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Frightening Knight posted:The moment Biden announces he's running people are going to start passing around collages of him inappropriately touching women a quarter of his age where they look clearly uncomfortable and he's going to crash and burn. .
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Oct 30, 2018 17:14
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Frightening Knight posted:The moment Biden announces he's running people are going to start passing around collages of him inappropriately touching women a quarter of his age where they look clearly uncomfortable and he's going to crash and burn. It's also surprising how many people have forgotten just what a lousy campaigner he is in his own right. The man has run for president before and he makes a royal hash of it each time, and the main reason he came off as well as he did as bottom of the ticket in 2008 and 2012 is being paired with a once-in-a-generation-caliber campaigner like Obama.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:56
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Biden is a tree stump he wont be president. He basically did nothing as vp,while he made some okay speeches hes not presidential. He just doesnt have the umpf
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Oct 30, 2018 18:25
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Ytlaya posted:Like, the whole lesson from Obama should have been that having a likable personality does not translate to having good politics. But it does mean a hell of lot in terms of whether you can win. Pretending that politics is all rational and position based is what got a lot of people to go for Hillary Clinton in 2016. We need to acknowledge that getting into the US government is a lot more like winning a high school student council election than we want to admit.
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Oct 30, 2018 18:36
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Brony Car posted:But it does mean a hell of lot in terms of whether you can win. So you want a good candidate who will turn around and govern horribly? That's your ultimate desire? Personally I'd rather have a good candidate who will govern well. You know, Bernie. It is actually shocking to me that people want another Obama consider how much of a failure his presidency was.
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Oct 30, 2018 18:47
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the kind of people clamoring for another obama his presidency wasn't necessarily a failure for them
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Oct 30, 2018 18:51
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WampaLord posted:So you want a good candidate who will turn around and govern horribly? No. I just want primary voters to stop choosing unelectable people who bungle the campaign stage. A good candidate is one who has good positions and can also handle herself or himself publicly. A candidate who is good and then becomes garbage in office isn't what I consider a good candidate. And as far as governing well... I think it's wait and see for Bernie. You might just get years of gridlock (which is still much better than, say, Trump with a GOP rubber stamp).
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Oct 30, 2018 18:53
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Brony Car posted:No. I just want primary voters to stop choosing unelectable people who bungle the campaign stage. I mean you'll likely get years of gridlock regardless of who the Democratic president is, at least if Bernie is there he can posit ideology that might nudge the country to the left.
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Oct 30, 2018 18:55
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Brony Car posted:No. I just want primary voters to stop choosing unelectable people who bungle the campaign stage. There is literally no one the Democrats could run that the GOP won't attempt to stonewall and gridlock the Congress, no one at all. Consequently, there's no reason for the Dems to hamstring themselves in the pointless quest to find someone "reasonable" or "moderate" enough to pass muster with the other party (since that person does not, and I'm increasingly convinced can not, exist). Not that the idiots won't try anyway, of course.
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Oct 30, 2018 18:56
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Brony Car posted:No. I just want primary voters to stop choosing unelectable people who bungle the campaign stage. The problem is that "unelectable" translates either to "too minority" or "too lefty" to political types.
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Oct 30, 2018 19:00
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Brony Car posted:No. I just want primary voters to stop choosing unelectable people who bungle the campaign stage. The good positions (plus some background to make the person a reliable supporter of them) should be a prerequisite, with other stuff only being considered after-the-fact to compare otherwise-similar candidates. It is also obvious that many ideas of "electability" aren't accurate. Like, Beto is someone who I feel appeals to a specific kind of person (like educated young adults who work in white collar professions), but I dont think he'd necessarily have much broader appeal (like Obama managed to have). Edit: A lot if people argue "well, the most important thing is winning! I'd rather have a mediocre Democrat than a Republican!", but that relies on the false assumption that we can clearly anticipate whether a candidate's "electability" is even higher or lower to begin with, and whether it'll cost the election regardless. And a lot if the time the sort of people making these judgements in the media aren't representative of the wider population (see: people calling Hillary electable in 2016). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 19:41
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Obama, a business friendly sycophant who loved bombing the poo poo out of countries and passing trillion dollar bail out packages for banks at the expense of the people, put up milquetoast weenie Merrick Garland for a Supreme Court seat as a show of bipartisanship. He made the most fawning moderate pick he could have with a seat that was his to install whatever left wing judge he wanted (he wanted the milquetoast weenie though). He did everything he could to work with the Republicans and prevent gridlock short of getting on his knees in the Senate chamber and fellating Mitch McConnell. Obama even refused to use any 'dirty tricks' to get a recess confirmation to show everyone how committed he was to fair play and shame the Republicans. The Republicans kicked dirt in his face and stonewalled for a year, then got literal rapist and executive apologist Kavanaugh confirmed. I think its time to let this delusion of ever 'getting things done' and 'avoiding gridlock' by electing a moderate Democrat instead of a left winger just die.
