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On March 18 2020 23:47 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2020 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:I mean, would you rather bank on something that worked 12 years ago and then failed every time since, including during the current primary season? Or something that worked 2 years ago? Biden's support among the demographics that resulted in a Democratic house in 2018 (i.e. suburban women and disillusioned Republicans) stomps Sanders' into the ground. Especially among suburban women. So your planned strategy is to run against the least popular president in modern history every time and start from an incredible deficit compared to the popular vote for a result of basically a draw (lose senate, gain house)?
I am not saying that it is the right thing to do. Nor even the rational one. But at this point a (sizeable) majority of Democratic voters prefer a Biden presidency to a Sanders one, and I think part of that is that they would rather gamble on a 2018 than a 2008. Especially when the 2008 requires nominating a man who has lost two primary contests, losing the second by a larger margin than the first, despite being (in my opinion at least) a better candidate! Just imagine how that looks to most people absent context about party makeup and overall turnout.
And I mean if you want to maximize the chances of winning the Senate you need to change the presidential primary completely and do a lot of down-ballot calculations, so I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.
Ultimately it's fine to reject the whole democracy part of the primary-I would to a big extent. Only states that would get delegates would be purple ones. But be aware that if you do that, it gets much harder to advocate for, you know, making the primary more democratic in other ways without it seeming like you only care about getting the outcome you want (which is also fine-but means that you'll never convince anyone with the advocacy).
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On March 19 2020 00:09 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2020 23:47 Logo wrote:On March 18 2020 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:I mean, would you rather bank on something that worked 12 years ago and then failed every time since, including during the current primary season? Or something that worked 2 years ago? Biden's support among the demographics that resulted in a Democratic house in 2018 (i.e. suburban women and disillusioned Republicans) stomps Sanders' into the ground. Especially among suburban women. So your planned strategy is to run against the least popular president in modern history every time and start from an incredible deficit compared to the popular vote for a result of basically a draw (lose senate, gain house)? I am not saying that it is the right thing to do. Nor even the rational one. But at this point a (sizeable) majority...
It is situations like that where standing up for what is right is hardest that it is the most important. Future generations won't (and shouldn't) forgive us for messing this up imo.
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On March 18 2020 23:47 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2020 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:I mean, would you rather bank on something that worked 12 years ago and then failed every time since, including during the current primary season? Or something that worked 2 years ago? Biden's support among the demographics that resulted in a Democratic house in 2018 (i.e. suburban women and disillusioned Republicans) stomps Sanders' into the ground. Especially among suburban women. So your planned strategy is to run against the least popular president in modern history every time and start from an incredible deficit compared to the popular vote for a result of basically a draw (lose senate, gain house)?
Your strategy should be based on the current situation and that situation is that the youth don't vote. If they don't show up to vote in more progressive candidates at the local and state level because Bernie lost the primary again then that movement is never going to happen.
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On March 19 2020 00:21 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2020 23:47 Logo wrote:On March 18 2020 23:34 TheTenthDoc wrote:I mean, would you rather bank on something that worked 12 years ago and then failed every time since, including during the current primary season? Or something that worked 2 years ago? Biden's support among the demographics that resulted in a Democratic house in 2018 (i.e. suburban women and disillusioned Republicans) stomps Sanders' into the ground. Especially among suburban women. So your planned strategy is to run against the least popular president in modern history every time and start from an incredible deficit compared to the popular vote for a result of basically a draw (lose senate, gain house)? Your strategy should be based on the current situation and that situation is that the youth don't vote. If they don't show up to vote in more progressive candidates at the local and state level because Bernie lost the primary again then that movement is never going to happen.
The youth don't vote because the system is rigged against them intentionally to begin with...
...but even so Biden's vote share is mostly based on manufactured consent and the candidate being pushed as the right choice. Which is pretty transparently obvious, Biden doesn't even have positive momentum in the primary he is winning (Sander's out performed in 2 of the 3 states yesterday and a national poll put him back within 10 points of Biden).
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So at this point it's pretty clear that Biden is the nominee, and despite the fact that he isn't a phenomenal candidate he's got a good chance of riding the wave of Trump incompetence right into the White House. I wouldn't blame Bernie for continuing at this point, but one thing I do wonder: is he working hard in the Senate on making sure the right kind of legislation gets through for addressing the coronavirus response and associated economic bailouts? Lots of industries are asking for hundreds of billions of dollars of government assistance right after spending all of their cash on stock buybacks, and there's a lot of effort to try to buy Wall Street out of trouble on Trump's behalf. I can't help but think that the crisis response right now is going to define the next four years even more than who actually ends up being president in 2021. Obama definitely seemed to just continue on the path that Bush laid out under TARP, and I imagine either of the two leading candidates will be operating under the rules that are set right now, at the outset of the crisis.
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I wouldn't blame Bernie for continuing at this point, but one thing I do wonder: is he working hard in the Senate on making sure the right kind of legislation gets through for addressing the coronavirus response and associated economic bailouts?
