Young voters were key to electing Joe Biden in 2020. Student loan forgiveness was the biggest issue for them, and now he has traded it away to the Republicans in debt ceiling negotiations. This is a decision he may live to regret.
Biden Throws Student Loan Borrowers under the Bus
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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President Dirty Harry (aka Biden) has “traded away” the student loan issue for what, exactly, even mildly useful to anyone outside the profit stream of the perpetual war machine?
Falco, it’s even worse than a trade-off. Everything Biden has done has been a compromise — using the loosest possible sense of that word. His environmental bill was such a “compromise” that it’s pretty much worthless. The “compromise” for the debt ceiling, which he never had to make or take, was a payday for the petropeople. His support of Ukraine? Yup, gots to back a country that doesn’t recognize gay marriage; that’s how you show support for the gays. Etc.
Now? Donald Trump’s got an indictment. The Republicans will never tolerate it. His base will never accept it. Now it’s existential for them — gummint comin’ to take the guns away, first they get Trump in prison on a bogus charge, why didn’t they indict Hillary, etc.
We’re going to end up with Trump as the Republican nominee (if he deigns to take it). And Biden is just a long skid mark of failures and compromises. Do you seriously think anyone who just got shafted out of $20K or $10K in loan forgiveness will vote for him?
The theater peeps know what I mean: you can recover from one, maybe two, bad flubs. But if they’re REALLY stinkeroo? Doesn’t matter how great the second act is. Biden would literally have to tell us all he invented a perpetual motion machine in his Delaware basement during the lockdown to win now.
A detail omitted in every piece of coverage I have seen about student loans: it is the only debt that is nondischargeable through bankruptcy. You can go on a credit card spree and buy trips and fancy dinners and take cash advances to gamble with and go off and start an idiotic business that fails with a bank loan and you can walk into bankruptcy court and it will all be forgiven. But student loans because you need a degree even for an entry-level job? (Surprise, it’s to keep poor people out of the middle-class jobs and because a high school degree is meaningless due to a whole batch of reasons.) Hang on, here comes the lecture.
Go, Joe Biden, go. Straight to hell.