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Oct 30, 2018 20:33
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Not a Step posted:Obama, a business friendly sycophant who loved bombing the poo poo out of countries and passing trillion dollar bail out packages for banks at the expense of the people, put up milquetoast weenie Merrick Garland for a Supreme Court seat as a show of bipartisanship. He made the most fawning moderate pick he could have with a seat that was his to install whatever left wing judge he wanted (he wanted the milquetoast weenie though). He did everything he could to work with the Republicans and prevent gridlock short of getting on his knees in the Senate chamber and fellating Mitch McConnell. Obama even refused to use any 'dirty tricks' to get a recess confirmation to show everyone how committed he was to fair play and shame the Republicans. The Republicans kicked dirt in his face and stonewalled for a year, then got literal rapist and executive apologist Kavanaugh confirmed. Do you think the people would have suffered less if obama didnt stop the blood spilling out of our financial system
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Oct 30, 2018 21:40
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Ytlaya posted:It is also obvious that many ideas of "electability" aren't accurate. Like, Beto is someone who I feel appeals to a specific kind of person (like educated young adults who work in white collar professions), but I dont think he'd necessarily have much broader appeal (like Obama managed to have). I think part of Beto's appeal is also that he comes across as a return-to-normalcy: "I'm a well meaning white dude but I'm not racist or sexist, I'm sane, I'm pleasant, I support reasonable policies that will help people." His support isn't *just* white collar (although that's a lot of it, sure). It's also just people who want to look at their representative and think "wow, the person representing me in Congress is *not* a horrible slug person." So, the perfect anti-Cruz candidate. And he does have *some* good policies. He supports (or at least has at several points said he supported) Medicare for All (which, while equivocal, is better than NOT saying you support it), and he has explicitly called for marijuana legalization and purging prior marijuana convictions, for example. Is Beto the white male AOC? No. But he's also, like, not the white male Obama, either. He's at least running non-trivially leftward of even Campaign Obama. He's basically positioning himself as a compromise point between Bernie/AOC and the Democratic Party establishment. That's not as good as Bernie / AOC but it's also a meaningful shift away from the Democratic Party establishment. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 21:59
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LeoMarr posted:Do you think the people would have suffered less if obama didnt stop the blood spilling out of our financial system How did he stop the bleeding or make people's lives any better? Tens of millions of people lost their homes under his watch, student-loan debt reached stratospheric levels, household assets for the vast majority of people declined (and especially for people of color), the job market was flooded with employers hiring contractors over employees so as to avoid paying taxes or providing benefits, health-insurance costs massively multiplied, and he purposely chose to fight for deferring Medicare to age 67 and rolling back social-security benefits. He also expanded our military adventurism, rolled back even more civil rights than Bush had, and increased the military budget. He swapped away restoring Clinton-era tax rates in exchange for a six-month extension of unemployment benefits. He used "bipartisanship" as the figleaf for his neoconservative/neoliberal policies, agreeing to permanently cut $600 million from the community health clinics that Bernie had insisted on in exchange for his ACA vote at a time when we were spending $600 million per week on bombing Libya. Worst of all, that this kind of poo poo was going on under a Dem president who happened to be charismatic and photogenic made every liberal buy into the trope that these were all good things happening. It'll take decades before the damage Obama did to the country and to the Dem party can be reversed--if it ever is.
