Lightning Knight posted:

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Also when did "electoralism" become pejorative

Typo posted:

as someone who was much more bullish on biden's chances than almost everyone else itt Biden is currently on track to poll 4/5th by Jan 2020

the actual policy questions from the 1970s could be overcame, the problem is that Biden is clearly no longer the Biden who fought Paul Ryan in 2012. It's clear the dude is starting to have senior moments and is not there 100% of the time anymore. Almost every actual voter in the D base care the most about taking down TRUMP and wants a fighter to go in there and rip the guy's face off, the Biden of 2012 certainly looked to be that person but the Biden of 2020 is Mr.Senile and nobody would pick him to go after Trump instead of <insert candidate>.

Pembroke Fuse posted:

Capitalist interests are often at odds with each other and treating the capitalist class as a monolith is ahistorical and not particularly coherent (even from a purely Marxist perspective, capitalism is supposed to be "anarchic" after all). Being a part of a class doesn't grant you a revelatory understanding of what is and isn't profitable and what does and does not satisfy your class interests in the short or long term (i.e. CEO as long-term manager vs. CEO as resource plunderer). Class-consciousness, in the sense of knowing you're part of a class or what your class interests actually are, is neither guaranteed nor automatic. Capitalists are just as likely to fall for bad narratives and their own propaganda as anyone else.

That said, while there's a good chance that some capitalists would see the personal benefits of M4A... the overwhelming narrative around M4A is that it's anti-capitalist, and therefore has the "slippery slope" quality of leading to further democratization of resources (and additional taxes). That's the part around which capitalists would build their opposition to M4A (even if taxes going up on them specifically isn't true).

Mellow Seas posted:

Proponents of M4A should say it’s good for businesses because that will make the policy seem Smart and Sober and Responsible to a certain type of voter, and the mechanism by which it could hypothetically benefit businesses (lower costs) is easy to explain and understand. And if business owners and corporations say they don’t actually want it, just double down and repeat that it’s good for them anyway.

That’s Republican-style messaging: if you can make an argument for something, do so, whether it’s “true” or not. Except instead of Evil Republican poo poo, this would be in the service of the greatest American reform in 70+ years.

Wicked Them Beats posted:

Polls don't really matter, so saying that the debates changed the poll results is not a defense of debates mattering.

Also that Iowa poll is weird, since it's showing that Biden's support held more or less steady (the most recent Iowa polls had him at 30 and 24 points) but Harris surged via taking Bernie Sanders and Buttigieg voters? That's an odd coalition if accurate. Guess we'll need to wait and see if it's an outlier or not.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Eh, not really. There are still plenty of plausible paths for Bernie. They just involve two of the following three things happening:

1) Biden has to keep stepping on his own dick (highly likely)

2) Kamala Harris has to collapse somehow (moderately to reasonably likely, definitely plausible)

3) Warren's support has to drop down (another DNA test style flub could do this easily)


Any two of those happen and Bernie has a decent chance of gaining enough support that he moves into the lead. #2 and #3 aren't wildly likely but neither is impossible and the chance of one or the other happening is decent.

EDIT: oh yeah or 4) unusually high pro bernie youth turnout

Majorian posted:

It helps that Biden still has enough time and resources to start hitting back at Harris. I think he's doomed, but hopefully he'll take her down with him.

MSDOS KAPITAL posted:

Both Bernie and Warren are going until March at least.

quote:

Bernie Sanders’ campaign says more of his donors work for Walmart than any other company
Hayley Peterson, Business Insider US

--Walmart was the top employer of donors to Sen. Bernie Sanders‘ presidential campaign during the second fundraising quarter of the year, Sanders’ campaign said Tuesday.

--The campaign said it raised $18 million during the quarter.

--Other leading employers of Sanders’ donors included Amazon, Starbucks, Target, and the US Postal Service, the campaign said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ attacks against Walmart may be helping fundraising efforts for his presidential campaign.

Sanders’ campaign said Tuesday that it raised $18 million during the second fundraising quarter of the year, and that Walmart was the top employer of his donors for the period.

