|
If this thread turns into a USPMT 2.0, we will not hesitate to shut it down. Do not even bother posting if all you're going to do is shit on the Democratic candidates while adding nothing of value.
Rules: - Don't post meaningless one-liners. - Don't turn this into a X doesn't stand a chance against Trump debate. - Sources MUST have a supporting comment that summarizes the source beforehand. - Do NOT turn this thread into a Republicans vs. Democrats shit-storm.
This thread will be heavily moderated. Expect the same kind of strictness as the USPMT. |
On February 20 2020 05:56 Mohdoo wrote: Would it be technically legal for Bloomberg to pay each candidate $10M to drop out? If he just straight up paid all of them $10M to drop, what would happen?
Presumably he'd "hire" them and that'd be perfectly legal afaik. He could easily spread $100 million each hiring them and their allied businesses as well.
|
I think its legit to have questions about Sanders' health after his heart attack. I prefer Sanders and his people answer the questions about his health directly rather than firing back with accusations that derail an important aspect of Sanders possibility of success as President.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/19/politics/bernie-sanders-health-records-cnntv/index.html
"What you're seeing right now is really reminiscent of some of the kind of smear, kind of skepticism campaigns that have been run against a lot of different candidates in the past. Questioning where they're from, aspects of their lineage, et cetera, et cetera,"
Sanders' spokeswoman firing back was a bad idea i think.
|
Canada8988 Posts
On February 20 2020 06:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:I think its legit to have questions about Sanders' health after his heart attack. I prefer Sanders and his people answer the questions about his health directly rather than firing back with accusations that derail an important aspect of Sanders possibility of success as President. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/19/politics/bernie-sanders-health-records-cnntv/index.htmlShow nested quote +"What you're seeing right now is really reminiscent of some of the kind of smear, kind of skepticism campaigns that have been run against a lot of different candidates in the past. Questioning where they're from, aspects of their lineage, et cetera, et cetera," Sanders' spokeswoman firing back was a bad idea i think.
Well they're not gonna give a straight answer to that, no communication team would ever talk about the possible death of their candidate. Obviously the answer wasn't a great one and they need to work on what their answers are gonna be to dismiss it a fast as possible since the question will come back, especially against Trump.
But you know, he's a 78 years old man and the US life expectancy is 76 or men, off course it would be way more for active white politician than it is overall, nevertheless there's a decent chance he dies in the next 5 years, he could be in fantastic shape he's still almost 80, at that age people just die sometime. You'll never hear him talk about it openly tho, neither will you with Trump, Bloomberg or Biden that all want to be president above the US life expectancy, Roosevelt didn't do it back in the day either.
|
On February 20 2020 07:14 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2020 06:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:I think its legit to have questions about Sanders' health after his heart attack. I prefer Sanders and his people answer the questions about his health directly rather than firing back with accusations that derail an important aspect of Sanders possibility of success as President. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/19/politics/bernie-sanders-health-records-cnntv/index.html"What you're seeing right now is really reminiscent of some of the kind of smear, kind of skepticism campaigns that have been run against a lot of different candidates in the past. Questioning where they're from, aspects of their lineage, et cetera, et cetera," Sanders' spokeswoman firing back was a bad idea i think. Well they're not gonna give a straight answer to that, no communication team would ever talk about the possible death of their candidate. Obviously the answer wasn't a great one and they need to work on what their answers are gonna be to dismiss it a fast as possible since the question will come back, especially against Trump. But you know, he's a 78 years old man and the US life expectancy is 76 or men, off course it would be way more for active white politician than it is overall, nevertheless there's a decent chance he dies in the next 5 years, he could be in fantastic shape he's still almost 80, at that age people just die sometime. You'll never hear him talk about it openly tho, neither will you with Trump or Biden, Roosevelt didn't do it back in the day either. ya , it is kinda scary who old several of these major candidates are. She could answer that Sanders is healthy and maybe try to move the convo to a different topic.
For the record, studies show shorter men live longer than taller men; I think Bloomberg is the shortest of the really old guys @ 5' 6.5". If Bloomberg is really savvy he can turn it into a running joke that as the shortest candidate he has the chance of living the longest.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien used to joke about his Bell's Palsy saying : " I guarantee you I'm the one politician who won't talk out of both sides of my mouth". This kind of light hearted approach endeared himself to voters. Pulling off such a subtle humour trick is not easily done though. Memory problems, severe headaches and balance problems are some of the symptoms of Bell's Palsy. Chretien stared down those raising questions about his health by being a total fucking bad ass.
