Biden’s original policy was made to court progressives on the left. His current move is to make himself more appealing/ defend against attacks from the right. Which is both frustrating for those he courted in his first election, but also stupid because those on the right won’t know/ care that he capitulated. They’ll just move the goal posts further right.
It’s a blunder and an unforced error, the favorite kind of mistake to make for democrats.
Republicans do this, too. Changing policies/views to try to please as large a group as possible is just what it means to be a successful politician. Politicians with firm beliefs end up like Bernie Sanders, respected by people with values, but without ever getting any real power. Just go back far enough, and you’ll find biden going on about how gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry, and trump talking about how he identifies as a Democrat. To succeed in this business, your morals have to be made of playdough.
No, they don’t. Republicans court the right. Any time they try to court the left, there’s a mutiny and anyone caught trying to form a bigger coalition gets ousted and replace with a more fanatical right-winger. They’re a rage-fueled party, voting out either democracy or themselves as their voting base becomes smaller and more fanatical as time marches on.
Democrats win national elections by courting the left (see, the vast majority of American’s policy views), blame any minor losses on their more progressive members, move right, and then lose elections because why would anyone vote for Wishy-washy, Diet Republicans who can’t keep campaign promises because they keep undoing them to court people who will never vote for them? Oh, and they keep moving right because that’s where all the money is to campaign on
Maybe it was all before your day, but Republicans have moved left on lots of issues. They used to be completely against drug reform, same sex marriage and other lgbtq+ issues, they used to be almost 100% in denial of climate change, they’ve come around to health care reform such as allowing pre-existing conditions. They even used to be harder on immigration and social security. You can’t imagine how much further right the Republicans were on many issues in even just the 80s and 90s. It’s not necessarily because they wanted to. It’s because they had to in order to keep getting voters.
