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Sometimes simple comments say broad things for trends. In a group chat for a mixed group someone posted the Biden energy guy who likes stealing bags. I said if the Dems ran on their current platform in 2008 they would get 10% of the vote. I got a reply “truth”.
I can go back in time and pull up Joe Biden being very anti-gay marriage. Would it be fair to say if Joe Biden went in a coma in 2008 and woke up in 2022 he would be one of the most ardent Maga extremists? And a bunch of Republicans just voted for gay marriage.
The question I’m asking is it fair to say the left made a giant leap in roughly 15 years and the extremists today are just normal people not that long ago. I know this is meme. But is this factual?
It is easy enough to look at Biden's campaign site from 2008 and find out. The answer clearly seems to be "no."
It is also easy to look at the 2008 Democratic Platform, which calls for ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell; refers to climate change as a "national security crisis", calls for the "end the tyranny of oil", and says "our response will determine the very future of life on this earth; condemns "inequalities in our criminal justice system"; promises to "restore vigorous federal enforcement of civil rights laws"; calls for "banning racial, ethnic, and religious profiling"; and opposes voter ID laws.
Edit: Biden could not have been "very anti-gay marriage" in 2008, given that he rather famously came out in support of it only 4 years later, much to the annoyance of the Obama Administration.
The actual reality is almost every Democrat from a purple or blue state was personally in favor of gay marriage by 2008, but they just needed to let the populace get a little more behind it before announcing it officially. Just like basically every Catholic Democratic politician was privately pro-choice, but may have pretended to be pro-life for a while until the last JFK-voting Catholic Democrat's went off into the great beyond or became Republican's.
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