To achieve a real legacy, Biden will have to be more radical - and ready to fight | David Sirota

The lesson of the Obama years is that you can have appeasement or transformative progress, but not both

A full 12 years after Joe Biden was sworn in as the vice-president of hope and change, hope is in short supply and the need for change is even more acute. Progressives have a rare opportunity to enact their agenda - but they will need to play the kind of hardball they have backed away from in the past, because Biden continues to send conflicting messages. For every promise of transformational change, he signals a desire to appease a Republican party intent on destroying his presidency.

The stakes could hardly be higher: one out of every thousand Americans has died from a lethal pandemic, with no end yet in sight. The economy is officially still humming along, but millions face eviction, bankruptcy and hunger. Even US democracy is under unprecedented siege by an insurrectionist movement encouraged by the outgoing president and his loyalists in Congress.