Nixon’s first choice for EPA administrator was William Ruckelshaus.

Years later, William Ruckelshaus was again appointed as EPA administrator. By Ronald Reagan.

So if Nixon is “progressive” because of his EPA, then so is Reagan. They put the same guy in charge.

If you think Nixon was more progressive than Obama, then you really don’t understand American politics.

Nixon did for the environment what Bush did for Homeland Security. He took a bunch of agencies that already existed and were already issuing regulations, and put them all under control of one person who took orders directly from the President. Thus making it much easier for future Republicans, like Trump, to interfere with environmental rule-making.

And Nixon didn’t raise tax rates. He signed a tax bill sent by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. It didn’t raise tax rates either, but it instituted the Alternative Minimum Tax which everyone ignored until decades later when they realized it had unintended effects on the middle class.

I am comparing Biden’s presidency to those of Obama and Clinton. All of those actions taken by Biden represent a significant shift to the left compared to his Democratic predecessors.

Leftist support of Biden is why we got mandatory union recognition, student debt relief, and corporate tax increases, all of which were championed by Bernie Sanders but previously had little support from moderates.

In order for moderates to play ball with progressives, progressives must be willing to play ball with moderates.

Everybody wants change yesterday, but they never actually get that. They don’t even get major immediate change. At best they get incremental progress.

So when evaluating someone’s achievements, you can’t hold them to an impossible standard. Someone is not a failure if they were unable to change the past. In fact, they are a success if they deliver the best outcome that is actually achievable. And history shows that outcome is incremental progress.

That’s true, but change is always a mix of progression and backsliding. That’s another reason why incremental progress is so valuable.

Sure, I agree that it takes more than voting to make change. My point is that change appears incremental when it is actually happening. Only in retrospect, after many small changes have accumulated, can you see a major shift.

Perfect example. “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

After more than a decade of activism, MLK didn’t live to see the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And that law didn’t solve the problem of racial inequality.

If you were alive in MLK’s time, you would be complaining that he hadn’t done enough.

I think the biggest LOL in history is Main Characters who think they can immediately solve the world’s problems. They literally have a 0% success rate.

All of our actual progress has always been incremental.

The top doesn’t have as many options as people think.

Ben Shapiro is dumb and I don’t fault anyone who can’t bring about a worker’s paradise, provided they make an incremental improvement in the lives of others. That includes Biden.

After taking millions of tiny steps forward, we’ll eventually get to where we need to be.

Even the people who believe in dissolving capitalism have accomplished nothing but perpetuate the system.

He passed the IRA, rejoined the Paris Agreement, repealed the transgender ban in the military, restored net neutrality, defended the use of mifepristone, supported Ukraine, and relieved some student debt. That’s enough to earn my vote.

The vast majority of employees are not at the top of their pay scale. If you told them their salary will never grow faster then inflation, unlike you they would look for another job.

The average growth in corporate income over the past two decades is 4%/year. That’s comparable to what the average employee expects from their long-term salary growth.

I think it’s disingenuous to keep pushing this idea that corporations cannot survive without ever increasing income.

What would happen if your employer said you would never again get a raise? Most people would probably start looking for another job. At a minimum, they expect their long-term income to keep with inflation.

But if employee salaries are expected to grow over time, then so are the company revenues that pay those salaries. A company whose revenues stop growing is like an employee whose salary stops growing. They will not last long at whatever they are doing.