You're right, but I see these types of orders as an effective way to build public support (assuming they're successful and popular) and make codified changes later on more likely.
The democrats lost it on immigration enforcement (or lack thereof) and not knowing when to step aside for a new face.
All they had to do was two things after trump’s first term debacle:
- keep to trump’s remain in Mexico policy
- have a fair primary (or stick to the person picked in the fair primary)
Democrats lost, in part, by giving in to the republican narrative around immigration. They gave up on arguing that immigration can be good, and started accepting the republican framing of it as a problem to be solved. This strategy is doomed from the start, since republicans will always be willing to go harder on anti-immigration rhetoric and action than the democrats will.
According to Gallup [1], only 47% of US Americans thought that immigration should decrease in 2020. That number had held more or less steady since at least 2000. But it grew steadily over Biden's term, reaching 88% in 2024. This, I believe, is a reflection of how the democrats shifted their rhetoric to be "tough on immigration". And it handed Trump a populace that was primed to be more susceptible than ever to his much more aggressive immigration rhetoric.
Of course, this is just a small part of a much bigger picture, but I don't exactly think it helped.
Lack of immigration enforcement is nonsense. Enforcement ramped up under Obama and hasn't gone down since. We americans are just very dumb and buy into obviously bullshit stories about brown people stealing and eating cats.
The border controls were removed under Biden leading to a lot of illegal immigrants. Obama enforced but never stopped the flow. Trump had stopped the flow with remain in Mexico.
Domestic enforcement is 1/2 the problem. Controlling your border is the other half.
I’m baffled that you can look at the Democrats’ decades of running to the right on immigration and still blame their losses on not doing that enough. This is a perfect example of why ceding any ground to right-wing talking points is a mistake. Obama deported more people than any president before him and it never mattered because reality was never the point.
We have a gestapo kidnapping members of our community in the streets and the xenophobic propaganda still has you believing the most vulnerable and underpaid people in our society were ever a serious problem.
Im baffled that you can look at the polling numbers about the migrant fiascos in dem cities and come to any conclusion other than that it was one of the biggest political fuck ups this century. Republicans played urban dems like a fiddle calling their bluff on sanctuary city talk. The bussing programs made republicans look like problem solvers and dems look like the classic progressive trope of all bark no answers. Dems didnt need to close the borders or even slow down immigration, but they did need a real answer that isnt "this isnt a real problem" and they came up with nothing.
The migrants were a serious problem for democrats and youre still denying that.
1. Theyre racist and xenophobic so they dont like migrants
2. They feel discriminated against by urban people so they dont like them either
3. Combine those two and its easy to see how they can revel in the suffering caused by the situation. Politics is about narratives and this one spread like wildfire because dems had no counter narrative. End of the day cities are dominated by democratic politics so its easy for republican narrative makers to point at cities that are failing to deal with a crisis and turn that into a reason to not vote for dems.
4. Everyone loves a good told you so. The problem for democrats with this one was that it was so incredibly visible. Made for very good TV on fox news
We can blame democrats but there's also some real dysfunction in the US in terms of lack of education/critical thinking and relic ideas (guns, religion, white supremacism) that still lingers on. Trump did win the popular vote.
Guns are a part of the constitution. Those aren’t going anywhere. Unless someone wants to work towards an amendment - which means you need the president, 2/3 of Congress and senate and 2/3 of the states to agree.
> Guns are a part of the constitution. Those aren’t going anywhere.
So is due process, but that went out the window last year. It turns out that the constitution doesn't mean shit if the executive doesn't want to follow it.
Lina Khan is probably my favourite American official of all time. Everything I've seen of her is just focus and directly pushing forward rights for all Americans, and she wasn't afraid to square up against $tn companies.
The very idea of executive orders is antithetical to democracy, only necessary because Congress - in particular the Republicans - has abandoned the foundational idea in the American political system that the two large parties are able and willing to engage in bipartisan work and compromises.
Every US president starting with Washington has issued executive orders except for William Harrison. Harrison would have issued executive orders but he died 31 days into his term before he had time to.
Define foundational? The concept was heavily discouraged and only came about from personal feuds between Hamilton and Jefferson. They were never included in any official founding documents and Washington was right about them leading to "frightful despotism".
Biden was nice. It turned out his screw up in his debate was that he came back from a foreign trip and was under some medication. He was tired on stage. Full blame goes to this team who did not call the debate off when they should have. (yes i judge in my arm chair)
This is where a dogged loyalty to the two-party system gets you. Desperately trying to engender sympathy for someone who went against every better instinct regarding politics and optics.
lol. I’m a Trump voter. It is not loyalty. It is sympathy, plus honesty. His failure was he was momentarily handicapped, tired. Not disabled. And he was a nice guy even though I didn’t agree with his politics.
I'm having a hard time even comprehending this. Most of the MSM propped him up and ignored his clear cognitive decline. That doesn't seem like he was up against every media company in the nation or eaten alive?
How about we accept both Biden and Trump were and are in cognitive and physical decline, simply due to their age?