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Oct 30, 2018 22:08
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https://twitter.com/benyc/status/1057377593723404288
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Oct 30, 2018 22:09
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you're looking at it jackass
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Oct 30, 2018 22:11
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I think if the last 40 years or so had been all Obama like presidencies we'd be OK. Inching society towards a better way would add up. The problem is we keep letting the right wing lurch society towards evil and then we take a half a step back towards decency then they come in go even further to the right. Those idiots lurch, we need to lurch.
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Oct 30, 2018 22:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is Beto the white male AOC? No. But he's also, like, not the white male Obama, either. He's at least running non-trivially leftward of even Campaign Obama. He's basically positioning himself as a compromise point between Bernie/AOC and the Democratic Party establishment. That's not as good as Bernie / AOC but it's also a meaningful shift away from the Democratic Party establishment. I strongly disagree with you on this, it is non a meaningful shift in any sense, it's pure incrementalism. E: VVV To be frank, that's the bare minimum necessary to even call yourself a Dem in my eyes, not anything that should be praised. WampaLord fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 22:16
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WampaLord posted:I strongly disagree with you on this, it is non a meaningful shift in any sense, it's pure incrementalism. Isn't Beto on board with M4A?
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Oct 30, 2018 22:18
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Hellblazer187 posted:I think if the last 40 years or so had been all Obama like presidencies we'd be OK. Inching society towards a better way would add up. The problem is we keep letting the right wing lurch society towards evil and then we take a half a step back towards decency then they come in go even further to the right. Those idiots lurch, we need to lurch. Yeah this is how I feel about it. Obama was not perfect by any means but he was at least trying to be a decent person and actually do good in most (non-military) situations. If we had a long string of Obama-like presidents, we'd be much better off on global warming, international relations, LGBT rights, health care, etc. Would we be a perfect peaceful socialist utopia? Probably not, and that's a shame, but we'd be a lot closer to it than we are now. Back to the subject of the thread, I am a huge fan of Harris. She's an excellent public speaker. As a former attorney general, she has a straightforward no-nonsense way of talking. She's also made it clear in her questioning of folks in Senate hearings that she will not back down from asking tough questions even when her male colleagues chastise her. She's pro-Medicare for all (the most important policy issue from my perspective). She and Booker agree on like 99% of policy issues, but I worry about Booker being from NJ--I don't think it's possible to be involved in NJ politics without getting a little dirty.
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Oct 30, 2018 22:26
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Rosalind posted:Yeah this is how I feel about it. Obama was not perfect by any means but he was at least trying to be a decent person and actually do good in most (non-military) situations. If we had a long string of Obama-like presidents, we'd be much better off on global warming, international relations, LGBT rights, health care, etc. Would we be a perfect peaceful socialist utopia? Probably not, and that's a shame, but we'd be a lot closer to it than we are now. What did Obama do that makes you believe he was trying to be a decent person? Bail out the banks and make the poorest in society suffer the effects to this day?
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Oct 30, 2018 22:42
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WampaLord posted:E: VVV To be frank, that's the bare minimum necessary to even call yourself a Dem in my eyes, not anything that should be praised. Sure, but it's a minimum that the current Democratic Party "frontrunner" by poll numbers -- Joe Biden -- does not meet. Biden has yet to state that he supports Medicare for All or any other single payer alternative. So, like, it should be a minimal requirement, but it isn't currently, so Beto's adoption of it is meaningful progress (especially if he wins).
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Oct 30, 2018 22:49
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seizure later posted:What did Obama do that makes you believe he was trying to be a decent person? Bail out the banks and make the poorest in society suffer the effects to this day? He spent all his political capital trying to extend health insurance to nearly everyone. They had to make some compromises along the way and the final plan was not nearly as good as the one he initially proposed (the loss of the public option was devastating), but for many people (including myself!) the effects of the ACA were a net positive. He pushed for many LGBT rights making me feel safer and offering me more employment protections than I had previously. He put Kagan and Sotomayor on the Supreme Court who are both excellent Justices. The Iran Deal was hugely important. It would have been much easier for him to be hawkish on Iran but instead he brokered a deal.