Other leading employers of Sanders’ donors included Amazon, Starbucks, Target, and the US Postal Service. More than 99% of donations were $100 or less, according to the campaign.

Sanders’ campaign said the data indicates that support for the Vermont senator – who has been an outspoken critic of Walmart, Amazon, and other large corporations – is coming from “working people.”

“While other candidates court big money at fancy fundraisers, this campaign is supported by teachers, retail workers, and nurses who are putting what little money they have behind the one candidate who can bring about the transformative change this country needs,” Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in a statement.

It’s also possible that these statistics are simply a reflection of the general US population, as Walmart and Amazon are the top private employers in the US.

Read more: Bernie Sanders accuses Walmart of paying ‘starvation wages,’ attacks the CEO’s pay, and praises Amazon

Sanders has called on Walmart to raise its starting wages to $15 per hour. He attended Walmart’s annual shareholders’ meeting in June and accused the company of paying “starvation wages ” that “are so low that many of these employees are forced to rely on government programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and public housing in order to survive.”

He also attacked Walmart CEO Doug McMillon’s compensation, which reached nearly $24 million last year.

“Frankly, the American people are sick and tired of subsidizing the greed of some of the largest and most profitable corporations in this country,” Sanders said at the meeting.

Walmart last year raised its starting wages to $11 an hour.

Oh Snapple! posted:

Well yeah, sticking to something requires the kind of conviction she's not interested in.

Midgetskydiver posted:

There is a stark difference between knowingly saying something is false, and placing a little too much faith in one's own family members being correct about lineage. Her siblings and other family members have stated that they had a relative who was socially ostracized because everyone thought she had native blood. Turns out that was probably not the case but the belief did cause a rift in her family that was real. Warren herself mentions that the relative essentially had to elope in order to get married.

All this to say, as an Oklahoman myself, this sort of thing is very common. Family genealogies in places like Oklahoma from 1880-1960 were extremely janky because there weren't really any strong social institutions to keep detailed family records. This is true all across America in the 19th century (most American genealogies are extremely well kept once you get back to Europe, record keeping in the US was poo poo due to the Catholic Church, the main authority on family records, being a minority religious institution). Plenty of people in OK believe they have native ancestry when they don't, and not all of them are racist liars- some people just genuinely don't know and have gone through situations like Warren where the assumption of native blood wasn't a ploy to get ahead, it was an understandable mistake.

Should people be more diligent in finding out the truth of their ancestry? Sure. Did Warren act pretty tone deaf on this? Yeah. Should you be calling her "a liar" and accusing her of lying "for decades" given her nuanced family response to this? You can, but you sound like someone just trying to win the Leftist purity contest rather than someone making an argument in good faith.

Shear Modulus posted:

if you want trump to lose and you dont care which not-trump wins you clearly shouldnt be supporting warren and by all evidence should be backing biden

Failed Imagineer posted:

If he can lift the sword then who are we to argue

Jaxyon posted:

You know, if just one of these times, the response was like "yeah, there's some sexism involved with people's dislike of Warren and that's something we need to take into account, even if that's not the only reason" I'd shut up.

But I don't think I've ever seen that happen. So I keep bringing it up.

Craptacular! posted:

Question to the people who talk labor: isn’t working these sorts of poo poo Jobs a ladder for people with a terrible employment history? If you have huge, gaping holes in your history I can see opting to do some kind of unpaid campaign job simply to show the next employer you did something.

This has always kind of been my quiet concern with the labor/union politics, it seems designed to benefit those who already are in the system by denying opportunity to people who fell through the cracks in some way. (Edit: I guess in Bernie’s ideal world a jobs guarantee is supposed to address this, but man I feel there’s better ways to address poverty.)

Majorian posted:

Many will grudgingly coalesce around Warren for the nomination, some will vote 3rd party in Nov. 2020, and, as you've seen, some will abandon electoralism altogether. Those of us who lose the toxx will probably come back very quickly; we'll just have different outlooks on where the country goes after all this is over.

