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Who do you wish to win the Democratic primaries? This poll is closed. |
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| Joe Biden, the Inappropriate Toucher |
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18 | 1.46% |
| Bernie Sanders, the Hand Flailer |
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665 | 54.11% |
| Elizabeth Warren, the Plan Maker |
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319 | 25.96% |
| Kamala Harris, the Cop Lord |
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26 | 2.12% |
| Cory Booker, the Super Hero Wannabe |
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5 | 0.41% |
| Julian Castro, the Twin |
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5 | 0.41% |
| Kirsten Gillibrand, the Franken Killer |
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5 | 0.41% |
| Pete Buttigieg, the Troop Sociopath |
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17 | 1.38% |
| Robert Francis O'Rourke, the Fake Latino |
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3 | 0.24% |
| Jay Inslee, the Climate Alarmist |
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8 | 0.65% |
| Marianne Williamson, the Crystal Queen |
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86 | 7.00% |
| Tulsi Gabbard, the Muslim Hater |
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23 | 1.87% |
| Andrew Yang, the $1000 Fool |
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32 | 2.60% |
| Eric Swalwell, the Insurance Wife Guy |
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2 | 0.16% |
| Amy Klobuchar, the Comb Enthusiast |
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1 | 0.08% |
| Bill de Blasio, the NYPD Most Hated |
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4 | 0.33% |
| Tim Ryan, the Dope Face |
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3 | 0.24% |
| John Hickenlooper, the Also Ran |
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7 | 0.57% |
| Total: | 1229 votes | ||
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Lycus posted:Looks like the biggest disconnect between goon reaction and outsider reaction to the debates is Booty Judge. My "parents' reaction" report is the following (they're probably what I'd consider left-leaning liberals, though obviously also boomers: - Dad responded well to Buttigieg (lol) and mom responded well to Gillibrand and one of the random white men - Didn't like Sanders much - Responded well to Warren (this didn't surprise me - my guess is they'll end up wanting to vote for her*, which I'll do my best to prevent) - Was a bit surprised neither responded positively to Harris, since I felt like she gave one of the better showings from the perspective of someone with nothing but the debate itself to go by * Regarding this, my parents (and likely a lot of older people) are under the bizarre misconception that Sanders is unelectable and (this is the weird part) that Warren is very electable. I tried to explain how bizarre that is, given that both Sanders and Biden are the only ones with any reason to perceive as "electable." Also, most older people in general, even if well-intentioned, just seem to fundamentally not "get it." It's like they have some sort of syndrome that makes them incapable of considering the possibility of real change. Part of it is that "legacy media" still has almost 100% control over the opinions of older Americans. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jun 28, 2019 |
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Jun 28, 2019 16:39
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Halloween Jack posted:At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, "electability" is a self-fulfilling prophecy cooked up by the media. How else do you explain the most popular candidates who support the most popular policies being deemed "unelectable" by all of the Very Serious People? That's not really a conspiracy, it's just an undeniable fact. Like I mentioned in my previous post, Sanders and Biden are the only candidates with both significant support and support across a wide set of demographics (Warren fails the second condition). I think that, on a personal level, peoples' opinions about electability are either driven by the media, or are driven by whether they personally find someone likeable (and then they assume that other Americans will feel the same). The one saving grace in this regard about Sanders is that, while his type of speaking and performance in the debate doesn't play well with your average upper-middle class educated white person, it apparently does well with many normal, working-class people. Though unfortunately working class people are heavily underrepresented in the primary.
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Jun 28, 2019 16:48
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One other thing about Bernie is that there's some irony to the fact that the only people who seem concerned about his age are boomers/olds.
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Jun 28, 2019 16:52
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Quorum posted:As a young person who likes him I view it as his biggest flaw; age is demonstrated to cause a decline in some important cognitive functions and it's frustrating to me that the two leftmost people among the top candidates are also two of the oldest. It's a function of the hollowing out of the American left on a governmental level between the rise of Reagan and basically a few years ago, but it definitely isn't good and any of the old farts need to be ready to counter the issue of their age. It's not something that actually makes people not support him with younger people, though (at least to the extent that it makes much of a difference). So in the specific context of "choosing who to support in the primary" it doesn't matter.
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Jun 28, 2019 17:33
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My dad had possibly the strangest take I've heard so far: that Harris is bad because she is like Jesse Jackson. Just a weird mix of racism and ideological incoherence.
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Jun 28, 2019 20:22
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Solaris 2.0 posted:As I have stated before I do not like Harris but this poll makes me feel good because it shows Biden is vulnerable, as many goons predicted he would be. Eh, rather than finish him off, I'd prefer for Harris, Biden, and Warren to split the non-Bernie vote (so this outcome is still good). If I'm being completely honest, I don't think Bernie's support will exceed the net support of people who don't want to vote for him (in the primary; I still think he would perform better than anyone else in the general). If Harris or whoever could successfully clear the field and get the media behind them, I believe they would beat Bernie. It's just too early and there are too many boomers/gen-x-ers still voting. But fortunately there are multiple candidates splitting the older-person vote (mainly Biden, Harris, and Warren), so he can possibly win a plurality.
