Nancy Pelosi fretted during a meeting with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that "Abolish ICE" had been "injected into American political discourse by the Russians," the book says.
You’re not wrong, and we should always push for more! But we also shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that literally nothing has been accomplished either, particularly when you look at what the other side has been blocking. Biden attempted to institute a $15 minimum wage for federal contractors, which was shot down by a conservative court. The student loan forgiveness was absolutely nuked by the SCOTUS. Just a tiny handful of Republican votes in the Senate could have saved the expanded child tax credit, which had directly observable effects on childhood hunger rates (which shot right back up when it expired).
For issues that hit a bit closer to home for me, the Respect for Marriage Act is a huge comfort allowing me to know that, if I ever have to move to a red state for some terrible reason, my marriage rights will still be upheld. In schools, some basic respect for trans rights has been tied to federal school funding. Trans people are allowed to serve in the military again.
None of these are super huge things, but they are real, and they have meaningful effects on real people’s lives. There are trans teens in high schools, right now, that are able to use the bathroom they want because of Biden. Sure, it’s not universal healthcare or a solved housing crisis, but to them, it is still very real progress, and it’s worth fighting for.
While the ACA is better than before, I wonder if 20,000 lives is even half what we’d have saved if we had real universal healthcare.
We certainly wouldn’t have increasingly record insurance, hospital, and pharmacy profits (which are all the same vertical orgs anyway).
You’re not wrong, and we should always push for more! But we also shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that literally nothing has been accomplished either, particularly when you look at what the other side has been blocking. Biden attempted to institute a $15 minimum wage for federal contractors, which was shot down by a conservative court. The student loan forgiveness was absolutely nuked by the SCOTUS. Just a tiny handful of Republican votes in the Senate could have saved the expanded child tax credit, which had directly observable effects on childhood hunger rates (which shot right back up when it expired).
For issues that hit a bit closer to home for me, the Respect for Marriage Act is a huge comfort allowing me to know that, if I ever have to move to a red state for some terrible reason, my marriage rights will still be upheld. In schools, some basic respect for trans rights has been tied to federal school funding. Trans people are allowed to serve in the military again.
None of these are super huge things, but they are real, and they have meaningful effects on real people’s lives. There are trans teens in high schools, right now, that are able to use the bathroom they want because of Biden. Sure, it’s not universal healthcare or a solved housing crisis, but to them, it is still very real progress, and it’s worth fighting for.