Man, I hate to say it but I've never gotten in the least why people are saying that Trump is anything like Biden. From outside they couldn't look more different, in terms of policy and personality, and Biden's speechifying lately has seemed.. quite good. Miles better than Trump and his 40-word vocabulary.
Some of the other stuff, like "Biden won't tax the rich" also seems way off. Taxes are Congress's domain, after all, so not much to do with him unless he vetoes it, and I really can't see him vetoing even very significant tax hikes. Maaaybe a wealth tax, but I'm far from convinced one would really be necessary.
There's a couple of other angles that don't make sense. Biden's campaign had basically no money, and that limited it's ability to spend and build a ground game. If Biden was really bankrolled by all these huge donors, it would have shown up with much more wall to wall bought coverage.. but none of that happened. Also, if he was really the one establishment tool, why were there so many other moderates running? Support only went behind him because he was top moderate, not the one chosen tool, and he was top moderate due to.. votes.
If you want a place where the executive can make a difference on tax policy, the place for that is enforcement. And if he's elected, we'll enter the post-trump era where every reporter on the planet will want to see the paid-off fat cats through Trumps stock manipulation put through the wringer, along with the outright incompetents and fraudsters he put in charge of basically every federal law enforcement agency gone. Those are the difference-makers in the executive branch, and I'm pretty damn sure there will be some competent people placed there, under Biden.
So, in summary, I don't see why Biden would be anything like Trump. From outside, here's what I've seen as important actions by Trump:
Gutting federal law enforcement agencies, by filling them with toadies and incompetents. Funny enough, many of the people appointed by Obama turned out to be annoyingly hard to corrupt and made it take several years for Trump to root them out and render the agencies the nonfunctional shells they are today.
Stacking the courts. Filling them with essentially the entire lineup of available right-wing toadies and incompetents will eventually render them incapable of saying no to any actions made for progress. The reason you still have expanded medicare and the privileges associated with such is entirely because the Trump organization has lost so many attempts to remove those protections through the courts. Here's a summary, and it might be a bit of an eye-opener:
https://policyintegrity.org/trump-court-roundupBiden won't be appointing judges who will be willing to vote to remove those protections from people. Also note how many Republican-appointed judges who concur with them. It's Trumpism that is pushing for that sort of bullshit, not the moderates.
The last, and possibly most important thing is the normalization of governmental dysfunction. Ignoring congressional subpoenaes? Firing people for talking to congress? Hiding negotiations behind super-classified directions? Claiming any and all investigations are lies? Claiming epidemics are simply hoaxes? Banning funding for climate research?
The single most basic element necessary to a democratic government is the element of choice. And in order to make a reasonable choice, information is required.
The reason for Putin's survival in Russia is largely because a good chunk of the Russian population can't see there being any reasonable alternatives to him. This was done through outright murder, attacks on journalists, lethal or otherwise, international assassinations, jailing of political opponents, etcetera. These aren't exaggerations or such, but actual things that he has done in order to retain power. For all that I've heard of the evils of the Democratic establishment, Sanders hasn't been arrested, has a seat in the Senate, has held huge rallies across the country at multiple locations, and has ran for president previously. It's simple and easy to find information on what his views are and what he wants to do.
That's.. not what it's like for Trump. If you want to find out the actuals of what he's done? Well, his talks with foreign governments are impossibly classified. FOIA requests are heavily redacted when they are available. Political opponents are to be investigated, both by domestic and foreign governments. Hell, you can't even find out how much he's paying himself to golf at his own resort, (via charging the secret service) because they stopped sending that information to Congress after year one. In general, you aren't allowed to know thing one about your own government with him in charge.
Biden.. well, he isn't like that. I can see reasons for people to prefer Sanders, both as a candidate and in terms of policy, but I don't see how you can call Biden anything like Trump. And supporting a wannabe dictator under whom there may not be another meaningful election simply because Biden may not do some things you want to see happen.. well.. that I don't understand.
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