If you didn't see from last night: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bernie-sanders-proposes-242-trillion-coronavirus-relief-effort/ar-BB11kATG
I believe the highlights are (sorry if these are mistaken, a bit by memory):
* 100% salary unemployment payment up to 75k
* 2000/mo to everyone
* Invoke wartime powers to scale up medical supply production
* Expand community medical centers
* Temporarily empower medicare to cover all expenses. (not just coronavirus I believe)
In terms of responses right now the left-right alignment of proposals is amazingly:
Sanders -> -> -> Trump (???) -> Republicans -> Democrats
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On March 19 2020 00:44 Logo wrote:Show nested quote + I wouldn't blame Bernie for continuing at this point, but one thing I do wonder: is he working hard in the Senate on making sure the right kind of legislation gets through for addressing the coronavirus response and associated economic bailouts? If you didn't see from last night: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bernie-sanders-proposes-242-trillion-coronavirus-relief-effort/ar-BB11kATGI believe the highlights are (sorry if these are mistaken, a bit by memory): * 100% salary unemployment payment up to 75k * 2000/mo to everyone * Invoke wartime powers to scale up medical supply production * Expand community medical centers * Temporarily empower medicare to cover all expenses. (not just coronavirus I believe)
I didn't see that. My personal thought is that while I don't agree with all of it (the unemployment and free money are a little too ambitious here), it's a solid hardball stance f
On March 19 2020 00:44 Logo wrote:
In terms of responses right now the left-right alignment of proposals is amazingly:
Sanders -> -> -> Trump (???) -> Republicans -> Democrats
That's, for what it's worth, kind of why I believe there's a reasonable chance for a realignment of parties. Biden's pretty much a moderate Republican in all but name, and that's the kind of base he's attracting right now. Trump's base is more sympathetic to leftist ideas than initially seems.
Most important of all, though: fuck any additional bailouts to the "too big to fail" industries. We got that run-around in 2008, and in hindsight that just made things worse. If some of these businesses have been rendered unviable by a long string of bad financial decisions, the bankruptcy courts are always open for business. I don't know who's for and against this approach right now, but there is more resistance than I expected to things like the Boeing $50 billion beg.
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Holy motherfucking shit guys, I mean, because of the coronavirus bullshit I stopped following US politics for a while but just saw it today, how the fuck is Joe Biden the effective nominee now? I mean what the fuck Americans?
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On March 19 2020 10:57 Bourgeois wrote:
Holy motherfucking shit guys, I mean, because of the coronavirus bullshit I stopped following US politics for a while but just saw it today, how the fuck is Joe Biden the effective nominee now? I mean what the fuck Americans?
tl;dr - Young people don't vote, for varying reasons from either out of their control or dumb, and old people do.
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On March 18 2020 20:16 Zambrah wrote:
I think there are tons of systematic reasons that make voting difficult for young people, and while I wouldnt say the US is designed to depress the youth vote, I would say that our system has had some fingers on the scale to depress minority community turn out, which is likely to be poorer, which coincides with young people who have two jobs and dont have potentially 7 hours to spare on a week day to vote. Where as older people would have more stable employment, with opportunities to take time off to vote, etc.
Can we please just be honest here and not play the victim game?
The likelihood is that young people are studying at university, and have much more spare time than older people, who are likely busy with work, including those in retirement age that are still working (those who really have retired will probably vote Republican because they are in the higher wage gap having worked in business or whatever when they were younger).
The majority of young people are probably just fucking around playing computer games and watching porn instead of going out to vote because they simply don't give a shit, or think that one vote doesn't make a difference. It's not some bullshit sob story about having to work two jobs to support their immigrant family or some shit like that. No excuses.
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On March 19 2020 10:57 Bourgeois wrote:
Holy motherfucking shit guys, I mean, because of the coronavirus bullshit I stopped following US politics for a while but just saw it today, how the fuck is Joe Biden the effective nominee now? I mean what the fuck Americans?
I'm not sure what's surprising about this; it's been predicted from the beginning that it'd end up with Biden vs. Sanders. From Super Tuesday onwards, Biden's popular demographics performed at or above expectations, and Sanders's popular demographics performed at or below expectations. Did you think it was going to be completely different than the 2016 primary, with Sanders somehow destroying the moderate-liberal majority of Democrats?
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On March 19 2020 11:33 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2020 10:57 Bourgeois wrote:
Holy motherfucking shit guys, I mean, because of the coronavirus bullshit I stopped following US politics for a while but just saw it today, how the fuck is Joe Biden the effective nominee now? I mean what the fuck Americans? tl;dr - Young people don't vote, for varying reasons from either out of their control or dumb, and old people do.
Also, more people just want things to go back to normal than want big changes. Bernie may be a big change candidate in theory (actually getting things passed is another matter), but Trump was a big change candidate at least by rhetoric. A lot of people have gotten pretty sick of that.
A whole lot of people long for the days of Obama, not some untested new world. Biden was Obama's VP and is about as boring as it gets. He'll redo a bunch of the stuff that Obama did and Trump undid. Then he may take one or two steps to the left as the party has been pushed further left and he's pretty much always at the middle of the party, wherever the party has shifted.
