Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.

The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.

With just more than three weeks of his single-term presidency remaining, Biden’s reported rueful reflections are revealed in a Washington Post profile that contains the clearest signs yet that he thinks he erred in withdrawing his candidacy in July after a woeful debate performance against his rival for the White House, Trump, the previous month.

  • fine_sandy_bottom
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    4 days ago

    This obsession with “centrism” is so tiresome.

    Left, right, and centre is subjective. Any country with a two party system is going to have a centre left and centre right.

    If you’re a major party in a two party system the only way possible way to attract enough votes to form government is to have policies as close as possible to your opponent whilst simultaneously differentiating yourself so as to be identified as “the best option” to any voters on your side of the political spectrum. This dynamic of political science is well established, and patently obvious to everyone but a handful of 16 year old idiots who think they’re the first generation in the history of the world to want things to be better than they are.

    Your big "I see that Australia has… " reveal sadly says more about your very limited understanding of politics in your own country than it does about my perspective.

    • kreskin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      If you’re a major party in a two party system the only way possible way to attract enough votes to form government is to have policies as close as possible to your opponent whilst simultaneously differentiating yourself

      This is absolutely hilarious stuff, thank you.

      • fine_sandy_bottom
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        4 days ago

        Ah yes, hilarity. The classic resort of a child when confronted with a concept beyond their comprehension.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 days ago

      If you’re a major party in a two party system the only way possible way to attract enough votes to form government is to have policies as close as possible to your opponent whilst simultaneously differentiating yourself so as to be identified as “the best option” to any voters on your side of the political spectrum. This dynamic of political science is well established, and patently obvious to everyone but a handful of 16 year old idiots who think they’re the first generation in the history of the world to want things to be better than they are.

      It’s very much not a basic tenet of politics, simply the philosophy that centrists continually push because it’s the philosophy that promotes centrists. This election was the perfect test case. Harris couldn’t be more centrist, even putting a lot of effort into courting actual Republican voters, while Trump leaned into the far right. Your naive political philosophy was soundly disproven.

      Elections aren’t a static population of voters on a line, they have diverse opinions and different priorities, and elections are often won or loss on turnout from voters in the party base. Trumps turned his out, Harris didn’t. It had nothing to do with who was best able to represent the center.