US Elections: When Murder isn't Murder

[Commodore]

our exit poll has Kloppenburg ahead 53-47 with 285 responses

hard to draw conclusions though until after work crowd votes

surprising number of Trump-Kloppenburg voters

[IheartIheartTesla]

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Except that's not true, like, at all. He caucuses with democrats, received endorsements from the DNC, Obama and Reid, received funding from the DNC when running, made agreements with the democrats to not run a democratic candidate in his state against him, has a standing rule to vote on all procedural matters with the democrats unless he gets sign off from the whip...why wouldn't he be supporting the Democratic down-ticket candidates? They've been supporting him for quite a while now. 

And he has supported the DNC in return. Not sure what this extra bar he has to clear suddenly appeared from, I've never seen it applied in the past to primaries. At any rate, he will bring in more money/new voters/voter lists to the DNC with leftovers from the campaign than I foresee DWS ever doing, so it's all good. 

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

Just now, IheartIheartTesla said:

And he has supported the DNC in return. Not sure what this extra bar he has to clear suddenly appeared from, I've never seen it applied in the past to primaries. At any rate, he will bring in more money/new voters/voter lists to the DNC with leftovers from the campaign than I foresee DWS ever doing, so it's all good. 

It certainly applied to Obama and Clinton both in 2008. It kind of did with Gore, though Gore deliberately wanted to step out of Clinton's shadow so didn't do as many things. It was at the time a big feather in the cap for Obama, who was going out of his way to campaign for a number of other candidates while doing his own, and it was a sign of his coalition building. 

It isn't something that is necessarily a bar for Sanders; it's a comparison point. Clinton is working for the democratic party a lot more than Sanders is. Now it is something to criticize Sanders for because he's come out recently and slammed Clinton (and George Clooney) for having these fundraisers for the Democratic party despite the money not going to her - which seems like he doesn't want fundraisers for Democrats. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Well, I don't care about that comparison point at all, so its fine. I donate to ActBlue separately just to get them off my back.

[Astromech]

7 minutes ago, Commodore said:

our exit poll has Kloppenburg ahead 53-47 with 285 responses

hard to draw conclusions though until after work crowd votes

surprising number of Trump-Kloppenburg voters

This isn't very surprising considering certain voters views of  who the "anti-establishment" candidates are. Opinions differ as to whether Trump is establishment or anti-establishment. However, it's difficult to argue Bradley is anything but a Walker lacky. 

[SpaceChampion]

Regarding the Hillary Victory Fund.

 

[lokisnow]

I gotta say, I'm thrilled that Sanders continuing to campaign is bringing issues like Down Ballot candidates to the front and center. 

It illustrates how little substantive difference there is between the candidates (on policy they mostly differ in degree, not in kind), that their different behavior on a relatively obscure wonky whinging point, is now becoming a clear delineation between them.  Raising the profile of this as an issue means that more people are aware of it as an issue in the general election, which probably is good, overall, for coattails.

I'd support Sanders, but as soon as the general public tunes in to recognizing his name and once republican attacks on him start (were he the candidate) he'll drop to sub 40% of support, nationally. I mean the vox tax calculator has continuously been the number one story on vox since it launched two weeks ago. We live paycheck to paycheck and per the calculator he wants to raise our taxes more than $10,000. Fuck that. Once that sort of tax attack on the middle class gets spread far and wide his support will completely vanish.

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

7 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Regarding the Hillary Victory Fund.

 

Um...isn't that kind of the job of the Democratic party? I mean, Sanders is basically saying that he doesn't want to accept this money as a matter of moral choice. It's not like the party hasn't given him money otherwise, or been willing to do so. 

[SpaceChampion]

The job of the DNC is to launder money for Hillary?

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

5 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

The job of the DNC is to launder money for Hillary?

The job of the DNC is to fund the candidates for the party, yes. Including Sanders, who has received a bunch of money from them as well. 

