Matt Stoller, who was a Congressional aide, wrote an important article on Biden back in April.

… Biden is a bad candidate. Obama was exceptionally disciplined, and Biden is not…

Basically, Biden combined two traits that work against each other. He’s lazy. Staffers can deal with that, if the lazy person is willing to delegate. But Biden doesn’t delegate important decision-making authority. He won’t write a speech beforehand to clear it with political allies, and he also won’t just read the damn talking points.

This means important things don’t get done, because he won’t do them, and he won’t let others do them. It is a nightmare to work for someone like this, because the staff never knows if there’s going to be a scandal. They never know if the boss is going to straight out lie to their own staff about it and have them ruin their own reputations and connections with political allies. They will not be able to defend Biden because it’s impossible to defend someone who isn’t trustworthy, unless people go full Trump and deny reality openly.

Given that Biden has a decent shot at being the President of the United States, I’d suggest reading the whole article.


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The obvious similarity is, actually, Trump. The same type of mismanagement and laziness. Biden’s politics are different, and essentially the same as Obama’s, but a bit more retrograde: Biden is a neoliberal corporatist.

He’s less retrograde on social issues than many people think, mind you. Obama was against gay marriage until gay activists and donors took him out to the curb (something people forget). But Obama would bow to pressure on things that didn’t matter to him, like social issues.

He wouldn’t bow on key items, like making sure bankers were made whole, though, and Biden will be similar.

But Biden will also be, effectively, incompetent, even though Stoller notes he’s talented. All the talent in the world means little when he won’t do the work and won’t let anyone else do it.

So, not that anyone who reads me was likely to do so, I’d suggest not supporting Biden in the Democratic primaries.

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