copenlu/druid huggingface dataset:
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2020-11-02): Here is how one expert sees it: "There is a reason Bernie Sanders has called the Biden agenda the most progressive ever. Because it is." [...] "The world is different; there’s too much unfinished business for us to just look backwards. We have to look to the future. Bernie understands that, and Joe understands that," former President Barack Obama said in a video when he endorsed Biden as president. "It is one of the reasons that Joe already has what is the most progressive platform of any major-party nominee in history. Because even before the pandemic turned the world upside down, it was already clear that we needed real structural change." [...] "There is a reason Bernie Sanders has called the Biden agenda the most progressive ever. Because it is. And I think it is largely because of those promises that Biden loses next week," Feehery added.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2021-09-26): The president’s gesture of support underscored the political reality that is driving the tense negotiations on Capitol Hill: In the battle for ideological supremacy in the Democratic Party, the progressives have already won. Biden was indeed a proud moderate during his three and a half decades as a senator, but he has fallen in firmly with the progressives as president. He’s embraced the agenda championed by the likes of his former rivals Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—tackling climate change; creating a new child-care tax credit; expanding the government’s role in health care; endorsing universal pre-K, free community college, and paid family leave—and made it his own. The moderates in the House and Senate are balking at the size and scope of Biden’s plan, and, still, the president is siding with the progressives. He used last week’s meetings to reassure lawmakers like Jayapal and to pressure centrists such as Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have opposed the $3.5 trillion price tag of the Democrats’ proposal but have yet to make a counteroffer of their own.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2021-05-16): They’re right on one count: Biden is pushing an ambitious progressive program while making it sound, well, moderate. [...] But surely they noticed when former President Obama released a video last year praising Biden for "the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." Or when Biden, in his last big campaign speech, compared his program to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and prom-ised a pandemic plan, a healthcare plan, a climate plan and an economic plan "to give working people a fair shot again." [...] The Biden of 2008 who ran as Obama’s running mate was more progressive than the Biden of 1994 who voted for Clinton’s crime bill. The Biden of 2012 who declared himself a fan of same-sex marriage was more progressive than the Biden of 2008.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2024-04-18): The Congressional Progressive Caucus agenda, first shared with NBC News, doubles as a blueprint of political advice for how it believes President Joe Biden can win over progressives and young voters who are uninspired by his re-election bid ahead of a rematch with former President Donald Trump. [...] Progressives have had a rough two years, having been marginalized after Republicans took control of the House and steered the agenda rightward. Biden has broken with the left on issues like tougher asylum laws and crime. Some prominent Democrats, like Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, have eschewed the "progressive" label as conservatives have found success in associating it with the left’s most divisive ideas. Gallego, who is running for the Senate in his purple state, quietly left the progressive caucus. The caucus recently missed an opportunity to elect one of its members to a rare open Senate seat in deep-blue California, with two of them running and losing. [...] Some of the provisions in the new agenda represent items in Biden’s "Build Back Better" agenda that were left on the cutting room floor because of the thin majorities. Others could spark intraparty disagreements, including a far-reaching liberalization of the immigration system with a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally. Yet other pieces resemble popular causes that progressives want Biden to get behind, like expanding Social Security and legalizing marijuana.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2024-07-25): Since Biden’s revealing performance in the first Presidential debate, on June 27th, his candidacy had been leaching support. Even after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, which many believed would buy Biden time, growing numbers of Democratic members of Congress abandoned the President’s campaign. Other Democrats, especially those in the Congressional Black Caucus, maintained their support for Biden. But Biden’s most stalwart defenders came from the Party’s left flank. Senator Bernie Sanders described Biden as the "most effective President in the modern history of our country." In February, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described Biden as "one of the most successful presidents in modern American history," and earlier this month Representative Ilhan Omar called Biden "the best President of my lifetime." This was a far cry from Ocasio-Cortez’s claim during the 2020 Democratic primaries that "in any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party"—and it’s likely to have a pronounced effect on progressives’ ability to influence Harris. [...] Representative Ro Khanna, of California, spelled out the larger strategy of left Democrats with regard to the Biden campaign. "We see an opportunity to get this Party to move in a bolder direction on economic policy," he said on July 9th. "I think some people should give the progressives credit. It’s not the progressives who have been part of the circular firing squad. And I think that progressives have really come out looking like we have a governing vision."
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2021-04-14): One explanation for Biden’s progressive turn is that he has never been an ideologue. He has lodestars—standing up for the middle class, favoring unions, and so on. But those lodestars have led him to varied results. His superpower, it is often said, is possessing "this sense of where the Democratic Party is, where the median of the party is, at a given moment," as Khanna put it. [...] Something progressives admire about Biden is that he is a talented "reasonablizer" of their ideas. As Reich told me, "Biden is almost magical in his ability to make progressivism boring. He can say the same thing that Bernie Sanders has or AOC has and say it in a way that causes your eyes to glaze over." From progressives who are used to even their more modest proposals being tarred as communism, this is a genuine compliment.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2020-04-14): • If you compare Biden’s platform to an absolute concept of liberalism, it is the most progressive. Tracking shifts within his party, Biden has moved to the left compared with where Obama and some previous Democratic nominees stood. [...] "It is one of the reasons that Joe already has what is the most progressive platform of any major-party nominee in history. Because even before the pandemic turned the world upside down, it was already clear that we needed real structural change. The vast inequalities created by the new economy are easier to see now, but they existed long before this pandemic hit." Is it accurate to say that Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history"?