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Jun 28, 2019 21:18
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Quorum posted:Correct me if I'm wrong but depending on the distribution of the split support between states I'm pretty sure this is likely to lead to a contested convention and aaaaaaaaaaaa please kill me if that happens. I believe this is true, but because I'm pessimistic I also don't see Sanders winning if the rest of the field consolidates early. It's possible I'm being overly pessimistic, though. The advantage of Sanders' huge organizational effort and funds is probably pretty big and will make a big difference in terms of motivating people to get out and vote.
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Jun 28, 2019 22:18
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:I don't really get this sentiment that Warren is a sure loss against Trump. If anything, she strikes me as the sort of candidate that will have the fewest problems when it comes to firing up the Democratic base as a whole. A lot of Bernie voters seem to consider her "good enough" to vote for in the general, but she's also "establishment" enough that liberals and olds won't be afraid to vote for her. Add to that the chance to boot out Trump and she seems like she'd be a lock. I know polls say she does worse than Biden/Bernie against Trump, but polls this far out don't mean poo poo. Warren is unlikely to have the significant crossover appeal Bernie has, and she has also shown that she has very bad political instincts on multiple occasions (like the DNA test thing or the dumb "facts about Elizabeth" thing on her website). Warren is charismatic in a way that appeals specifically to people who are educated and/or higher-income, but those people don't make up as big a portion of the general election (though she has a good chance in the primary). One important thing to keep in mind is that a lot of Bernie's support seems to actually be coming from the sort of people who don't post a bunch on Twitter and what have you. It isn't a coincidence that he has such a big spike for people who make under $55k or who have no college degree. While this subforum may strongly skew left and have a bunch of Bernie supporters, Bernie supporters here probably aren't representative of most of the people who will actually end up voting for him (and this is good). edit: All of this being said, nothing related to electability should ever factor into who someone chooses to vote for. If Warren were actually better than Bernie on the issues, I wouldn't care that she has bad political instincts or whatever. Cerebral Bore posted:The establishment people who say that they're fine with Warren are lying, hth. It's literally the same story everywhere and every time, what they do is pretend to support the second most left candidate and then turn on them once the leftmost alternative has been smoked out. Well, we should hope they're lying! Because if they're being honest, it doesn't say anything good about Warren.
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Jun 28, 2019 22:25
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How are u posted:
GreyjoyBastard posted:I'm alternating between being part of the problem / the joke, and stark terror of my glimpses of our future. No one's "rallying behind" anyone, what is wrong with you people. Literally no one in this discussion is voting for Marianne (and this also makes MainPainframe's earlier comparison to Ron Paul very dumb, since Ron Paul actually had a bunch of posters unironically wanting him to win). People were only arguing that there is no reason to consider her worse than most of the other candidates, and they're 100% correct in that evaluation. This is meant to highlight the amount of immensely harmful and hosed up beliefs and policies that have mainstream acceptance among those other candidates.
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Jun 29, 2019 00:30
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of course the same ol circular firing squad crowd is rallying behind the anti-vax candidate. Of course.
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Basically, the thing notable about the Marianne thing is that people are correctly lambasting her for the vaccine thing, but do not apply nearly the same standard to the other candidates for supporting things at least as harmful (especially when you consider the president's amount of influence in those specific areas). Other candidates being either implicitly or explicitly cool with the violent killing/displacement of thousands/millions abroad and domestically through foreign policy/deportations doesn't warrant the same instant cancellation, even if those posters might say they disagree with it. Heck, the candidates not willing to pursue any significant climate change policy even work better for this comparison. Or those unwilling to significantly change US healthcare policy. None of these things trigger the same "lol get off the stage, you're cancelled" response. And they probably should! It basically ties into the fact that many liberals (and even some on the left) just sort of treat status quo harm as a "default" that doesn't warrant the same sort of reaction as harm associated with departure from the status quo. This also ties into their reactions to Republicans vs. their reactions to Democrats, despite most harm being bipartisan in cause. It's an understandable reaction, but it is still wrong. Solvent posted:1. Warren is going to get the nomination unless there is some kind of gigantic sea change in politics over the next year and a half. Bill Maher said it today to great applause, Bernie is an American hero. I can’t say the only sure shot Democrat’s have is Oprah, but I’ve loved Warren since the financial crisis that defined my generation. Me and my my wife are gonna send in 40 bucks for a pair of T-shirt’s... my wife’s got a plan we worked together on, and I’m really proud of that. It's been kind of creepy seeing a bunch of liberals explicitly echo this "Bernie a great guy and hero, but it's just not his time" stuff. It seems like that's the angle a lot of media is taking to try and thread the needle of arguing against him without having to directly attack his ideas. And I think it helps the liberals in question avoid the cognitive dissonance associated with not supporting the person who is transparently the best on the actual issues.