Grapplejack posted:

I like the idea that if Bernie fails it's time to abandon the idea of democracy altogether and become the pro-authoritarian left, as if that is at all a good idea

Iamgoofball posted:

as a previous bernie donator and a current bernie donator, i support bernie and will be voting for him but if he drops out beforehand i can see why people would shift over to supporting warren as a result

or maybe they should just merge their campaigns like voltron and go for a bernie/warren pres/vp ticket

i mean, who else are my fellow bernie supporters going to vote for, the cop? biden?

Typo posted:

I think "New Age cult" are not "authentically American" but rather cultural appropriation from many older non-white traditions by Americans

MSDOS KAPITAL posted:

lol

figures I'd suggest getting back to real primary chat and get a LinYutang shitpost for my troubles

Your Boy Fancy posted:

And it’s incredibly telling that saying “Bernie can’t win, his supporters are assholes and his message gets lost in the belligerence” triggers a chorus of FOOL! CENTRIST! BIDEN LOVER! MSNBC WATCHER! This is my point. The majority of the last day in this thread was a parade extolling the virtues of the vaccine-skeptic self-help-for-profit joke candidate, because at least she was never a Republican at some point. Prester Jane could write a whole chapter in her book on cults on the compaction cycle that went on here. Y’all made mcmagic sound reasonable.

mormonpartyboat posted:

open question: "but how will we pay for it?"

The Muppets On PCP posted:

wrap it up bernailures

https://twitter.com/PodSaveAmerica/status/1154866044596609024

Mellow Seas posted:

The “good” thing about the Kamala plan is that it’s absolute poo poo electorally because it enthusiastically limits itself to an extremely small portion of the democratic electorate and an even smaller portion of the general electorate. People are generally somewhere between “meh” and “bleh” on programs that help people who aren’t them. Even moreso when the plan is barely helpful for the small group of beneficiaries. That’s one of the reasons we tend took be anti-means testing around here. Anybody who likes that poo poo plan is sure to notice that Warren’s is better and Bernie’s is MUCH better. This does indeed scream “Hillary advisors” loudly and unmistakably.

Reverend Dr posted:

liberals love number fuckery because the more complicated it is, the easier it is for them to pretend that "actually this is good and you don't understand it", scratching both the elitist itch as well as bog standard maintaining plausible deniability to the horrors of the world.

Mellow Seas posted:

Krugman was also a fierce opponent of austerity and debt panic during the recession. That view was depressingly rare in the mainstream. He was very hard on Obama’s attempts to lower deficits and (especially) cut entitlements. He called the stimulus too small, loudly and repeatedly. He was against almost of all of Obama’s economic feints to the right.

I don’t know what his bugaboo is with single payer but generally speaking he’s on the party’s left.

Pembroke Fuse posted:

Krugman was one of Obama's policy booster, AFAIK. He hasn't even hopped on the "neo-Keynesianist" train like Danni Roderik and others.

Mellow Seas posted:

Or maybe he just disagrees with you.

quote:

The Plot Against Medicare

Paul Krugman APRIL 20, 2007

The plot against Social Security failed: President Bush’s attempt to privatize the system crashed and burned when the public realized what he was up to. But the plot against Medicare is faring better: the stealth privatization embedded in the Medicare Modernization Act, which Congress literally passed in the dead of night back in 2003, is proceeding apace.

Worse yet, the forces behind privatization not only continue to have the G.O.P. in their pocket, but they have also been finding useful idiots within the newly powerful Democratic coalition. And it’s not just politicians with an eye on campaign contributions. There’s no nice way to say it: the N.A.A.C.P. and the League of United Latin American Citizens have become patsies for the insurance industry.

To appreciate what’s going on, you need to know what has been happening to Medicare in the last few years.

The 2003 Medicare legislation created Part D, the drug benefit for seniors — but unlike the rest of Medicare, Part D isn’t provided directly by the government. Instead, you can get it only through a private drug plan, provided by an insurance company. At the same time, the bill sharply increased payments to Medicare Advantage plans, which also funnel Medicare funds through insurance companies.

