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Notes -
Vaccine Mandates and penalties were one of the major flashpoints.
Biden tried imposing them nationally.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-lloyd-austin-e4047962b92087be278c6886e2e2d0c5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Independent_Business_v._Occupational_Safety_and_Health_Administration
Biden also tried to pull the student loan forgiveness card a couple times.
https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/supreme-court-strikes-down-student-loan-forgiveness-program
He used the Pandemic as the justification in that one:
Even if I grant that Biden and Trump's approaches were similar in many ways, the ways in which they were different are pretty damn salient.
Sure, but I'll note that you used the word tried multiple times there. My argument is not that Trump and Biden are the same, it's that the office of President is much more limited than people think. Biden trying and failing to do something, that Trump didn't even try to do has exactly the same outcome. The thing does not get done. So the difference in actuality was vaccine mandates for the military. Which the link says affected 8,400 servicemen/women.
If the Presidency gave you unlimited power then the differences between a Trump and Biden presidency would be huge, I agree. But it is highly constrained, so when it comes down to it, their differences of what they actually did was I maintain pretty small.
If you're the victim of an 'attempted' murder I think you still will have certain rational opinions about the perpetrator who tried to kill you but failed.
I just think it's odd to make the argument that it 'doesn't matter' when we've got a recent example of how much it can matter.
Which still subsumed by the point that one shouldn't worry too much about it because the factors we can control have little influence on that particular outcome.
Again, that is fine, I am not saying that having preferences between them is a problem. And it's absolutely fine to prefer the person who didn't even try to do X in the first place. That makes perfect sense!
My very narrow point is the system has built in rails, and those rails in general mean, that in practice, the difference presidents make to their citizens as opposed to the difference the legislatures, governors et al make is actually pretty small. And much, much smaller than most people think. A combination of the deep state, federalism, separation of powers and so on contributes to this.
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