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Jun 29, 2019 03:29
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A lot of the time I feel like two separate discussions are happening in parallel in situations like this. Some people are arguing about how they perceive politicians as people, while others are arguing about the actual likely material outcomes from electing them. I think this at least partially explains the people who support Warren over Sanders; to them Warren is someone they personally like who just "feels" competent to them (a sentiment which I understand, since I'd probably feel the same if I saw both candidates without knowing anything else about them). But if you're talking about actual likely outcomes, there's not really any question that Sanders is the most reliable advocate for the issues he supports (and he's also just concretely better, even if you trust Warren on things like M4A, simply due to his superior explicit positions on foreign policy and student debt cancellation - and that's ignoring the important points about his general approach to political change/activism, which are arguably the most important reason to support him, even if it's harder to quantify). The pro-Warren arguments usually rely upon treating Warren as a default and finding reasons to dismiss the arguments against her (like with the M4A thing, the simple fact that it's plausible that she supports it is enough for them, when any remotely "objective" assessment would find that it's common sense to support the consistent advocate over the one who has repeatedly changed their position on the issue; it's frankly a strange perspective when you're talking about something with potentially millions of lives hanging in the balance). And while I used Warren as an example because she has the most non-Sanders supporters on this subforum (that's the only reason I focus most of my criticism at her - she's the only other candidate really competing for left-y votes), this is even more true for the non-Sanders/Warren candidates, who most people prefer entirely due to a vague perception of them being nice/competent and representing their mental image of "a president I want." Most people never even find out the various things these candidates have said/done*; they decide entirely based on what they say in debates and ads. * This is part of the reason I think young Americans will end up significantly different politically from older generations. Due to the internet and stuff like Twitter, we generally hear about things politicians have said/done, while older Americans just hear what's on television/radio (or from other old people on Facebook or whatever). Obviously material reality is probably the biggest reason for the political difference, but I think this also plays a role. Even when the posters on this forum disagree about stuff, for example, we're still arguing with each other using actual information about the politicians' histories. This is something that almost all older Americans just don't do.
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Jun 29, 2019 05:23
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HootTheOwl posted:And you shouted them all down and they've left. That's how a forum works. Warren or Harris will make the news again and you'll shout down their supporters again and the thread will be in agreement again. I think you're confusing "disagreed with them in large enough numbers that they weren't comfortable not being among a bunch of people who already agree with them" with "shouting them down" (which is kind of a strange concept in an internet forum). Though in the case of Warren there are still a bunch of her supporters posting here (that's why I tend to focus most of my attention on her; she probably has the most non-Bernie support in D&D). Pinky Artichoke posted:I agree that Bernie will most consistently say things about the things he supports. Outcomes however require doing and that is not his thing. But that is complete nonsense with no actual factual basis. He has a long history of doing a ton of poo poo in Congress. There is no sane, rational reason to trust Warren (or any of the other candidates) to be more effective. You know how you guys get annoyed at how Republicans live in an alternate reality with their own facts? That's basically what it's like seeing comments like this. Cerebral Bore posted:You know, when you're trying to troll you really shouldn't recycle something that was debunked last time around. Eh, I think there's a good chance he/she honestly believes that. I made a comparison to Republicans above, and it's not all that different; they absorb a lot of false things as "common sense" and never even think to question whether those things are true. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Jun 29, 2019 |
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Jun 29, 2019 19:27
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So I had a post all typed out, but as usual joepinetree basically says the same stuff, except better and in 1/5 the words:joepinetree posted:Again, Warren's wealth tax proposal is absolutely silent on enforcement, especially since the US allows for things like anonymous trusts, and since the bulk of wealth can be easily rerouted through foundations, offshore trusts, and offshore accounts. Bernie's 77% estate tax plus 0.5% tax on transfers of financial instruments is not only much more aggressive in its redistributive aspects, not only much more enforceable, but also much more detailed, since they are bills that Bernie has introduced. The frustrating thing is that there's not much we can do to push back against the gut feeling that is instilled in people from the media (plus them just associating Warren's demeanor with "a smart person"). At best, they might read your post and be like "yeah, that makes sense..." but Warren would still be the one that pops into their head when they think "smart policy-crafter." One other aspect that is frustrating to me is that the "weak on race" talking points were (and still are) frequently used against Sanders, while Warren is doing significantly worse with minority groups. I actually don't think this really reflects particularly poorly on her, but it really highlights how cynical those attacks were against Bernie (and unlike Bernie, Warren actually has an honest-to-god legitimate and significant race-based scandal - the DNA test stuff was an actual bad thing she did). generic one posted:Just as a casual observer and infrequent poster, I’ve gotta ask, do you read the posts in this thread, or just skim for tweets and article links? ‘Cause, it’s all over the place. Some dipshit even suggested gulags for people who said they’d be fine with Warren if Sanders wasn’t the nominee. There are literally two (or maybe three?) posters who post like that. Either way it's not common at all, and it's definitely not the real reason people are "driven off" (the real reason is that they're simply not comfortable discussing things when a majority of other posters disagree with them, and it doesn't help that they don't have any responses to their arguments) Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Jun 29, 2019 |
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Jun 29, 2019 20:37
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Z. Autobahn posted:I'm gonna chime in real quick and say that no, it is very much those 3-4 extremely obnoxious posters that make this thread basically unbearable and drove most of us away. Like, you're right that folks like you and Marjoran and even VS, while we disagree, are actually engaging and interesting to talk to and I feel like I often learn something or have a worthwhile conversation. But the "Warren is a fascist and if you back her you're worse than Trump" moron brigade is *really* loving annoying and they post constantly and make this thread unbearable. I think there's just an actual ideological difference (and that actual ideological differences are usually the cause of arguments like this). Those people disagree about where the line between "total garbage politicians" and "non-garbage politicians" is (specifically in regard to Warren). That is an actual opinion someone can have that reflects their worldview, and that worldview can then possibly be debated. The comments they make probably wouldn't bug you if aimed at Republicans, or even conservative Dems, so it's not their tone so much as their content that's the issue. It's possible for both you and them to think Bernie is the best candidate, but to still have different evaluations of the individual candidates. My personal feeling is that, while their opinions are stronger than mine (in that I don't really feel compelled to insult Warren or anything, and I more or less understand where Warren supporters are coming from), I generally agree that it makes more sense to consider Warren one of the "non-Bernie" candidates, rather than consider Bernie and Warren to be part of the same "group" of left-leaning candidates. And I don't really like the idea of just being like "it's fine if you support either Bernie or Warren, since they're both good  " since I actually don't think that's fine; Bernie will need all the votes he can get if he wants to both win and avoid a contested convention.So basically what's really going on here is that people disagree about how bad Warren is. Some people consider speaking badly of her to be ridiculous or insulting, because for those people Warren falls within the realm of what they consider to be good, and even if those people think Bernie is better, the fact that they consider Warren to still be "good" still reveals a real disagreement between them and the people they're bothered by.