As a result, Medicare — originally a system in which the government paid people’s medical bills — is becoming, instead, a system in which the government pays the insurance industry to provide coverage. And a lot of the money never makes it to the people Medicare is supposed to help.

In the case of the drug benefit, the private drug plans add an extra, costly layer of bureaucracy. Worse yet, they have much less ability to bargain for lower drug prices than government programs like Medicaid and the Veterans Health Administration. Reasonable estimates suggest that if Congress had eliminated the middlemen, it could have created a much better drug plan — one without the notorious “doughnut hole,” the gap in coverage once your annual expenses exceed $2,400 per year — at no higher cost.

Meanwhile, those Medicare Advantage plans cost taxpayers 12 percent more per recipient than standard Medicare. In the next five years that subsidy will cost more than $50 billion — about what it would cost to provide all children in America with health insurance. Some of that $50 billion will be passed on to seniors in extra benefits, but a lot of it will go to overhead, marketing expenses and profits.

With the Democratic victory last fall, you might have expected these things to change. But the political news over the last few days has been grim.

First, the Senate failed to end debate on a bill — in effect, killing it — that would have allowed Medicare to negotiate over drug prices. The bill was too weak to have allowed Medicare to get large discounts. Still, it would at least have established the principle of using government bargaining power to get a better deal. But in spite of overwhelming public support for price negotiation, 42 senators, all Republicans, voted no on allowing the bill to go forward.

If we can’t even establish the principle of negotiation, a true repair of the damage done in 2003 — which would require having Medicare offer seniors the option of getting their drug coverage directly, without involving the insurance companies — seems politically far out of reach.

At the same time, attempts to rein in those Medicare Advantage payments seem to be running aground. Everyone knew that reducing payments would be politically tough. What comes as a bitter surprise is the fact that minority advocacy groups are now part of the problem, with both the N.A.A.C.P. and the League of United Latin American Citizens sending letters to Congressional leaders opposing plans to scale back the subsidy.

What seems to have happened is that both groups have been taken in by insurance industry disinformation, which falsely claims that minorities benefit disproportionately from this subsidy. It’s a claim that has been thoroughly debunked in a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — but apparently the truth isn’t getting through.

Public opinion is strongly in favor of universal health care, and for good reason: fear of losing health insurance has become a constant anxiety of the middle class. Yet even as we talk about guaranteeing insurance to all, privatization is undermining Medicare — and people who should know better are aiding and abetting the process.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Yeah, I don't think Krugman is willfully malicious I just think he's a Badly Burned Leftie Boomer who's learned helplessness and is terminally afraid that better things aren't possible.

A lot of older lefties just have terminal post-Reagan PTSD and can't dare to dream of anything further left than Bill Clinton.

Arist posted:

This is some hardcore revisionist history, Trump is not actually good at debate, he's just good at sucking all the air out of the room in an overcrowded field

Slowpoke! posted:

Well if you want a real world example, I live in Canada and OHIP does not include dental, prescription drugs, or other types of insurance such as accidental death, etc. The private insurance through my employer supplements those things.

The two companies that I have had (Manulife & Desjardin) also provide our Retirement Savings plans, so I’m not 100% sure this would be an apples for apples comparison as to how these companies would exist, but there would likely be a role for private insurance companies to fill. It just wouldn’t be as profitable.

Chilichimp posted:

I know why she won't give them the answer, because it's a stupid loving question that absolutely will be used against her...

But there's no winning here. Now they'll just say she's won't admit that taxes will go up WHAT ELSE IS SHE HIDING!?!?!?!?!

BENGHAZI 2 posted:

When Dredd says he's the law it's not a good thing so maybe don't evoke that

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

It's been a while admittedly but I'm pretty sure the post debate polling data does not support that assertion, and Clinton got a relative bump from every debate. It just wasn't enough / didn't last.

Jaxyon posted:

Throwing red meat to his base was something he was already doing. It didn't move the needle on non-white voters because they weren't willing to overlook his racism in favor of his faux populism.

Hillary said the right thing for a lot of her voters as well.

Debates are stupid.