JOE BIDEN won by promising less. Vocal factions in the Democratic Party and beyond saw Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat as evidence that Americans were hungry for something bold and transformative from the left. But the former vice-president made a more modest bet in 2020: that people mostly wanted Donald Trump’s presidency to be over and more competent response to the pandemic.
It paid off. And to the surprise of many voters and activists who had lowered their expectations, the president has shown flashes of bold vision in office, signing a big stimulus package praised by Bernie Sanders himself as “the single most significant piece of legislation for working-class people that has been passed since the 1960s.” The decline in poverty rates that his American Rescue Plan has helped accelerate—across racial groups but for Black people especially—may be temporary, but it indicates the profound impact his agenda can have at its best. Biden and his party are on the cusp of passing a $3.5 trillion omnibus package that would flush an unusually large amount of resources toward expanding access to health care and education and fighting climate change.
Yet this wave of legislation is still tethered to Biden’s original proposition: Pushing for less than what America’s crises demand is the price that has to be paid for victory and hence any chance at progress at all. So instead of universal health care, tinkering with the Affordable Care Act so more people have coverage. Instead of a Green New Deal, a commitment to reducing carbon emissions by half within a decade, which experts say is insufficient.
Bu hikaye New York magazine dergisinin August 2 - 15, 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye New York magazine dergisinin August 2 - 15, 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
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