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Oct 30, 2018 22:49
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seizure later posted:What did Obama do that makes you believe he was trying to be a decent person? Bail out the banks and make the poorest in society suffer the effects to this day? There are millions of people with coverage today that wouldn't have it absent Obamacare. That likely means there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people alive today who wouldn't otherwise be. He raised taxes on the wealthy. He put Sotomayor and Kagan on the court. DACA was an attempt at humanity, which has backfired because of Trump, but the intention was obviously good. There were actions by his EPA to lower pollution limits. Signed Paris agreement. Bank bailout happened under Bush, btw. Hellblazer187 fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 22:50
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WampaLord posted:I strongly disagree with you on this, it is non a meaningful shift in any sense, it's pure incrementalism. This is literally insane. You're defining away movement on this issue by calling it the "bare minimum." I agree it's a bare minimum, I would not support any candidate who wasn't for it, but that doesn't mean its not a meaningful shift.
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Oct 30, 2018 22:53
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And even if the bailouts of the banks and AIG did happen under Obama, at what point was a massive financial sector collapse really going to be a good thing for the US? I understand that no one should be rewarded for failing, but a total credit market collapse goes beyond just sticking it to the 1%.
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Oct 30, 2018 22:54
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Sweet a cop who sees prison slavery as an important tool to balance the budget, what could go wrong
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Oct 30, 2018 22:54
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Brony Car posted:And even if the bailouts of the banks and AIG did happen under Obama, at what point was a massive financial sector collapse really going to be a good thing for the US? Maybe bail out the people who owed money to the banks and recapitalize them that way, rather than handing money to the banks who then needlessly stole everyone's houses anyway and deposited the bailout funds with the treasury for free interest? Nationalize failing banks and take control of their loan portfolios directly like FDR did?
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Oct 30, 2018 22:55
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Wow, I saw the news stories that Trump was seeking to overturn an amendment by executive order and I just sort of figured it was the 14th, not the 22nd!
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Oct 30, 2018 22:57
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VitalSigns posted:Maybe bail out the people who owed money to the banks and recapitalize them that way, rather than handing money to the banks who then needlessly stole everyone's houses anyway and deposited the bailout funds with the treasury for free interest? Yeah I wonder why Obama didn't do that when he was president during 2008. It's just like him too, he didn't do poo poo during Katrina either!
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Oct 30, 2018 22:59
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Brony Car posted:And even if the bailouts of the banks and AIG did happen under Obama, at what point was a massive financial sector collapse really going to be a good thing for the US? Yeah it’s more the fact that banks committed fraud at absolutely incredible levels, destroying generations of wealth all while being too big to prosecute. In some communities the fraudulent foreclosure rate was up to 80%. But Obama, guided by his banker allies, responded by implementing programs that led banks into tricking more people into foreclosure while the public made the bank whole and the real human people got put on the street. This is yet another reason why so many Democratic voters find the conservative message of “return to Obama” in 2020 dooming to this nation.
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Oct 30, 2018 23:03
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Hellblazer187 posted:Yeah I wonder why Obama didn't do that when he was president during 2008. It's just like him too, he didn't do poo poo during Katrina either! HAMP was entirely formed and enacted under Obama, as were the second and third tranches of TARP. In any case, I hope that the Obama legacy of faux-weakness & "bipartisanship" (instead of getting what you & your donors set out to get from the beginning) is as dead for Dems as Biden's candidacy will be six months from now.
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Oct 30, 2018 23:05
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Willa Rogers posted:In any case, I hope that the Obama legacy of faux-weakness & "bipartisanship" (instead of getting what you & your donors set out to get from the beginning) is as dead for Dems as Biden's candidacy will be six months from now. The bailout was passed and signed in October 2008. I'm not defending Obama's record vis a vis his overall management of the crisis, but "the bailout" was Bush (although I think Obama did vote for it as a Senator) Your final point I agree with. We may disagree about whether Obama was trying to be good or not but I think this entire thread is on board with someone closer to Sanders for 2020.
