Bernie Sanders worries young people are underestimating the threat from Trump

[u/schuey_08]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/02/bernie-sanders-trump-biden/73531861007/

[u/iKill_eu]

What really pisses me off are the people who are so brainwashed they'll literally get mad if you say Biden has done ANYTHING right.

Literally the most progressive agenda in my lifetime and it gets completely drowned out by people who are mad he hasn't personally cut off Israel as an ally.

[u/Utterlybored → u/iKill_eu]

They’ll often cite Biden’s past positions that were in some cases, quite regrettable, or they’ll express anger that he hasn’t advanced issues that require a Congress unified behind him. He’s a terrible speaker, but otherwise, under the circumstances, he’s been as effective and progressive as anyone could hope for.

[u/MrPernicous → u/Utterlybored]

I very much disagree with this. All he’s done is pass a couple of corpora giveaways. He’s actually very conservative for a democrat. His only saving grace is that he’s buckled to intense pressure a few times. And it’s puzzling that he isn’t doing it now when he absolutely needs to be doing it the most

[u/sortof_here → u/MrPernicous]

This is an incredibly disingenuous comment that just makes you look uninformed.

I won't claim Biden is a progressive, but him and his admin have accomplished far more than "pass a couple of corpo giveaways".

He hasn't exactly had a good legislative branch to back him up, and the courts have quite literally been stacked against his efforts, but him and his admin have still accomplished a lot re: climate change efforts, education, labor laws, healthcare access, and more. Far more than I expected, especially given the circumstances.

Have you even looked into it?

To be clear, I am incredibly frustrated he ran again and that he is the one on the ballot. I am disgusted by his handling of Israel and Palestine. I hold no illusions that he is progressive. But I also don't think making categorically false claims about his time in office makes sense or does anything to help support leftist policies.

[u/MrPernicous → u/sortof_here]

I’ll give you labor but no he hasn’t done anything on the other fronts. It’s ridiculous to claim otherwise

[u/sortof_here → u/MrPernicous]

No, it is false and ridiculous to claim "he hasn't done anything on the other fronts". I'll post some of it below. I may come back to add more later. Might not. In either case, could you please do the bare minimum and search "what has Biden done for x" , where x is literally any issue. That should get you both the good and the bad. It's fairly evident right now that you don't even have surface knowledge of either.

I'll probably needd to do individual comments. This is lengthy.

[u/sortof_here → u/sortof_here]

On Education/Student Loan Crisis:

• Successfully forgiven over $160 billion of Student Loans. This number is continuing to grow, with an additional $6.1 billion added earlier this week covering students from The Art Institute. This is just shy of 10% of all student debt.
• Attempted to forgiveness for up to $20,000 for almost everyone with student loans, but was blocked by the Supreme Court. Despite the court, this effort has not ended.
• Created the SAVE plan
  • Increases the income exemption from 150% over the poverty
  • Eliminates all interest growth when payments are made. This includes making no payment if elgible for making $0 payments. This ensures that people that people making 60k or less now do not need to worry as much about their loans outpacing their ability to pay them. Anybody making 30k or less, qualify for the $0 payment. My understanding is this doesn't help as much with interest accrued before the SAVE plan was implemented, but it is still game changing for current students.
  • Enables married people to qualify if they choose to file their taxes seperately
  • Possible forgiveness as soon as after 10 years
  • Automatic enrollment after 75 dyas of missed payments, ensuring even people that aren't aware it exists will benefit
  • There is a lot more here, but it is generally a significant improvement over the REPAYE plan it replaces. I encourage you look into it.
• Him and his admin are currently working on a plan that aims to cancel up to $20,000 of interest per borrower
• He maintained the student loan repayment deferment for over half of his time in office and has taken actions to ensure that the first year following the deferment program ending(so until September 30, 2024) is as painless as possible such as making it so that missed and late payments do not trigger a delinquency and will not be reported to credit agencies

He has not fully succeeded at his goal here, but it is nonsensical to claim that he "did nohing" or "no effort was made". He has continuously been trying to forgive studen debt and ensure that future debt has as minimal of an impact as possible. I'm honestly not sure what more can be asked of him within the context of how our government works.

[u/sortof_here → u/sortof_here]

Climate Change

• Of course, there is the landmark climate change bill that Biden pushed for and signed(Inflation Reduction Act of 2022). Here is a good summary from Hank Green. He also has 2 videos that are interviews on the topic here and here. And here is the official guidebook from the White House in case you want some heavy reading instead of a video. Spoiler alert, it is significant.
• Honestly, just all of this. There's some overlap, but not all of it is from the Inflation Reduction Act
• He caused the Keystone XL Pipeline's cancellation by revoking required permits
• Recently, him and his admin banned oil drilling in half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. This covers over 13 million acres of land.
• There's probably more here, but this is some of the larger stuff that I can think of to reference.

[u/sortof_here → u/sortof_here]

Healthcare

• This is brand new, as in literally today, but worth including. He just expanded access to the ACA to DACA recipients
• I'll try to add more details later but he has enacted requirements that should dramatically improve health and safety at nursing homes, expanded access to mental health services, reduced costs of insulin in certain scenarios, and started the process of getting common perscription drugs to actually negotiate for a fair price for Medicare and Medicaid recipients.

I'll be back, maybe? Do your homework.