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Jun 30, 2019 01:45
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Craptacular! posted:I’m just tired of “well you know (name) will not keep to their promises” as if that’s some kind of tangible negative. You’re predicting the future, and it’s deliberately hard to argue with someone who feels they can prognosticate eventual timelines. This is dumb, because what you're saying basically amounts to "You can never know the future, ergo it's impossible to judge how trustworthy politicians are." While it's impossible to know for sure whether Warren will actually push for single-payer healthcare if elected, it IS possible to say that the change of her not doing so is significantly higher than it would be with Sanders. Also, I have no clue what you're trying to get at with the abortion thing, since there's a pretty fuckin huge difference between "people upset about politicians teasing doing a very important good thing and not doing it" and "people upset about politicians teasing doing something that will cause millions of women to suffer and not doing it." Like seriously, what the gently caress lol, I don't think you thought this out. Imagine I posted the @dril "there is no difference between good things and bad things" tweet joepinetree posted:This is nonsense. Trying to compare Bernie saying that he'd do drone strike against an isolated terrorist (and Bernie specifically highlighting the isolated part) to Warren supporting the bombing of hospitals and schools is either disingenuous or ignorant. Bernie is far from perfect, but there is no comparison here. Also the idea that it is too early for it to matter in the campaign and that is why they are all so bad is ridiculous once you realize that every single front runner is either a currently sitting senator or former vice president with very long records. As for Warren, she signed a letter against Obama's abstention at the security council in 2016, voted for the Iran sanctions bundled with Russia stuff in 2017, voted for Trump's increase in the military budget for 2018, and defended sanctions on Venezuela in 2019. The idea that the foreign policy records of the people running are either incomplete, underdeveloped or unknown is ridiculous. To be "fair," I think that poster is actually just pretty right-wing in terms of foreign policy, rather than one of the people trying to claim that Warren is left-wing. Like, they list Bernie being "soft" on Russia and opposing trade deals (I guess referring to NAFTA/TPP) as bad things. Craptacular! posted:It doesn’t stop a lot of (probably white) posters from saying that a woman of color will lose black voters because of how she’s more racist to POC than the white guy. I can’t speak for POC but that’ll never stop being hilarious to me. Uh, is it just me or are you basically saying "PoC will support the PoC candidate even if they're more racist to PoC"? That seems like a kinda messed up thing to think! Cerebral Bore posted:How exactly is this supposed to work? Even if we assume that you're right it doesn't matter how much to how little you try to do unless there's some seismic shift in Congress, because the usual suspects will just stonewall any and all progressive legislation no matter what. To me this just sounds like Hillmen back in the day insisting that Clinton would somehow get her agenda through a hostile Congress by dint of some monomaniacal act of willpower, and that's why she's better than Bernie. It's basically an attempt to retroactively rationalize their choice to support Warren (which initially stemmed from a "gut feeling" that she's good/competent). Unfortunately for them, there isn't really anything concrete to point to if you're trying to argue that Warren is better, so they don't really have any choice but to resort to weird things like that. It's actually kind of interesting to compare with the Hillary arguments from 2016; in 2016 the argument was a fairly straight-forward one of "Bernie's ideas won't pass and Hillary's are more pragmatic." But this time around their argument actually relies on the idea that Warren is actually going to support the same things as Bernie! So they can't rely on the pragmatic angle and need to come up with something else. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Jun 30, 2019 |
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Jun 30, 2019 07:47
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Craptacular! posted:Yes, I’m using false equivalency here because it’s not a debate about morals, it’s the old incrementalism talk. It was said here long ago that if a Obama really wanted a public option, he should have pushed for single payer. He didn’t, and we got what we did now. The far right has long bitched about GOP presidents not giving them exactly what they want right now, but the incremental changes of the past 19 years has made things very lovely indeed. You're arbitrarily drawing the line between "incremental" and "absolutist" in a way that is convenient to you, but not in a way that makes any logical sense. M4A is itself not a full solution; it doesn't actually nationalize most of the industries involved in providing healthcare. And the more important difference is that the "incremental" alternatives to left-wing ideas are proposed specifically because the people proposing them want to avoid the outcome the left desires. This is not true for the Republicans, who generally share the desires of their base (or at least don't have a problem with them). Craptacular! posted:No, I’m just saying I’m tired of white posters telling me they know what minority voters want. There was a black guy on Hardball a few days ago who said an “ethnic minority” absolutely must be a part of every ticket from now on, which seemed to me a little much, but hearing it from him was better than hearing from, like, I’m just gonna guess like 80% of the people here. Well, there's kinda a few separate things here and it's not clear what you're talking about. One is evaluating how good a candidate's policies are for minority groups, which is obviously fine and it's dumb to be opposed to that or care about who's saying it. Another is stating the result of polls; for example, it is a fact that certain candidates poll better or worse with different minority groups, and it's fine to push back against false narratives that are directly contradicted by this (though it's bad to attribute this to those candidates being better/worse on minority issues, or to act like those poll results are some 100% reliable or permanent thing). The only real situation where what you're saying makes sense is when someone is talking about whether they personally trust a candidate to be an advocate for their group.