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Oct 30, 2018 23:10
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Hellblazer187 posted:The bailout was passed and signed in October 2008. I'm not defending Obama's record vis a vis his overall management of the crisis, but "the bailout" was Bush (although I think Obama did vote for it as a Senator) The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that crested TARP was basically a blank check for the Treasury Secretary and Geithner had wide latitude to use the funds otherwise than simply buying out Banks bad depts at market value and shielding them from any negative consequences.
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Oct 30, 2018 23:32
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Hellblazer187 posted:I think if the last 40 years or so had been all Obama like presidencies we'd be OK. Inching society towards a better way would add up. The problem is we keep letting the right wing lurch society towards evil and then we take a half a step back towards decency then they come in go even further to the right. Those idiots lurch, we need to lurch. Obama has likened himself to a Reagan Republican and is very much in the vein of Third Way politics championed by the Clintons, so basically we already live in the world that would result from 40 years of Obama rule. Hellblazer187 posted:There are millions of people with coverage today that wouldn't have it absent Obamacare. That likely means there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people alive today who wouldn't otherwise be. He raised taxes on the wealthy. He put Sotomayor and Kagan on the court. DACA was an attempt at humanity, which has backfired because of Trump, but the intention was obviously good. There were actions by his EPA to lower pollution limits. Signed Paris agreement. Bush signed the bank bailout act, but the Obama administration handled the implementation. Obama sacrificed homeowners ('foaming the runway') to keep banks that had ruined themselves afloat, and his justice department failed to send a single banker to prison for their part in the collapse and instead pointed to a big wet fart of a fine as justice for the people. Many of the hyper wealthy came out even wealthier from the bank disaster they engineered while millions of Americans saw their life savings and homes just evaporate. And because the wealthy made more than the poor lost dickhead economists and liberals lined up to praise Obama's economic growth. Obama could have easily nationalized the banking system in order to restructure it, or forced one major bank to eat all the toxic assets and fail (Citibank was almost beyond saving and would have been perfect for this) but Obama's administration willingly sacrificed millions of homeowners to keep the system afloat and in the black. And lets talk about health insurance. Millions of people have coverage they can't afford to use but have to pay for or face massive fines. Have you ever looked at a bronze plan? The deductible would bankrupt any family that relied on it. The ACA was great for the segment of the population with money and pre-existing conditions, it was great for the poor who lived in a state that took the Medicare expansion, and it loving sucked for everyone else. The promised efficiencies never materialized, and instead many families suddenly had another $500 a month in insurance bills for a plan they couldn't afford to use. It sucked. You're defending a pork program that brought jobs to your town at the expense of everyone else. Its great for you but there was a lot of collateral damage. Its a typical trash liberal 'market' plan, and like all trash liberal markets it sucks. Markets suck. Markets are efficient for distributing different flavors of soda, not for providing basic human services. LeoMarr posted:Do you think the people would have suffered less if obama didnt stop the blood spilling out of our financial system A million times yes. Most Americans don't own stock and have no investments. High finance produces nothing of value. It just sloshes money around between dragon hordes and doesn't make or do anything productive.
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Oct 30, 2018 23:32
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I was not aware that former President Barack Obama was running in 2020 for President again, or that we had amended the constitution to allow this. (this is your only warning)
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Oct 30, 2018 23:46
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In summation, there is no such thing as 'moderate Democrat who can avoid the gridlock' because the Republicans will never work with a Democratic president, even one who is falling over backwards to implement conservative policy. In the year of our lord 2018 bipartisanship means doing what the Republicans want and getting nothing in return. Embrace the dysfunction and get someone who *won't* be a collaborator
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Oct 30, 2018 23:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's also just people who want to look at their representative and think "wow, the person representing me in Congress is *not* a horrible slug person." hm, i might have to rethink my support for beto then
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Oct 31, 2018 00:03
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GreyjoyBastard posted:hm, i might have to rethink my support for beto then Yeah, I get why goons arent' generally fans
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Oct 31, 2018 00:14
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