Spot on. Biden would be a bog standard Conservative in any other Western country and that's with them all having shifted massively towards the right in the last half century already

I think the best you could possibly hope for from Biden is that he's a bit better on Climate Change but even then I suspect he'll just talk a good game and not actually do anything just like Obama before him.

The major differences seem to be on the ongoing culture wars in the US and hopefully a Biden presidency will focus on the social unrest, by all accounts that was his motivation to even go back in the ring this time around.

But in terms of policy there isn't a huge difference - they have the same approach on China (more aggresion), the Middle East (less intervention) and South East Asia (more collaboration). Biden will probably stop kicking Europe and NATO around publicly but the US as a whole will be less interest Europe by the end of this decade, regardless of who is in charge. I suppose Biden will play nice in multilateral institutions which will be well received since the rest of the G7 are terrified of a world where they need to step up.

Economically, Biden will probably accelerate the step towards renewables and clean energy which is a good thing - however market forces are driving that change compared to 10 years ago and there's gradually going to be plenty of powerful billionaires lobbying for control on that side of the spectrum too. I suspect he'll help the process by not getting in the way which is still a net positive. There's going to be a fair chunk of money being injected into the US as 'stimulus' - if it's Trump it'll be in the form of a new infrastructure bill and if it's the Democrats it'll be in the form of a watered down Green New Deal. And the Fed and Treasury are lock step in terms of policy regardless of who is in charge.

Ultimately I don't feel like there will be material changes but the middle class don't have to read uncomfortable headlines of the President saying openly racist or bigoted things so we'll feel better about not having to think too much about what's going wrong. I think Biden's best chance of doing anything memorable is to try and heal social divisions and accelerate progress towards a cleaner America - in theory those should be low hanging fruit but I don't think he's really got the power to make any significant socio-economic changes. I dare say no President can at this stage.

Kanye has released his range of campaign merch. I was gonna get a t shirt for the craic but they're $40. The Hoodies are $160.

Well said mirth. Climate change will probably be the most progressive part of his agenda, as its not economic taboo like it used to be

Isn't he already going back on fracking? And the election hasn't even started.

Well, most progressive relative to his other positions i.e. increments of increments

Again, this is where you need to balance campaigning versus implementation.
Fracking is a key employer in Ohio and Pennsylvania, two swing states. This is the reason that Pence brought it up in the debate. He wanted to turn it into a talking point.
The Biden green deal calls for carbon neutrality in a 15 year window. Fracking will at least be a bridge to other renewables and can remain if it meets those standards. But throwing away Ohio and Pennsylvania over fracking would be a disaster, especially when you have a chance to control every arm of government.

Claudius wrote:

Fracking will at least be a bridge to other renewables and can remain if it meets those standards.

Say what?

I'm not sure I get that one either. Fracking is the absolute worst thing ever conceived in terms of environmental impact and it's not a renewable at all.

Either way, Biden's original position was to only ban fracking on land owned by the government (95% of all fracking takes place on privately owned land so this was pretty much the most pointless grandstanding in the history of grandstanding) and he couldn't even hold firm on that position. How on earth is he going to get anything done as president? And why does the compromise always have to lean towards conservatives rather than independents? This is why democrats always lose even when they win.

Qwiss! wrote:

Kanye has released his range of campaign merch. I was gonna get a t shirt for the craic but they're $40. The Hoodies are $160.

Prices will go up when he wins...

5 days later

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/14/facebook-twitter-new-york-post-hunter-biden

Facebook and Twitter took steps on Wednesday to limit the spread of a controversial New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, sparking outrage among conservatives and stoking debate over how social media platforms should tackle misinformation ahead of the US election.

In an unprecedented step against a major news publication, Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report. Users attempting to share the story were shown a notice saying: “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Users clicking or retweeting a link already posted to Twitter are shown a warning the “link may be unsafe”.

What the hell.

That was ham fisted, but the phony pearl clutching from conservatives over it is hilarious after years of dear leader calling everything he doesn't agree with fake news

This is the inevitable eventuality of these platforms deciding what counts as "fake news" and what doesn't. The whole push for that came from exactly the politicians it now serves.

17 days later

Election eve and all the numbers appear to be in bidens favor. The big rust belt swing states will likely only finish counting by the weekend, so most eyes will be on places like FL, NC, AZ, GA which should be called on the day of. If biden wins any of those on the day, it could be a landslide when all the votes are counted

Trump will have sued before then. Get your popcorn and Prozac

Im nervous and i dont even live there. Come on you yank nutters, time for the fever to break

Kinda torn about who I hope to win. It was nice to go about life for last few years not being self conscious about your faith as most of the focus everywhere on tv and outside was on Trump.