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Jun 30, 2019 18:59
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DeadlyMuffin posted:This tweet seems pretty innocuous to me. Good thing you're here to read between the lines and let us know she actually meant "American Empire Forever!" Even the best possible interpretation of Warren that downplays or ignores all the bad things is "a less reliable Bernie Sanders." Even if someone wants to be a total rube and trust her on things like M4A despite her explicitly waffling on the issue within the past 1-2 months, it still makes zero sense to support her over the candidate who doesn't have that problem. In the case of foreign policy, I would bet money that Warren will basically just be a continuation of Obama. On the other hand, while Sanders is still very far from ideal, he would still represent an improvement and definitely wouldn't do things like support foreign coups. Sanders' history also gives far more reason to be confident that he would push back if the Pentagon or other politicians tried to persuade him to support something bad. I see no reason to have that same confidence about Warren.
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Jun 30, 2019 21:26
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Typo posted:Bernie's actual problem this cycle btw is more with older voters in general rather than race/gender, something like <30% of 65+ say they would even -consider- voting for him and he's at 7% with them in "who would you vote for". The average age of Dem primary voter in 2016 is something between 47-52. This and income are basically the only relevant demographic stats when discussing Sanders. Any increased/decreased likelihood along vectors like race or gender after accounting for age are likely pretty insignificant. Mellow Seas posted:I don’t have any confusing triangular graphs to back me up but my understanding is that Bernie “isn’t doing well” with black voters simply because Biden is and you can’t (in the paradigm of a poll) support two candidates at once. If/when Biden crashes Bernie should be picking up a lot of black voters, because they actually “like” him - in a fav/unfav sense - more than white voters. While I would like to believe you're right, I feel like there's a good chance that, if the media and Dem establishment rallied behind some other candidate, that candidate would pick up most ex-Biden voters.
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Jul 1, 2019 03:13
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joepinetree posted:As for the rate, Warren's proposed wealth tax rate is 2%. On what exceeds 50 million in assets. So it's not that far off. Do you or anyone else know how frequently transactions usually occur to tax havens? Like, do wealthy people just rarely make big conversions, or is it a frequent (1 or more times annually) thing? If the latter, Sanders' tax rate would effectively be like a significant wealth tax. GreyjoyBastard posted:I think what I was angling for was more along the lines of: the financial transaction tax is all good and I like it, but in addition we need wealth taxes and/or estate taxes and/or other ways to redistribute the wealth of the rich. joepinetree's initial point was just how wrong the "Warren is the smart policy wonk, as opposed to Sanders who views thing too simplistically" talking point is. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jul 1, 2019 |
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Jul 1, 2019 17:16
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Bernie's problem is that there's basically jack poo poo he can do to magically prove that the other candidates aren't trustworthy. This is why, prior to the primary, I felt Warren would be the biggest problem. Basically, older voters are looking for something that Bernie can't be (someone who will smoothly and charismatically lay sweet owns on Trump). He benefited in 2016 from Hillary being really lame. There's likely nothing he can do to convert people through the debates, so the important thing will be whether or not he can mobilize his much larger motivated base (and Sanders likely has more strongly committed supporters than any other candidate).
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Jul 1, 2019 21:41
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The interesting thing to me would be what would happen to Bernie's numbers if Warren dropped out. Currently Warren is the only other remotely plausible candidate where people can at least feel like they're not compromising their values (even if that might not be true), but I wonder if many of her supporters will go to Sanders if she isn't there and there's no excuses they can make for supporting anyone else. I know that at least a significant subset would go to Harris, but I wonder if it's larger than the subset who would go to Bernie.