In particular, the story from counterpunch leaves out some fairly crucial details - namely that the money that was given back to the DNC from the states did not go directly to Clinton, and in fact has gone to all sorts of Democratic candidates around the country - including Sanders. It implies that all money goes to Clinton, and that is neither factually backed up nor is, actually, even true. 

[All-for-Joffrey]

4 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

I gotta say, I'm thrilled that Sanders continuing to campaign is bringing issues like Down Ballot candidates to the front and center. 

It illustrates how little substantive difference there is between the candidates (on policy they mostly differ in degree, not in kind), that their different behavior on a relatively obscure wonky whinging point, is now becoming a clear delineation between them.  Raising the profile of this as an issue means that more people are aware of it as an issue in the general election, which probably is good, overall, for coattails.

I'd support Sanders, but as soon as the general public tunes in to recognizing his name and once republican attacks on him start (were he the candidate) he'll drop to sub 40% of support, nationally. I mean the vox tax calculator has continuously been the number one story on vox since it launched two weeks ago. We live paycheck to paycheck and per the calculator he wants to raise our taxes more than $10,000. Fuck that. Once that sort of tax attack on the middle class gets spread far and wide his support will completely vanish.

Oh jesus christ. Not that shitty tax calculator again. I've already addressed this at length on Facebook so I'll just copy and paste that. (Please forgive the fact that it's out of context as it was a very long facebook thread.) That calculator is highly, highly disingenuous and skews all the candidates' tax plans, especially Cruz and Sanders.

 

Oh good lord -- the fair.org article actually DID address this head on when discussing the single payer system proposal. First off -- it's questionable to call the 2.2% proposal an income tax increase because it would presumably be a payroll tax similar to medicare. If you're looking solely at income tax, Sanders only increases income tax itself on people earning upper 100k and up. (But yes, for the average taxpayer it's money you don't have regardless of whether it's an income or payroll tax, so I'll stop being anal retentive about terminology here).

The 6.2% tax on employers is literally trickle down economics/Reganomics orthodoxy, which empirically HAS NOT WORKED. It's highly questionable and extremely abstract/not easy to quantify the assumption that employers will pass their tax onto their employees in the form of lower wages. That's a text book Republican talking point (which the Clinton campaign has repeatedly employed against Sanders btw). Meanwhile, the tax calculator doesn't even make the pretext of balancing this out by including Kenysian economic modals. By Vox's own admission, it does not include the effects of higher spending on increased GDP and therefore higher wages, etc.

But most importantly, it DOES NOT account for how the 2.2% income/payroll tax (whatever you wanna call it) will save you because you no longer have to shell out abhorrent amounts of money for private health insurance. Like many (most?) Americans, I certainly pay more than 2.2% of my total income per year on insurance, copays, healthcare costs, etc. so yes, please increase my taxes by 2.2% a year and get rid of those costs to put more money in my pocket. The calculator does not take this into account. Additionally, I suspect that it still maintains medicare tax rates (which I suspect would largely become an obsolete -- or at least greatly reduced -- program under a single payer system). So under a single payer system with a 2.2% tax, you're probably looking at an eliminated, or at least reduced, medicare payroll tax. (And you probably pay much more than 2.2% on medicare taxes -- which is a regressive tax anyway if you want to talk about the middle/working class sharing an unfair tax burden).

And on top of all this, the calculator is fine with factoring abstract trickle down economic theory into its algorithms, but I don't think it even includes Cruz's 19% general sales tax -- the very epitome of a regressive tax that's harmful to the middle class, and especially the poor! (As a result, it looks like the Cruz tax plan will save you a lot more than it does according to the calculator -- I suspect that for many non-wealthy Americans it will actually be a tax hike). And yet it includes excise taxes -- specific sales taxes on things like cigarettes. The hypocrisy is glaring.

