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Comment by dotnet00 | Hacker News Reader

IIRC with Modi a big factor was that the previous prime minister was seen as effectively a spineless puppet, kind of like how Biden is seen by many. Modi came in promising to try literally anything rather than just sitting by and doing nothing unless ordered to by the political dynasty leading the party, and has largely delivered on that promise.

It has meant lots of controversial legislation being forced through, but to many that's better than just letting the issues simmer for decades. Especially since many of those issues had no uncontroversial solution.

Trump came in promising similar action, but in hindsight did absolutely nothing besides further divide the country. Unfortunately at the moment neither side seems to have a candidate that's actually willing to do something similar. Biden will continue to make excuses about not being able to do things, and Trump will continue to focus more on PR and dominating the news cycle than actual work.

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Manmohan Singh was seen as exceptionally spineless (because he pretty much cowtowed to whatever the Gandhi family said). That’s not how Biden is perceived. At all. Biden has installed more justices than Obama and Trump combined. He has done it without the right freaking out about it. He has been incredibly effective if you delve past the surface.

In right wing circles Biden is often perceived as a puppet for 'elites', too old and senile to make his own decisions. Every other tweet about him seems to get people joking about how he had to go to bed early or how they had to drag him out to make a speech. I was a bit young to carefully follow Manmohan's term, but I recall that one of the comments I often heard from adults were that he was clearly too old for office.

It's funny how his speech is an indicator that he is too old for office, when his opponent's speech is so frequently and completely unhinged[1], that it sounds like a self-parody.

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> [1] I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.

Yep, it's pretty ironic, the only difference between the two (in terms of showing their age) is that Trump is more energetic (animated?), but energy doesn't translate to coherence.

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