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2020-10-27): But this obscures the dramatic ways in which the country has shifted since 2016, and the ways in which the Democratic Party, and Biden as the leader of it, have shifted with it. It is no exaggeration to say, as former president Barack Obama did, that Biden’s is "the most progressive platform of any major-party nominee in history." [...] Biden has embraced the banning of police chokeholds and a national use-of-force standard, as well as new spending for community policing. And his $640 billion housing plan, funded in part by fees from big banks, would give a $15,000 down-payment tax credit for first-time home-buyers. The list is extensive: doubling Pell Grants, banning workplace discrimination against LGBTQ Americans, protections for domestic workers, removing liability protection for gun manufacturers, two years of free community college, tripling spending on low-income schools, a $15 minimum wage, lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60. And Biden is stocking his transition team with progressive figures devoted to the cause.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2020-08-16): When former Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. becomes the Democratic Party's official nominee for president on Thursday, he will complete two historic and improbable comebacks. [...] But 2020 was far from the first time Biden bid for the White House. His nomination realizes the dream of a recurrent campaign first launched more than three decades ago — in another political era, in another century. No other major party nominee has reached this plateau so many years after their first formal candidacy. [...] This is also a more progressive Democratic Party, as shown by the success of Sanders' two campaigns and the popularity of Warren's stands in 2020. Ideologically, Biden has been generally moderate to center-left, and while he has moved toward Sanders and Warren on health care and other issues since becoming the presumptive nominee, big differences remain.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2020-07-17): Radical politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have already taken advantage of Biden's absence of vision, pushing the presumptive Democratic nominee further left than he's ever been before. While Biden has gone to tremendous lengths to portray himself as a so-called "moderate," his current policy platform has morphed into something that even former President Barack Obama would have been reluctant to run on. "Joe already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history," former President Obama recently said while endorsing Biden. "[E]ven before the pandemic turned the world upside-down, it was already clear that we needed real structural change." Pleased with the ascendancy of his own radical ideology within the Democratic Party, Sanders has effusively praised Biden since the release of the "unity platform," arguing that his new policy platform would make him "the most progressive president since FDR."
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2024-10-05): In the ensuing months Biden outlined a platform that included a number of policies that appealed to progressives. He notably supported government aid to low-income communities, ambitious climate-change legislation, affordable child care, and the expansion of federal health insurance plans, such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which had been enacted during Obama’s presidency. During this time Biden gained a somewhat sizable lead over Trump in nationwide polls, in part due to criticism of the president’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which had caused an economic downturn that rivaled the Great Depression. In August 2020 Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate—she became the first African American woman to appear on a major party’s national ticket—and later that month, he officially was named the Democratic presidential nominee. Although preelection polling had shown Biden with a significant lead in key battleground states, the actual contest proved to be much closer. Nevertheless, Biden and Harris succeeded in rebuilding the so-called "Blue Wall" through the Midwestern Rust Belt states, and on November 7, four days after the election, Biden secured the 270 electoral votes necessary to capture the presidency.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2024-07-21): Biden’s outspoken support for Israel following the deadly Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, and his decision to keep supplying military aid to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government despite the tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties, has provoked dismay and outrage among progressive activists whose support was crucial to his reelection effort. [...] Republicans have labeled the Green New Deal a "socialist manifesto," and Biden repeatedly said during the 2020 campaign that he didn’t support the entire package as written. His own climate policies have included some similarly sweeping provisions, however, including steps meant to achieve net-zero U.S. climate pollution by 2050 and create clean energy, infrastructure, manufacturing and mining jobs. [...] Both Biden and Harris have aligned with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party on trade and took similar positions when they ran against each other during the 2020 primary. But some of Biden’s positions have departed from stances he took as Barack Obama’s vice president.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2024-10-05): Since Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, the Democratic Party has promoted a liberal platform that includes support for Social Security and unemployment insurance.[4][20][21] The New Deal attracted strong support for the party from recent European immigrants but diminished the party's pro-business wing.[22][23][24] From late in Roosevelt's administration through the 1950s, a minority in the party's Southern wing joined with conservative Republicans to slow and stop progressive domestic reforms.[25] Following the Great Society era of progressive legislation under Lyndon B. Johnson, who was often able to overcome the conservative coalition in the 1960s, the core bases of the parties shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic.[26][27] The party's labor union element has become smaller since the 1970s,[28][29] and as the American electorate shifted in a more conservative direction following the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, the election of Bill Clinton marked a move for the party toward the Third Way, moving the party's economic stance towards market-based economic policy.[30][31][32] Barack Obama oversaw the party's passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. During Joe Biden's presidency, the party has adopted an increasingly progressive economic agenda.[33][34]
