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Can Joe Biden Succeed Where Barack Obama Failed?
拜登會重蹈奧巴馬的覆轍嗎？
BY DAVID SIROTA
作者：大衛·西羅塔
Twelve 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.
在喬·拜登宣誓就任副總統，宣誓為美國帶來希望與變革的12年后，當今的美國希望緊缺，變革的需求更加迫切。進步人士想要借此難得的機會來制定他們的議程，但他們將需要手段強硬，因為拜登還在不斷釋放互相矛盾的信號，而他們已經放棄了過去的機會。拜登許下的每一個轉型變革的承諾，都顯示著他希望安撫意圖摧毀自己總統任期的共和黨。
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 U.S. democracy is under unprecedented siege by an insurrectionist movement encouraged by the outgoing president and his loyalists in Congress.
美國正處于極度危險的境地：每一千個美國人中就有一個死于致命的流行病，而且死亡增長還看不到盡頭。官方稱美國經濟仍在蓬勃發展，但數百萬人正面臨驅逐、破產和饑餓。即使是美國的民主也受到了前所未有的圍攻，這場國會叛亂運動受到了即將離任的總統及其忠實支持者的鼓勵。
The path forward is difficult to envision amid the fog of culture war, political war and the threat of actual, real-life civil war. But it is clear that Biden is at a crossroad and still unsure which way to go. He can follow his boss, Barack Obama, who pursued bipartisanship, comity and compromise—accommodating corporate power. Or he can break toward the path of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who did battle with oligarchy, stood down fascism and welcomed the hatred of the rich.
面臨著文化戰爭、政治戰爭和現實生活中內戰的威脅的重重迷霧，美國前進的道路難以想象。但很明顯，拜登正處于十字路口，仍然不確定該走哪條路。他可以追隨他的老板巴拉克·奧巴馬的方式來控制政權，奧巴馬曾追求兩黨合作、禮讓和妥協。或者他可以向著富蘭克林·德拉諾·羅斯福的道路前進，羅斯福曾與寡頭政治作斗爭，推翻了法西斯主義，并接受仇富。
One thing he cannot do is try to go in both directions. The lesson of the Obama administration is that you can have appeasement or transformative progress, but you almost certainly cannot have both.
拜登不能嘗試向兩個方向走。奧巴馬政府的教訓是，你可以推行綏靖或推行變革，但你幾乎肯定不能兩者兼得。
Obama won the 2008 campaign despite being falsely branded a foreign-born socialist bent on radical redistribution, and he assumed office in a similar cauldron of division and destitution. America's psyche was battered by the Iraq War, and our economy was shredded by a financial crisis that ruined millions of lives. It was his FDR moment—which he used not to forge a new deal that rebalanced the relationship between capital and labor, but to prop up the status quo instead.
奧巴馬贏得了2008年的競選，盡管他被錯誤地貼上了一個外國出生的社會主義者的標簽，致力于激進的再分配，他在類似的分裂和貧困的危及局勢下就職。當時美國精神受到了伊拉克戰爭的重創，經濟也被一場奪走了數百萬人生命的金融危機摧毀。奧巴馬那一刻仿佛化身羅斯福，他并沒有制定一項重新平衡資本和勞動力關系的新政，而是維持現狀。
He backed his predecessor's bank bailout program, but then terminated it in the name of deficit reduction rather than redirect it to aid struggling homeowners.
奧巴馬支持了前任總統小布什的銀行救助計劃，但隨后以削減赤字的名義終止了這項計劃，而沒有變革該計劃以援助陷入困境的房主。
He pushed a stimulus bill, but one that was far too small, which ended up delivering one of American history's slowest economic recoveries.
奧巴馬推動了一項刺激法案，但規模太小，最終實現了美國歷史上最慢的一次經濟復蘇。
He promised a change from a Bush administration that had tried to privatize Social Security, but then formed his own commission to try to slash the program.
奧巴馬承諾改變小布什政府試圖將社會保障私有化的做法，但隨后成立了自己的委員會試圖削減這一計劃。
He championed a slightly more liberal version of Republican health care reform, but steered clear of a more contentious fight for a public health insurance option or Medicare for All.
奧巴馬支持將共和黨提出的醫療改革變得自由化一點，但避開了為公共醫療保險或全民醫保而進行的更具爭議性的斗爭。
He touted getting tough on Wall Street, but his administration refused to prosecute bank executives, refused to force financial institutions to accept mortgage losses and refused to break up the biggest banks.
奧巴馬吹噓要對華爾街采取強硬措施，但他的政府拒絕起訴銀行高管，拒絕強迫金融機構接受抵押貸款損失，拒絕分拆最大的銀行。
And he effectively shielded the George W. Bush administration from any systematic investigation into its Iraq War lies and its lawless torture regime, out of "a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."
他還有效地保護了小布什政府，使小布什免受有關伊拉克戰爭謊言和非法酷刑制度的任何系統調查，因為他“相信我們需要向前看，而不是向后看”
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