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Jul 1, 2019 22:44
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Bernie is now far from the only leftward candidate, even if his cred on "being left" is still the highest among high-information left-wing voters. He's not your only anti-big banking candidate, and he's not your only M4A candidate, at least on paper. He's not going to be able to build support by just doing the same stump speech at every campaign event and talk show. His claim to fame is being obviously preferable to Hillary. She isn't here. He didn't actually run a good campaign last time, by his own admission. Difficult to figure out how he's going to do that now when he's already getting crowded out during debates. The problem is that he has no power over the fact that 1. he's an old guy and 2. most people aren't going to be smart enough to distinguish between him and Warren (or even Harris). There isn't really any strategy he can use to magically win those people over, because the reason they don't prefer him is "they don't like the picture of him as president as much as they like the picture of these other people." Fortunately, there's a lot more to the election than debates. Sanders' goal shouldn't be to convert a bunch of people in the debates, since that's impossible. It should be to motivate his existing supporters to vote (and get random undecided people to vote through a huge GOTV/door-knocking/etc effort). And also hopefully Warren is planning on dropping out at some point, because currently she's basically pointlessly loving up Sanders's chances by confusing people into thinking he's not the only one who will do the things he supports. Warren basically represents my biggest concern in politics going forward - that Dems can easily prevent the left from gaining power by simply rhetorically expressing support for their things and then not doing them. In the past the left has benefited from the fact that Dems weren't even willing to pretend, but if they do pretend it's a problem because you can't get the average Americans to pour over a politicians' words and actions and evaluate how reliable and trustworthy they are. STAC Goat posted:I assume the logic is that Bernie's losses are less important than Biden's and if Biden collapses Bernie can overtake Harris and Warren. Like I mentioned before, I don't think there's anything Bernie can do to win over people in the debates. The issue is that the people who care about actual substance already support him, and there's no way he can appeal on the "person who makes me feel good" level like the other candidates can. It's going to mostly come down to whether his campaign can motivate enough younger people to vote (and fortunately his campaign is in a good position to make the strongest GOTV effort of all the campaigns in this election, since he has the largest motivated base). It also might help if Warren ends up dropping out, since anecdotally speaking my parents would support Sanders if she wasn't in the race, so I think she might be sucking up a lot of "people who have good intentions but aren't 'plugged in' enough to scour candidates' records and understandably find the younger, smart-sounding woman more palatable than old-looking/shouty Bernie" votes. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Jul 2, 2019 |
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Jul 2, 2019 02:09
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The supposed Warren and Harris supporters on this forum are largely mythical. We don't have Warren "supporters" here, we just have bernie-or-busters and then a (shrinking) group of people willing to discuss second choice options and/or trying to discuss the practicalities of who might win rather than the moralities of who should. I have yet to see anyone actually post "I think Harris should win" just a few tentative steps towards "I fear Harris might win" which usually get shouted down. Nah, there are a bunch of Warren supporters on this subforum, even if they don't post often in this specific thread (and you'll see them occasionally pop up, but they mostly post in the USPol thread). I think Warren has a lot of support among people with lefty/progressive sentiment, but without the level of political engagement where debating whether she's actually best has any appeal to them. Part of the challenge as a Sanders supporter is that it's hard to really persuade them to change their minds without them perceiving you as overly combative (this is why I dislike the whole perception that arguing against Warren is somehow "the left fighting itself" or whatever - those arguments need to be made!). Like, the pro-Sanders argument relies on casting aspersions towards Warren's record and history, since the pro-Warren argument is that Warren is just as likely to do the things Sanders supports. And that's a hard sell when Warren supporters strongly like Warren as a person (and are probably more attached to her personally than Sanders supporters are to him).
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Jul 2, 2019 02:40
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The Glumslinger posted:I like both Warren and Bernie quite a lot. I think Warren has been significantly more outspoken on the need to abolish the filibuster and has been more willing to consider packing the supreme court, while I also think that her foreign policy is too much in line with the Clinton/Obama style interventionism. I think they'd both be great presidents who would work to reshape and fix many of the problems facing this nation The issue is mostly that, even if you trust Warren, Sanders 1. can be relied upon more to not cave under pressure from other Democrats on things and 2. gives a heavy emphasize to building an enduring movement to continue applying pressure during his presidency (which will be necessary, since both his and Warren's main policies won't pass currently). Sanders would also generally represent a departure in terms of hiring staff from outside the current Democratic Party structure, which is a huge deal that would finally help end a status quo that will never create real change, even if a well-intentioned person is at the helm. It's frustrating because I can't magically prove what the outcome will be, while still being 100% certain that a Warren administration wouldn't end up that different from Obama's (and that she'd absolutely quickly cave on stuff like M4A, and that's assuming she even maintains a consistent view on it during the entire primary and general, which I doubt). The way I've put it is that while Warren is better than all the other non-Bernies, she's closer to them than she is Bernie himself in terms of what the actual outcome of a Warren presidency would be.
