Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

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I legitimately like Biden. I think he was the best candidate for the current moment.

People have a tendency towards "visionary" politicians, who arrive with agendas and strive to make them reality. Politicians who "flip flop" are derided, because changing your position is a sign that you never had real ideals.

But I think we have this backwards—in a representative democracy, the job of a politician is to represent the electorate! The ideal politician, then, would be an empty vessel, who was willing to move to wherever the people are.

And that's exactly who Biden is. He's always been a centrist democrat, but his "center" moves alongside his party. Biden also believes that governing is fundamentally about building coalitions, not smothering the other side.

I am worried that Republicans may simply be unwilling to make any deals, no matter how hard Biden tries or what compromises he's willing to make. But, if anyone can do it—and that's a very, very big "if"—then Biden probably can.

Exactly. Would I have loved to see Bernie/Warren as a president? Yes.

Do I think a boring centrist president is for the best right now to deal with this pandemic and the upcoming recession? Also yes.

It’s likely that Biden’s centrism is going to result in him cowing to Republican pushes for austerity or limited, corporate bailouts that further exacerbate inequality and stoke populist discontent. I’m not sure that these impulses will work well in the context of the pandemic or it’s economic effects.

I agree with the second sentence, I'm hopeful the first isn't true (although I see the worry). The stories I've been reading about who he's using as economic advisors give me hope.

But it all has to get through Congress too.

It’s been reported in multiple outlets that his top pick for the Commerce department is Meg Whitman, a Republican who has also drove several companies into the ground. Trump also demonstrated that nothing has to get through Congress with his appointment of no-vote-required acting heads, for which he suffered zero consequences.

> "flip flopping"

A small observation: you know when we had more political compromise? When we had less (de facto) transparency.

Agreements bargained out in a dark room, with everyone announcing the compromise and expressing support for what's agreed, are how American politics worked best.

Radical transparency poisons compromise. By which I mean, non-comprehensive but absolute transparency: everyone knows details, but no one understands the greater picture.

In a largely uneducated democratic electorate (relative to our elected officials, their staffs, and professionals, and leveled as a non-partisan charge against all parties and independents), why do we try to completely usurp our elected representatives' ability to bargain on our behalf?

We, as voters, should judge our politicians on what they do, not what they reject.

The former results in functional compromises we're not thrilled with. The latter results in ideologically pure paralysis.

More depth: https://president.upenn.edu/meet-president/Mindsets-Politica...

The way the house and senate looks, this is going to be one long 4 years of gridlock. That's the only meaningful thing republicans can do now. Block everything. Make Democrats look as bad as humanly possible, then campaign for a second Trump term (or whoever is not imprisoned at that time, maybe he can tweet-lead the country from prison as well).

I agree, and I am very concerned and scared about that possibility. I hope to god Democrats do everything in their power to win the runoffs in Georgia, but it may simply not be achievable.

America's political system—as it exists right now—is fundamentally broken. Politicians have discovered that it is not in the minority party's interest to compromise, and so they don't, and nothing whatsoever gets done.

I don't blame Biden for any of this, however. But I'm extremely concerned.

Oh boy, then what's the point of having representatives at all? Just put every line in the budget to a vote. Personally, I want someone smart and rational who can put in the work to understand what's going on, listen to subject matter experts, and make tough calls based on what's right for the country. I don't want an "empty vessel", but I'm also not super concerned with someone's political website perfectly matching up with everything I happen to believe at the moment.

> Personally, I want someone smart and rational who can put in the work to understand what's going on, listen to subject matter experts, and make tough calls based on what's right for the country.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that we should have a robot! Yes, leaders need to listen to experts and advisors and make thoughtful decisions. But they should also stay in tune with the electorate.

Perhaps a politician is naturally inclined towards removing regulations so that it's easier to grow a business. That's a reasonable baseline position—but if there's suddenly an up-swell of support for strong environmental regulations to combat global warming, it's completely reasonable to change your position in response to the will of the country.

Ah, gotcha. Agreed!

Well said. Let startups be visionary, the government should be boring and centrist most of the time.

If everything is going well and on track in the government, there shouldn't be any news.The president of the united states shouldn't be the center of attention.

>>I am worried that Republicans may simply be unwilling to make any deals

Recent history has shown the democrats are also unwilling to make any deals... See the last Stimlus where Republicans wanted to deal for doubling what was already the Largest government expenditure in US history, and the democrats would accept nothing less than 4x that plus several poison pills that had nothing at all do with the economic stimulus that was inside the so called "hero's act"

The problem with the division we have now, is Republicans / Libertarians and to some extend even Union/Blue Dog Democrats have a VERY VERY VERY different view of what the proper role of the federal government to the new "democratic socialist" democrats that have seeming taken over the democrat party (the Bernie, Warren, AOC democrats)

When one side wants 0 new spending but will "compromise" and agree to 1.5 Trillion, and the other side will accept nothing less than 4 Trillion in new spending but a fundamental shift in all aspect of American governance, I am not sure what kind of deal can be had there

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