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Can Joe Biden Succeed Where Barack Obama Failed?
拜登会重蹈奥巴马的覆辙吗？
BY DAVID SIROTA
作者：大卫·西罗塔
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.
在乔·拜登宣誓就任副总统，宣誓为美国带来希望与变革的12年后，当今的美国希望紧缺，变革的需求更加迫切。进步人士想要借此难得的机会来制定他们的议程，但他们将需要手段强硬，因为拜登还在不断释放互相矛盾的信号，而他们已经放弃了过去的机会。拜登许下的每一个转型变革的承诺，都显示着他希望安抚意图摧毁自己总统任期的共和党。
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.
美国正处于极度危险的境地：每一千个美国人中就有一个死于致命的流行病，而且死亡增长还看不到尽头。官方称美国经济仍在蓬勃发展，但数百万人正面临驱逐、破产和饥饿。即使是美国的民主也受到了前所未有的围攻，这场国会叛乱运动受到了即将离任的总统及其忠实支持者的鼓励。
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.
面临着文化战争、政治战争和现实生活中内战的威胁的重重迷雾，美国前进的道路难以想象。但很明显，拜登正处于十字路口，仍然不确定该走哪条路。他可以追随他的老板巴拉克·奥巴马的方式来控制政权，奥巴马曾追求两党合作、礼让和妥协。或者他可以向着富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福的道路前进，罗斯福曾与寡头政治作斗争，推翻了法西斯主义，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.
拜登不能尝试向两个方向走。奥巴马政府的教训是，你可以推行绥靖或推行变革，但你几乎肯定不能两者兼得。
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.
奥巴马赢得了2008年的竞选，尽管他被错误地贴上了一个外国出生的社会主义者的标签，致力于激进的再分配，他在类似的分裂和贫困的危及局势下就职。当时美国精神受到了伊拉克战争的重创，经济也被一场夺走了数百万人生命的金融危机摧毁。奥巴马那一刻仿佛化身罗斯福，他并没有制定一项重新平衡资本和劳动力关系的新政，而是维持现状。
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.
奥巴马支持了前任总统小布什的银行救助计划，但随后以削减赤字的名义终止了这项计划，而没有变革该计划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.
奥巴马推动了一项刺激法案，但规模太小，最终实现了美国历史上最慢的一次经济复苏。
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.
奥巴马承诺改变小布什政府试图将社会保障私有化的做法，但随后成立了自己的委员会试图削减这一计划。
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.
奥巴马支持将共和党提出的医疗改革变得自由化一点，但避开了为公共医疗保险或全民医保而进行的更具争议性的斗争。
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.
奥巴马吹嘘要对华尔街采取强硬措施，但他的政府拒绝起诉银行高管，拒绝强迫金融机构接受抵押贷款损失，拒绝分拆最大的银行。
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."
他还有效地保护了小布什政府，使小布什免受有关伊拉克战争谎言和非法酷刑制度的任何系统调查，因为他“相信我们需要向前看，而不是向后看”
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