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Jul 2, 2019 04:01
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^^^ Anyone can pretend to be smart by using the One Neat Trick of opposing all change on the basis that it could have unintended consequences. By expressing this opinion, you are revealing that you're a complex thinker and mature person who understands that nothing should ever happen because you can't read the future and prove it won't cause the apocalypse.CelestialScribe posted:That's a preception problem, sure. It'll fix itself when people get on M4A and discover how good it is. But in the meantime, understanding that people are actually really loving scared of that option and opt for incremental change isn't bering spineless, it's being a good loving politician. Who gives a poo poo if people misunderstand it? It's an important thing that needs to happen. Most people don't have a good understanding of most things our government does, but that should have no bearing on what you support. As is, there's no reason not to support the thing that already has more than enough public support (and far more than many other things our government routinely does and passes). The logic you're using can always be used to oppose significant change, because the public will always be trigger-shy about that sort of thing. It isn't a reason to not support important things. enraged_camel posted:I mean I find it difficult to trust someone who genuinely believes that a tax on stock and bond trades is a good idea. lol, what do you think is bad about it? Do you think that the marginally decreased liquidity will somehow be disastrous? enraged_camel posted:Didn't she raise her hand when asked if she would be open to banning for-profit insurance companies? Yeah, but in light of the fact that literally within the last 1-2 months she answered "well there are many paths to medicare for all, like (insert a lot of things that aren't remotely close to single-payer healthcare or the actual M4A bill)" should make anyone highly skeptical of her commitment to the idea. She's also guilty of doing the same thing other non-Sanders candidates have done where they treat "Medicare For All" like it's just a slogan that means "universal healthcare" instead of an actual single-payer bill. I have trouble thinking of a reason for this other than "being intentionally deceptive." Warren isn't dumb; she knows M4A is an actual single-payer bill, so you have to question why she felt the need to treat it like some sort of vague goal. My guess is that Warren's angle will be "I support M4A at some point in the future, but in the meanwhile we should do _____ instead." enraged_camel posted:So the argument is that she cannot be trusted because she wasn't balls-to-the-wall about M4A from the beginning? ...yeah? You'd have to be a total rube to actually trust anyone to be committed to the idea when they so recently explicitly waffled on it. Even the most generous interpretation of Warren's words/actions is that she's a less reliable version of Sanders who is worse on several issues. But most people aren't actually making this judgement based off the issues, even if they might claim to be. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jul 2, 2019 |
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Jul 2, 2019 05:57
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Helsing posted:It's really not. The vast majority of voters do not think about politics through a coherent ideological lense. I think that Warren staying in the race makes a Bernie win highly unlikely, since she muddies the waters and makes Sanders appear like he's unneccesary and "his job is done" to laypeople (and there's nothing he can do about the very large number of - mostly older - voters who simply want someone who is "slicker" and more conventionally telegenic (like Harris, Buttigieg, or even Warren). Though Sanders has the advantage of a vhf likely significantly larger volunteer base for getting people out to vote.
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Jul 2, 2019 23:05
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That poll was for who did "worse than expected," not who did the worst (which is an important distinction because most candidates didn't have any expectations on them in the first place).
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Jul 2, 2019 23:16
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lol @ that post that is like "all the dem candidates are like various quirky professor stereotypes, except for Warren, who has all the other professors' strengths and none of their weaknesses and is basically the perfect person."
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Jul 3, 2019 03:49
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I think that the core conflict simply can't be won this early. There are just too many older people who are incapable of perceiving politics differently than they've been taught.
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Jul 3, 2019 20:38
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The Glumslinger posted:I mean, if Yang and Marianne can keep making it up there and Gravel can't, it clearly says that he is a tier below the other meme candidates in terms of appeal Not really? Neither Yang nor Marianne have a message that is particularly threatening, while being directly and strongly opposed to imperialism is harder to deal with. There's also an easier excuse to refuse Gravel (explicitly not being "serious").
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Jul 3, 2019 20:46
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Sodomy Hussein posted:We're still on "2016, Part II," where we post polls and then write fiction on how Bernie is going to grab all the undecideds and absorb all the departing Biden support any moment now. I know it's probably easier to believe that all arguments against your preferred candidate are crazy exaggerations, but that doesn't actually make it true. Anyone supporting Warren who discusses the topic should have to confront the fact that either 1. they're choosing someone with objectively inferior policies and history because her appearance and way of talking makes them feel more comfortable, or 2. that maybe they actually just ideologically disagree with the left.
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Jul 5, 2019 22:34
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The issue with the mindset of many folks like Warren is that they make "technically improve things" a goal rather than directly looking at the real impact on people and aiming for a specific desired outcome. So you end up with policies that just decrease rent or medical costs by X% without consideration of whether this will actually suffice to fix the underlying problem. It shows a certain detached perspective that is relatively ambivalent towards the actual lived experience of people. Like, if a plan takes 10+ years to fully take action, that's a huge portion of peoples' lives (and that's ignoring the whole "Republicans can take power and undo things" issue).
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Jul 6, 2019 04:22
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HootTheOwl posted:Congrats then, president Warren. You've caused rents to only increase by 11 percent over the same ten years. Just in case it wasn't clear from BENGHAZI's post, Main Paineframe actually made a good post examining the actual text of the plan that shows that this is in fact the case (and that in practice it would basically just attempt to main rent increase at a rate of 3% per year instead of 4% lol, and that's assuming its faith in the markets adjusting to increaased supply is accurate).
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Jul 6, 2019 04:45
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Heck, the average person is even worse than that. They'll never hear about this policy and just see Warren on TV and think "she seems smart and good."
