but the idea stands).
Beyond that, there's a lot of overlap in what big businesses want, and that's were you get bipartisan agreement. Corporations generally care about drugs in the sense that they want a labor pool that's not on drugs, so both parties kowtow to them on this topic.
Parties will pay lip service to the wedge issues of the day, but ultimately the parties do not actually concern themselves with the common voter except to make the appropriate sounds that those voters want to hear.
The more important thing is why this article is about a city in the suburbs of New York City. The Westchester County Board of Legislators has 16 Democrats and 1 Republican. Why can’t Democrats make any progress even in places where they have total control and don’t need to compromise? Westchester County can’t change federal drug laws, but they have total control over their own police force and how they’re trained and what they focus their efforts on.
See: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2...
There is no way that a Presidential candidate would win those 11 and lose the other 39.
The obvious answer is that these policies benefit Democrats and therefore they are uninterested in changing them.
No, they don't.
Even when they win national campaigns, Democrats don't win Mississippi, so they manifestly don't need to run a national ticket that appeals to Mississippi.
EDIT: The primary process the Democrats have chosen may encourage this, but that doesn't mean it's necessary or that that process is well chosen.
> Why can’t Democrats make any progress even in places where they have total control and don’t need to compromise?
Because American political parties are what would be broad coalitions in a system with multiple competitive parties, and it's only a significant faction (but not, in many places, the strongest faction) within the Democratic Party that actually wants to make progress on this point. That's more than the Republicans have, though.
Most US urban areas, some with the most problems, are completely controlled or mostly controlled by progressives -- some for multiple decades.
Why is there so much fail in the urban cores? Either the progressive policies fail because they don't work. Or, the progressives are not really interested in improving the situation. Or, a combination of both.
Progressives hire the police chiefs, negotiate the police union contracts, set the certification/hiring/training standards for police, make many state and most local laws, and so on.
Yet, police in the urban cores remain a problem? Why is that?
Many people will reasonably come to a conclusion that the progressive Democrats do not really want to improve things, or they are too incompetent to do so.
https://twitter.com/mplsward3/status/1267891869691850754?s=2...
Police officers have taken an oath to uphold state and federal constitutions and local laws. If they cannot live up to that commitment they need to go.
That's putting it mildly. Biden was an active participant in the war on drugs. He was the primary sponsor of the RAVE Act in 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reducing_Americans%27_Vulnerab...
Nevermind the fact that his home state of Delaware didn't have much of an electronic music / rave scene at the time. Or that the music genres in question were all originally created by people of color. Or that most music venues (regardless of genre or clientele) have been over-charging for water for decades.
It's also cruelly ironic that this act primarily targeted a drug that causes people to become perma-grinning touchy-feely overly-emotive types, which (in my view) is essentially how Joe Biden seems to behave on a regular basis.
Needless to say, as a Democrat I share your deep frustration with this candidate.
Edit: vote for whoever you want, I just think the debates will be better with their voice.
Now I get it, but I’m sure I’m not the only person who got tired of them sounding like a broken record.