In any event, the advanced age of all these guys is a real elephant in the room.
|
What you should look at is how long men with very high socio-economic who are already 78 are expected to live considering their current health.
Average life expectancy over the entire population is not that relevant imo.
|
Canada8988 Posts
On February 20 2020 18:31 Slydie wrote: What you should look at is how long men with very high socio-economic who are already 78 are expected to live considering their current health.
Average life expectancy over the entire population is not that relevant imo.
Of course, but it become less and less elastic the older you get, pretty much no rich people dies of natural cause in their 60-70, but once you hit 80-90 everyone life expectancy fell around the same speed. There's just become a point when the body can fell you out of the blue.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866586/figure/F1/?report=objectonly It look relatively for the top 5 percentile until around 80ish, of course politician keeping up a very active lifestyle late in life must help them a lot.
They have the top 1% of men at 87 years old, so it's still quite a long time away for all these candidate.
(Also this isn't suppose to be an argument to not vote for Sanders)
|
On February 21 2020 02:20 Nakajin wrote: (Also this isn't suppose to be an argument to not vote for Sanders) I think if there is clear evidence a candidate has health issues that can impede his or her ability to put in a 50+ hour work week one needs to take that into consideration when voting.
If you have an ambitious platform that goes against the tendencies of many other parts of the various government apparatuses around you ... it means you'll be working lots of overtime to overcome this. It'll be a lot of work to get things done.
A concrete example is Social Democrat Bob Rae becoming Premier in the very conservative Canadian province of Ontario in 1990. At age 42 and in perfect health he handled the long, grinding, grueling weeks as various Mayors and MPs and city councils fought hard against many of his policies.
So, hypothetically speaking, if I were of voting age in 1990 I would vote for Bob Rae if he were his actual age of 42 and in great health. If it were 1990 with the same circumstances and Bob Rae were 78 and had 1 heart issue I'd probably shy away from voting for him. A lot of it has to do with all of Ontario being very conservative and Bob Rae fighting the tide as a left wing labour party leader. Sort of an analogous situation that Sanders will be in if he becomes President.
In any event, I hope voters take a careful look at the health of the oldest candidates.
|
Advanced Age of someone like Sanders is overrated in my opinion and a misunderstanding of the nature of his campaign. With an expectation that his VP will hold the same values he does, if Sanders dies in office it's basically a non-issue for the movement he built and the VP takes over. Who cares?
Many people aren't voting for Bernie Sanders because they like him (even if they do); they are voting for him because he stands for important issues and has consistently stood for those issues.
This general point is a huge common misconception too and is part of why so many of the attacks on Sanders fall flat, Sanders is largely incidental to his campaign. I don't know why it's so often overlooked it's literally the campaign slogan.
|
what if you don't think the VP has what it takes to pull it off and get things done? in the example i cited, Bob Rae's deputy Premier was not very good.
in 1980 I'd say Reagan was 1000X better than Bush. That Hinckley bullet kills Reagan and I don't have any where near the level of confidence in Reagan that I do in Bush. The history of the USA is changed.
|
On February 21 2020 06:57 JimmyJRaynor wrote: what if you don't think the VP has what it takes to pull it off and get things done? in the example i cited, Bob Rae's deputy Premier was not very good.
Then we hope he doesn't die in office so things can get done, but if he does then it's no worse than if Bernie wasn't the nominee.
The odds of Bernie nominating a VP that would be worse than Trump is basically 0, and similarly low odds that he nominates someone worse than the average dem candidate left in the primary.
|
Taking about Sanders age would be legit if he wasn't running against Trump who is of similar age and might be in worse overall health given his size. That goes for biden's age although alot of us have already written off Biden.
There would be no choice of the "young one" if it was Trump vs Burnie both are well into the "could die at any time and it wouldn't be too unusual".
|
Just to back this up with some #s to get a ballpark idea of what we're discussing here. the life expectancy of a male in the USA is around 76.1 years.