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Jul 6, 2019 17:26
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SlothfulCobra posted:I'll never really understand people who feel like the greatest threat is the second best option rather than the conservative wing of the party that is doing its damnedest to avoid social responsibility or civil rights. In our opinions Warren is closer to the "non-Bernies" than Bernie himself in terms of her politics and the likely outcome of her potential presidency. Captain_Maclaine posted:It's appallingly telling that your first instinct upon hearing it suggested that a politician could continue to cooperate with and function within the popular mass movement that got him elected is to dismiss same as just "inspiring rhetoric." It's characteristic of a sort of pseudo-empiricism that many liberals practice, where they act like the only thing worth consideration is that which can be directly and accurately quantified (and in the absence of a reasonable metric or proxy, they just take some unrelated value and assume it has to be used by default). For example, take the post below. In this post, Z. Autobahn is referencing a statistic that is not actually a proxy for the size of an active political movement (which is more defined by the number of active volunteers and engaged supporters). He's trying to view things in an empirical/"data-based" way, but this often results in very wrong opinions when the data doesn't actually exist to support or deny a particular claim (which is usually the case with things like this). Z. Autobahn posted:If Bernie genuinely created a popular mass movement, I'd be inclined to agree. He's currently limping into fourth in most polls and falling. What I see isn't a popular mass movement, but a fractional passionate base with a low ceiling. To specifically address Z. Autobahn's point, which he again makes in this post: Z. Autobahn posted:I mean, I fundamentally do not believe Bernie is going to launch a mass movement or general strikes or issue forth a revolution or radically transform anything. I just... don't, and I don't know how you can look at what's happening with his support and possibly think that. It was wishful thinking months ago and it's crossing into denialist fantasizing. The revolution's not happening. Maybe in 8 years when the generational turnover has gone further, climate change is hitting harder, and the leader of the movement is somehow with a wider reach like AOC. But it's not happening now. It just... isn't. This isn't how popular movements actually work. The Civil Rights Movement was not a result of 50+% of Americans (or whatever) all being onboard and pushing the cause. It only takes a dedicated base of several million+. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 01:04
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Z. Autobahn posted:You do realize that you just took a key word in my quote ("mass"), replaced it with a different word ("active"), and then argued that I'm not supporting... the very different argument that you just made? Of course Sanders' movement is *active*. He has a very passionate dedicated base of support. What I'm disputing is that it's a MASS active movement as opposed to a fringe active movement. A mass movement, by default, requires a *mass*, which is what the relative standing in the polls* can serve as a proxy for ...those things are effectively synonymous. "Mass political movement" doesn't have some definition that requires a majority of the population be onboard or something. All it means is "a bunch of people in a movement" which is so vague it can refer to pretty much anything that has more than like a million people involved with it. And besides, your point was just wrong. It's not necessary for anywhere near a majority of the population (or even Democratic voters) to be part of a movement to affect change. My interpretation is necessary for your point to even make any sense in the first place. Polls are only relevant insofar as they show something doesn't have negligible support, but even something with only 10-20% of the population involved can be a movement capable of successfully enacting change.
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Jul 8, 2019 02:48
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^^^ Biden strikes me as the sort of rube who just genuinely likely and trusts the corporate lobbyists and poo poo, rather than the type who is bribed with hosed up sex stuff. Though I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he was also into those things.Punk da Bundo posted:Bernie promised to wipe my student loans away. Warren gave a weird non answer wonky policy as usual . All the other candidates have basically said uhh yeah student loans maybe you can refinance them or I’ll make community college free or something . To be fair to Warren, her student debt thing was, while absolutely inferior to Bernie's, fairly decent as far as means-tested things go. IIRC it was up to $50k for families under $100k, and scaling off above that, which would cover most people. It's still dumb, since people would pointlessly fall through the cracks, but not quite as bad as stuff like the recently discussed housing plan. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 03:09
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Z. Autobahn posted:This thread is so wild because on the one hand it's like "Well Sanders' student loan forgiveness plan is better than Warrens', which makes Sanders a better candidate!" when neither plan will ever remotely pass the Senate, but then when faced with an actual actionable step that you could realistically get a bare majority to sign off on like abolishing the filibuster, suddenly it's "Well, jeez the President has no real power anyway, what is Sanders, a wizard?" Ending the filibuster isn't a goal or value in and of itself, though, while the other policies being mentioned are. And the president *does* have direct control over many other things (like closing detention centers and foreign policy) so this logic doesn't even hold for all issues.
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Jul 8, 2019 11:13
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Trump will keep accusing of Warren being on risperdal, culminating in Warren releasing a video of a bunch of famous people saying she's not on risperdal, with the results of a drug test being announced at the end.
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Jul 8, 2019 23:23
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As has been mentioned before, at best, even with the most naive and positive perception of Warren as a politician reasonably possible, Warren is a strictly inferior version of Sanders who is worse on several issues and has a far less consistent and reliable background. Even if you blindly trust her despite having waffled on many of these issues in very recent history, it still makes no sense to support her. SlothfulCobra posted:She never claimed to be a full native american, she claimed to have a little ancestry, which is very distinct, and not exactly uncommon. Other people went on to independently spin that out for their own purposes. She specifically used language like "my Native American heritage" which is much stronger than just "it's interesting I might have some random Native American in my family tree." Making some trace heritage from an oppressed minority group part of your identity as a white person is hosed up, no matter how you slice it. And she very clearly made it part of her identity to a degree significantly greater than "oh I have this one random relative from X," even if she was later forced to backpedal that. The DNA test just made things even worse, because it publicly conflated Native/tribal identity with DNA. What she did was wrong. You can think it's forgivable or less important than other issues, but it was undeniably bad. SlothfulCobra posted:The far left have a habit of souring on everything, including the concept of engaging with legitimate politics and even Bernie when they're not trying to work him out to be a messiah. How about you actually point out what specific things people have said that you disagree with instead of just whining a bunch? Every time I see a post like this it basically just reads to me as "I'm really salty about what left-wingers are saying (in this case about Elizabeth Warren), but I don't really have anything countering their points so I'll just impotently whine about them being overly negative." This even includes a bizarre oxymoron to boot; apparently the left is bad because they "sour on" Bernie while also considering him a messiah (which is definitely a thing definitely based on reality, and not just a bizarre interpretation of things necessary to rationalize why the "far left" must be wrong despite actually being correct about all the issues).
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Jul 9, 2019 04:34
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