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2024-07-21): Why he could beat Trump: While Moore is a long-shot candidate to replace Biden, his profile as a compelling public speaker, savvy legislator, and activist has grown his standing among the next generation of Democratic politicians. Moore won the governorship of the Free State in 2022 on a platform of "work, wages, and wealth." His landslide victory crowned him the third elected Black governor in American history. Since taking office, Moore has hewed to a progressive platform of police reform, increased funding to public education, gun control, and health care reform.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2023-07-13): We don’t need to have major-party presidential nominees to have a conversation about a third-party spoiler candidate affecting the 2024 presidential election. Faced with the prospect of a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, at least two alternatives have already emerged: The bipartisan No Labels organization is working toward fielding a centrist presidential ticket, while Cornel West, a well-known public intellectual and political progressive, has launched a bid for the Green Party’s nomination. [...] To be clear, third-party campaigns don’t have to care one iota about how their presence might affect an election. They want to offer something they believe the major parties aren’t giving voters, in this case an unambiguously progressive platform (West) or a bipartisan and centrist-minded approach (No Labels). However, No Labels in particular has found itself mired in conversations about how it might potentially help Trump. Some former friends of No Labels, such as the centrist Democratic outfit Third Way and moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill, have criticized its efforts because they might benefit Trump. No Labels’s connections to some GOP donors have also prompted accusations that the group’s presidential campaign is a vehicle aimed at — wittingly or not — helping Trump win, a claim No Labels rejects.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2021-01-20): But during the Progressive Era, which spanned the turn of the century, the Democrats saw a split between its conservative and more progressive members. As the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, William Jennings Bryan advocated for an expanded role of government in ensuring social justice. Though he lost, Bryan’s advocacy of bigger government would influence the Democratic ideology going forward. [...] The slate of candidates running for president from the Democratic Party in the 2020 election was historically large and diverse. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Corey Booker, Andrew Yang, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Steyer were among the major candidates aiming to take on President Trump. After a slow start to his campaign, former Vice President Joe Biden won his party's nomination. Biden chose California senator Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate, making Harris the first Black and Asian American woman to be named on a major party's ticket. Biden ran as a moderate, and pledged to unify the country after a divisive four years under President Trump. On November 7, Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election; he took office as the 46th U.S. president on January 20, 2021, alongside a fully Democratic Congress.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2020-04-17): Former President Barack Obama endorsed his vice president, Joe Biden, as Democratic nominee, joining former candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren in trying to unite the party. But while Biden is self-isolating at his home in Delaware, President Trump has been dominating headlines and holding regular on-camera briefings. [...] FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (From video.) I’m so proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States. One thing everybody has learned by now is that the Republicans occupying the White House and running the U.S. Senate are not interested in progress; they’re interested in power. We have to look to the future. Bernie understands that and Joe understands that. It’s one of the reasons that Joe already has what is the most progressive platform of any major-party nominee in history, because even before the pandemic turned the world upside down it was already clear that we needed real structural change.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2020-11-08): During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to end private prisons, cash bail, mandatory-minimum sentencing and the death penalty. Candidate Biden also said the U.S. could reduce its prison population by more than half. While he didn’t put forward as progressive or as detailed a platform as many of his competitors for the Democratic nomination (including his running mate Kamala Harris), Biden has nevertheless, quietly, been elected on the most progressive criminal justice platform of any major party candidate in generations. So what can he actually do? [...] Beginning in 1984, Congress passed dozens of laws requiring minimum prison terms for a wide range of crimes, including buying and selling drugs, possessing guns unlawfully, or downloading child pornography. Over the years mandatory minimums have been singled out for leading to decades behind bars or life sentences for possessing or selling tiny amounts of drugs. Biden’s criminal justice platform pledges to eliminate federal mandatory minimums. Biden hasn’t specified which ones, but advocates say if he does tackle them, he will likely focus on drug crimes. [...] Biden’s victory has amplified calls from Democrats to end detention of children in chain-link cages and other Custom and Border Protection holding cells at the border. Biden has said he will not allow separation of children from migrant families, and he can instruct U.S. border authorities to hold young border-crossers in more appropriate government facilities and speed their release.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2024-07-23): Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, known to be a Democratic megadonor, previously told the New York Times Biden should step down as the Democratic party nominee.
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2021-09-29): The alliance has made its presence felt. Joe Biden may be a centrist, but his election campaign was fought on "the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in the modern history of the party", as Justice Democrats purred at the time. [...] Now, though, storm clouds are gathering. Climate progressives felt badly let down by Biden’s infrastructure plan: as Sunrise commented, "so much more is needed to reach the scale of what is necessary to truly transform this country to stop the climate crisis".
Claim: Joe Biden "already has what is the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history." (Barack Obama, 2020-04-14)
Evidence (2024-08-01): Charlotta Spears Bass was the first Black woman nominee for vice president in the United States. She ran on the Progressive Party ticket, which received less than one percent of the popular vote in the 1952 presidential election.