Biden
Biden has been protected from very close scrutiny because he is a bit hard to take seriously. Yet, goofy as he is, he has opinions and is running for President.
The Boston Globe ran this comparison to Obama:
..on issue after issue, Biden has veered sharply from Obama’s path.
On health insurance, for example, Obama rejected a public option as part of the Affordable Care Act and repeatedly stressed the importance of maintaining private coverage. But Biden favors a public option open to everyone, including the majority of Americans with employer-sponsored health coverage.
Biden supports government-funded health care even for unauthorized immigrants, something Obama never came close to proposing. He supports a sharp increase in US refugee admissions and a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants. When Obama ran for the White House in 2008, by contrast, it was as an enforcement-first hard-liner. He cracked down so hard on those who crossed the border illegally, he was known for much of his presidency as the “deporter-in-chief.”
No Democratic presidential nominee ever endorsed anything like the radical Green New Deal, with its price tag in the tens of trillions of dollars and its goal of eliminating the use of all fossil fuels. But Biden does. No Democratic nominee ever called for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour. But Biden does. The former vice president has moved emphatically leftward on abortion, on the death penalty, on free trade. By any understanding of “moderate,” as that term was used when Obama or Bill Clinton was president, Biden is no moderate.
..on issue after issue, Biden has veered sharply from Obama’s path.
On health insurance, for example, Obama rejected a public option as part of the Affordable Care Act and repeatedly stressed the importance of maintaining private coverage. But Biden favors a public option open to everyone, including the majority of Americans with employer-sponsored health coverage.
Biden supports government-funded health care even for unauthorized immigrants, something Obama never came close to proposing. He supports a sharp increase in US refugee admissions and a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants. When Obama ran for the White House in 2008, by contrast, it was as an enforcement-first hard-liner. He cracked down so hard on those who crossed the border illegally, he was known for much of his presidency as the “deporter-in-chief.”
No Democratic presidential nominee ever endorsed anything like the radical Green New Deal, with its price tag in the tens of trillions of dollars and its goal of eliminating the use of all fossil fuels. But Biden does. No Democratic nominee ever called for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour. But Biden does. The former vice president has moved emphatically leftward on abortion, on the death penalty, on free trade. By any understanding of “moderate,” as that term was used when Obama or Bill Clinton was president, Biden is no moderate.
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