Thursday, October 20, 2022
Political Mayhem Thursday: Biden being Biden
One thing that cracks me up is when someone reacts to something I write by commenting "I don't remember you criticizing Obama about this!" when if they had done a four-second Google search they would have found me doing exactly that in the New York Times and Washington Post. Most of my writing on politics, actually, has been critical of my fellow Democrats. That is, I think, because I expect something good from them, and I'm so disappointed when they don't deliver.
I never really expected much from Joe Biden, who never was much for criminal justice reform (despite being our only president, I think, who had worked as a public defender). Still, he has managed to not even meet my low expectations. As I explained a few weeks ago, his clemency grants have been mostly symbolic.
Yesterday, I addressed his troubling U-turn on the death penalty in an essay published at The Hill, which you can read here (it wasn't my only piece out yesterday; I also had an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the County Attorney's race, which you can read here).
I'm hoping that Biden will get more focused on these things (or at least his staff will) after the midterms, but I fear he will not.