The probability of death while in office for Bernie Sanders is around 25%. The probability of lower health forcing a much lighter work schedule is a lot higher than 25%. That is what happened to Ronald Reagan in his 2nd term. Diminishing health but not death. He was diagnosed with Alzheimers in 1992. People experience cognitive impairment 11 to 15 years before clear symptoms of the disease arrive. I'd say that by 1988 Ronald Reagan was not the man Americans thought they were voting for in 1984.
For the Bernie voters , maybe they can hope that Bernie's wife will turn out to be as good as Nancy Reagan. 
On February 21 2020 07:04 Logo wrote: The odds of Bernie nominating a VP that would be worse than Trump is basically 0, and similarly low odds that he nominates someone worse than the average dem candidate left in the primary. meh, Trump has been ok. he is a big troll. i ignore the idiocy and stick to evaluating the results.
|
|
Canada8988 Posts
We also shouldn't oversell a president job or weight, does someone really think Trump is sitting at his desk all day or that he actually went over the new north american trade deal lol. I'm sure most president were more essential to their administration that he is, but once the directive are given and that the people are nominated in the administration, it's not all gonna disappeared if Sanders die in office and someone like minded replace him. (or any other candidate I guess)
Belgium is currently in, yet another, phase without any government because of parliamentary blockade and it didn't felt apart. Well it's not super democratic, but you know, apart from that.
|
Belgium does have a 'running government' or whatever the correct translation is. We've not had a new government since the elections from 26 May 2019 though, that is because the French part of the country voted overwhelmingly Left while the Dutch part of the country voted overwhelmingly Right, and both halves gave way too many votes to extreme parties to end up with a decent coalition. So it appears we are currently headed towards re-elections (which no one really wants), and then the similar situation will occur, except even more votes will go to the extreme parties and forming a coalition will be even harder. And then who knows what will happen, potentially a split of the country or a confederate model. Politics in Belgium is pretty fucked, I wouldn't use us as an example of anything.
|
You don't need a clear majority or majority coalition to govern a country. Coalitions can easily form about single issues and change from topic to topic. This requires some goodwill and responsibility by all the parties involved but it's not inherently impossible to run a country like that. If your not carefull you might even end up with a goverment that represents the actuall will of the people and not the will of the 1-3 parties with the most votes while ignoring all the others.
|
On February 21 2020 23:09 Laurens wrote: Belgium does have a 'running government' or whatever the correct translation is. We've not had a new government since the elections from 26 May 2019 though, that is because the French part of the country voted overwhelmingly Left while the Dutch part of the country voted overwhelmingly Right, and both halves gave way too many votes to extreme parties to end up with a decent coalition. So it appears we are currently headed towards re-elections (which no one really wants), and then the similar situation will occur, except even more votes will go to the extreme parties and forming a coalition will be even harder. And then who knows what will happen, potentially a split of the country or a confederate model. Politics in Belgium is pretty fucked, I wouldn't use us as an example of anything. One of the many pitfalls of proportional representation schemes. This is one of the reasons the 2020 DNC primary has such a high chance of no winner. The delegates are split several ways with the trend away from winner takes all primaries. Except in the primary case, the ideologies are not in too many extremes (relative to field), so compromise is more likely to satisfy. The rush of candidates to yell at others to drop out, Bloomberg famously doing so before winning a single delegate, is very unsatisfying. (Not unknown in winner takes all, but more favored in proportional)
|
On February 21 2020 23:17 Velr wrote: You don't need a clear majority or majority coalition to govern a country. Coalitions can easily form about single issues and change from topic to topic. This requires some goodwill and responsibility by all the parties involved but it's not inherently impossible to run a country like that. If your not carefull you might even end up with a goverment that represents the actuall will of the people and not the will of the 1-3 parties with the most votes while ignoring all the others. A parliament that actually discusses each issue and votes on those issues seems like the dream. I don't know of any country that really has this, but perhaps splintering will get us there one day.
Also surprise, Danglars is once more out of his hole and arguing for FPTP in the few threads he's not banned from.
User was warned for this post.
|
|
Notes for Nevada ballot: Bloomberg isn't even on it. He's all in for Super Tuesday. He also won't be on ballot for South Carolina, where Biden is hoping for his first primary win. Much early voting was done (>30000) before the most recent debate. Those votes were locked in before the impact of possible debate winners and losers could be registered.
I cannot find any exit polls yet.
I'm watching for whether Sanders overperforms/underperforms polling, and if Biden has any life still.
|
|
|
|