Joe Biden is literally taking about all the executive actions on climate, guns, and women’s health he possibly can, but leftists are asking what he’s done because basically half the senate doesn’t do their jobs. I would add student debt to this list but I don’t feel like arguing about his supposed “magic pen” he won’t use to govern by fiat there. Because Presidents can just do whatever they want on personal debt, allegedly.

I just read some ex-Obama campaign staffer saying he will end up going down as one of our worst Presidents in history. I basically reject that position wholeheartedly, as someone who started off as a 2007-2008 critic. Their position is that he had the last possible moment to act to reform America and squandered it. It’s basically “he wasn’t bold/was a neoliberal/wasn’t ‘tough’ enough,” combined with this imaginary idea that 2009-2017 was our last chance as a country.

The level of civic illiteracy on the left is astounding. The only way to get political outcomes you want is to win elections. You win elections by getting more votes than the opponent. Not voting does not get you more votes. Period. You don’t get your way by protesting. Or canceling. Or meme’ing. The only way to get outcomes from the government that are good is winning elections. You can’t bully the majority in the government into doing what you want. You have to win.

Sometimes people get way too caught up in policy fights. They end up taking positions that they didn’t even mean to take. Take student loan debt, for instance. I don’t think President Biden can unilaterally cancel it all. This does not mean I should argue it’s all bad. It means I think Congress should explicitly give him better legal grounds for what they want. It means expand public service forgiveness, address the racial gap in student loan impact, it means forgiving interest. There’s so much that could be done.

By the way, everything I said about Senator Warren in that thread could be applied to Bernie, to AOC, to Bush, to any leftist member of Congress you want. Any shmuck can identify problems and state their plan. These people have the agency to #DoSomething, and they don’t. These are members of the United States Congress, not some neckbeard in a South Philly coffee shop ranting about politics. They have the ability to put their causes on the floor of Congress for action. Instead they blame Democrats who do stuff for not going far enough.

I’m sorry, Elizabeth Warren bothers me. Her entire political career is completely impossible white paper plans on issues and then blaming the people who actually produce and pass plans for not doing enough. She has basically spent a decade plus saying Dodd-Frank was insufficient market regulation, and President Obama/Senator Dodd/Congressman Frank should have gone further. Then she cites the CFPB as part of her amazing record, which Dodd-Frank created.

I was 18 on 9/11, 22 at the height of the Iraq War, 25 for the 2008 Great Recession, and 33 when Trump took office. I’m very tough on my generation and younger people for the rise of far lefty politics, and deservedly so, but we have lived our entire adult lives in crisis. For all of that crisis though, it’s important to note that we have largely survived. American society has not melted down all the way down to “Hunger Games” levels. There have been failings- Katrina comes to mind- but we have generally avoided complete and total disaster.