Biden was 78 when he assumed office, and so was Trump in his second term. Neither of them should have been in any position of power, not at that age - the average American has a life expectancy of ~75 years for males.
The position of the American President is inarguably the position with the most power, responsibility and stress in the world. Personally, I'd say if there is a floor cap of 35 years of age... there should be a ceiling cap as well. Pension age, or even lower.
I believe we should judge folk based on their actions not their gaffes personally.
Under Biden the US reduced inflation faster than any other peer country, reduced student loan debt by billions, secured 1 trillion in mostly green infrastructure investment, secured 500 billion in semiconductor manufacturing, had a low 4% unemployment rate, helped with the NATO expansion, supported Ukraine, fought for consumer protections, expanded transgender rights and visibility, and so much more.
Literally the most successful president in my lifetime, and all I hear is people tell me about how he couldn't do his job.
It just, doesn't mesh with reality. What it does mesh with is the messaging that's been pounded pounded pounded through everyone's heads for the last four years though.
Of course anyone trying to refute 15 lies in 60 seconds while actually performing the duties of his job (instead of say... tweeting, golfing, and calling women derogatory names while fostering hate, and rewarding sycophants with insider trades and contracts) and then also make their own point is going to fail.
Lots more people than Biden, who're a lot more physically fit would fail at debating serial liars and thugs like Trump.
> Under Biden the US reduced inflation faster than any other peer country, reduced student loan debt by billions, secured 1 trillion in mostly green infrastructure investment, secured 500 billion in semiconductor manufacturing, had a low 4% unemployment rate, helped with the NATO expansion, supported Ukraine, fought for consumer protections, expanded transgender rights and visibility, and so much more.
Indeed! But in politics, especially in the two-party systems that are the US and the UK, it is (almost) never about actual actions, policy and even campaign promises to a degree (because no one believes them any more). Individual voters often lack knowledge, context or empathy with others to recognize when stuff happens and if it is important.
In contrast, a politician's public image aka his "story" is much much more important. Even in a country like Germany which one might think focuses more on policy. We had incumbent Chancellor Schröder neck-deep in issues in 2002, then a historic flood disaster happened - and Schröder showed up in rubber boots while his competitor Stoiber was off vacationing. In the 2021 election, Armin Laschet didn't realize Steinmeier was talking on camera, someone cracked a joke or whatnot, he laughed - and got caught by said camera [2], which damaged his campaign so hard that he lost to Scholz.
Biden's age was already under discussion in his first term, and the critics were very vocal. There would have been the chance to set up Harris in the second half of his first term as a successor, prop her up into the spotlight and promise the voters continuation, the DNC didn't do that - and lost.
> Lots more people than Biden, who're a lot more physically fit would fail at debating serial liars and thugs like Trump.
Of course, of course. But still, I wish y'all had less gerontocrats in place.
Really? Talk about denial, or abject lack of paying attention.
The idea Trump is not in cognitive decline is easily rent asunder by watching any clips of his recent speeches and comparing them to clips from 2016 and 2020.
He's falling asleep in meetings, confusing words, hearkening back to old time shit like flag burning, stumbling, can't walk in a straight line, tweeting rambling word salads filled with falsehoods all night long.
Compare how Biden was covered whenever he made a gaffe to how the current president is covered when he gaffes constantly and you'll see what I mean.
For instance, Trump has said "oranges" instead of "origins", said that Hannibal Lector was a late and great person, praised pedophiles...
And where's the wall to wall coverage of that like there was when Biden screwed up that debate? Where's the weeks on end coverage of those stumbles? How come ABC doesn't even show the public when Trump calls _their own_ reporters piggy and tells them they're incompetent?
Not detached from reality, but thanks for the lame, no effort comment.
Similarly! Where were the weeks of coverage for the IRA which expanded energy production in this country (which most of my friends don't even know what the acronym stands for)
Where was the coverage for the semiconductor act which added 500bn in semiconductor manufacturing.
Biden wanted to do a land on the moon type quest to cure cancer, how much cooler would that have been for our nation than ICE raids on farm workers.
The man was incredibly successful, and barely anyone realizes that, and that's what I'm talking about.
They’re not de facto laws like some of the presidential orders. He created a task force to research the issue and directed the municipal consumer and worker protection division to prioritize enforcement of existing laws.
I’d assume the goal of the task force is to propose new laws which should be pretty easy to get passed.
Maybe there are existing laws already in the books that can be leveraged as part of this EO. I know Lina Khan with FTC was focusing on this. And this is being taken up by the NYC administration where Lina was part of the transition team. Lina was in charge of seeing how to fulfill Mamdani's vision using the existing law system.
I can't speak for executive orders for a mayor, but I can say that executive orders of the president are anything but symbolic. Their scope was expanded significantly under Bush and Cheney, and they are binding for federal agencies. For example, they used executive order 13440 to circumvent a supreme court ruling that stated the Geneva convention applied to the people they illegally kidnapped and held at CIA black sites. This EO functioned by essentially weakening the definition of torture, so they could go on and torture the folks they captured.
So, while the next president can just undo executive orders made by any previous one, making them a bit ephemeral, they do have direct and real consequences going as far as torture.
