I have been so caught up in personal stuff this first half of 2021 that I've barely commented on the still-nascent Biden administration. Make no bones about it: Joe Biden is running the country from the center-left. Compare him all you want to his pal Barack Obama, but a better comparison would be Bill Clinton. Biden hasn't been perfect --he's been slow to tackle immigration, or at least differentiate himself from his predecessor-- but right now I'll take mere competence. Give him time; it's only been six months.
Like the increasingly unhinged and uninformed far-right, progressives tend to be extremely vocal on social media, yet don't represent a majority of votes within their political party. Their notoriously bleeding hearts are in the right place, but the self-rightousness is palpable. This is why rattling off names of progressive presidential candidates --Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders-- almost reads like a graveyard. (I am randomly reminded of the prison camp situation on the US-Mexico border.) I hate to say it, but a democratic socialist would've handed Trump re-election.
I mention Biden because when I lost blogged, COVID as we knew it seemed to have its back against the wall. Now we have the Delta variant, a spike in deaths among the non-vaccinated, and the gradual return of mask mandates. Like last summer, we tried to move back into the "old normal" too quick, but now we have a flawed honors system that's hospitalizing the unvaccinated left and right. Unlike 2020 when a weak, deluded president deferred constantly to state governments, we have someone like Biden who can take some accountability and listens to the experts. For all his flaws, Biden is still better than the alternative.
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