So yeah, boring old Joe is getting out the votes more than Bernie because Joe's at the center of what the most Americans want. The loudest voices are pushing for change, but the loudest voices don't represent the majority. Joe does.
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On March 19 2020 13:17 RenSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2020 11:33 Gahlo wrote:On March 19 2020 10:57 Bourgeois wrote:
Holy motherfucking shit guys, I mean, because of the coronavirus bullshit I stopped following US politics for a while but just saw it today, how the fuck is Joe Biden the effective nominee now? I mean what the fuck Americans? tl;dr - Young people don't vote, for varying reasons from either out of their control or dumb, and old people do. Also, more people just want things to go back to normal than want big changes. Bernie may be a big change candidate in theory (actually getting things passed is another matter), but Trump was a big change candidate at least by rhetoric. A lot of people have gotten pretty sick of that. A whole lot of people long for the days of Obama, not some untested new world. Biden was Obama's VP and is about as boring as it gets. He'll redo a bunch of the stuff that Obama did and Trump undid. Then he may take one or two steps to the left as the party has been pushed further left and he's pretty much always at the middle of the party, wherever the party has shifted. So yeah, boring old Joe is getting out the votes more than Bernie because Joe's at the center of what the most Americans want. The loudest voices are pushing for change, but the loudest voices don't represent the majority. Joe does.
Careful not to confuse older Democratic primary voters with the majority of Americans.
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On March 19 2020 13:27 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2020 13:17 RenSC2 wrote:On March 19 2020 11:33 Gahlo wrote:On March 19 2020 10:57 Bourgeois wrote:
Holy motherfucking shit guys, I mean, because of the coronavirus bullshit I stopped following US politics for a while but just saw it today, how the fuck is Joe Biden the effective nominee now? I mean what the fuck Americans? tl;dr - Young people don't vote, for varying reasons from either out of their control or dumb, and old people do. Also, more people just want things to go back to normal than want big changes. Bernie may be a big change candidate in theory (actually getting things passed is another matter), but Trump was a big change candidate at least by rhetoric. A lot of people have gotten pretty sick of that. A whole lot of people long for the days of Obama, not some untested new world. Biden was Obama's VP and is about as boring as it gets. He'll redo a bunch of the stuff that Obama did and Trump undid. Then he may take one or two steps to the left as the party has been pushed further left and he's pretty much always at the middle of the party, wherever the party has shifted. So yeah, boring old Joe is getting out the votes more than Bernie because Joe's at the center of what the most Americans want. The loudest voices are pushing for change, but the loudest voices don't represent the majority. Joe does. Careful not to confuse older Democratic primary voters with the majority of Americans.
That's true, so I'd imagine "most Americans" should be changed to "most American Democratic voters". Of course, if the majority of Americans don't vote, then (pragmatically speaking) their preferences won't matter much to politicians. If 90% of Americans want policy X or president Y, but none of them vote or influence the country's leadership in any way, for all intents and purposes, they're irrelevant.
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If voters want a policy that candidate X and candidate Y both oppose, who do they vote for?
I think blaming voters doesn't properly take into account the systems design to both disenfranchise them, covid congo lines in Chicago, and 7 hour lines on Campus in Texas for example and discourage them Bad candidates, poor media coverage, *botched elections like Iowa (an important one I feel should be mentioned specifically beyond voter suppression),* etc...
The people to blame for low voter turnout are the politicians not the voters. Blaming voters is doing people like Trump's job for them imo.
It's the political equivalent to the bootstrap argument. "Why don't socialists/green party/etc... just pick themselves up by their political bootstraps and become the most powerful people in this corrupt political system" is as silly as it sounds imo.
*edit
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On March 19 2020 23:15 JimmiC wrote:
Politicians who promoted policy that people who vote didn't care about wouldn't get elected. Which is why change is not occurring, people don't want it. They want the safety of what they know.
It sucks that Americans who vote don't want what progressives are offering. But that is the reality of what the cotes are saying.
I'd be very concerned about people who suggest they know better what the people want than them, it is unlikely that you are taking the time to understand their position and are going to come off terribly and more likely turn them off to your ideas than get them on board.
Given that in the vast majority of states if you aren't registered with a party you aren't allowed to vote in their primary, it's fair to say that what the voting base at large wants is entirely obfuscated.
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Well, Tulsi dropped out and endorsed Biden.
Alright, now I'm firmly convinced that in 2016 I fell through some wormhole into some weird alternative timeline.
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On March 20 2020 00:20 ticklishmusic wrote:
Well, Tulsi dropped out and endorsed Biden.
Alright, now I'm firmly convinced that in 2016 I fell through some wormhole into some weird alternative timeline.
It's hilarious that Biden has managed to amass a bunch of endorsements that make it nearly impossible to believe his campaign and the DNC is on the up-and-up and not just a corrupt institution of cronyism and the only presidential candidate non-endorsement cements that fact.
Like you go for these endorsements to create unity and a united party and instead these are just a massive wedge between the left and the centrists.
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EPT