Now we can argue all day about trickle down vs. kenysian economics as conservatives and liberals do every day. As the saying goes, ask an economist one question and you get 50 answers. And that's precisely why expansive tax definitions, whether they be trickle down or kenysian, have no place in what's supposed to be a practical tax calculator designed to help you decide on who to vote for (IE: the questionable assumption that employer taxes will automatically be passed onto the employee in the form of lower wages). If you're going to make an expansive calculator, you at the very least should include the effects of fully funding government programs and higher spending and the effects it has on the economy, leading to higher wages. This calculator is one sided and does not do that. The calculator should stick simply to income tax, payroll tax, and any general sales taxes that are proposed. (Even this would skew the results against Sanders as it wouldn't factor in healthcare savings and medicare tax reductions, as the fair.org article explains, but it would certainly be much more accurate than the crappy calculator currently is).

[SpaceChampion]

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The job of the DNC is to fund the candidates for the party, yes. Including Sanders, who has received a bunch of money from them as well. 

That's not what I said, or what the point of the video is.  Through the Hillary Victory Fund donors exceed $2700 max spending limit for Hillary, but giving a max of $33,400 to the state parties, a lot of which in turn is funneled back to Hillary. 

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

Just now, SpaceChampion said:

That's not what I said, or what the point of the video is.  Through the Hillary Victory Fund donors exceed $2700 max spending limit for Hillary, but giving a max of $33,400 to the state parties, which in turn funnels it back to Hillary.

No, it funnels it back to the DNC. The implication that all the money that goes into the DNC goes to Clinton is both unsupported by actual facts and is not actually true. 

And point of fact, Sanders has literally the same deal that Clinton has, and has had the same deal since October.

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

No, it funnels it back to the DNC. The implication that all the money that goes into the DNC goes to Clinton is both unsupported by actual facts and is not actually true. 

And point of fact, Sanders has literally the same deal that Clinton has, and has had the same deal since October.

Kal,

I think you're overlooking an aspect of the allegation (I don't know if it's true or not). What TYT are alleging is that she used her super wealthy donors to buy state parties' support by funneling money to them they'd otherwise never have a chance of getting and that in turn also bought her the support of some Super Delegates. And furthermore, all this extra money is then funneled back to the DNC, which buys their support for HRC. Idk if it's true or not, but if it is, it does confirm the narrative that the party picked it's candidate long before the people had a say.

[Maithanet]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Kal,

I think you're overlooking an aspect of the allegation (I don't know if it's true or not). What TYT are alleging is that she used her super wealthy donors to buy state parties' support by funneling money to them they'd otherwise never have a chance of getting and that in turn also bought her the support of some Super Delegates. And furthermore, all this extra money is then funneled back to the DNC, which buys their support for HRC. Idk if it's true or not, but if it is, it does confirm the narrative that the party picked it's candidate long before the people had a say.

Even if that were 100% true, that sounds like very standard politics to me.  I wouldn't even give that a 2 out of 10 on the outrage scale. 

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

I'm ignoring the allegation because it's not what SpaceChampion was mentioning. 

I suspect strongly that it's a fair allegation that Clinton's system bought a lot of state's delegates essentially by buying into this system, though I wouldn't use that verbiage. I'm sure it doesn't look great. At the same time, when someone brings up a system that raises a whole lot of money for you and can do so fairly nicely it's not that weird to actually back that person. You can call it corruption; for the DNC, this would be called leadership. It's also what Obama did as well, though later in the campaign. 

The flipside of this is why shouldn't the superdelegates state that (for now) they're supporting the person who is actively raising funds for their own campaigns? I really don't get the outrage here. Should the superdelegates say 'no thanks I don't want money' and go and support Sanders, who openly condemns fundraising like this for the party? Of course not. Part of the superdelegates deciding who is best for the party is seeing who can fundraise the best for the party. So long as the superdelegates can change their mind, are not doing anything either illegal or particularly immoral, and are not stating that they will take money in exchange for their vote I don't see why this is even newsworthy. 

[Tywin et al.]

Well I personally have never bought in to the notion that the person who can raise the most money is the best person for the party. That's why we have DWS. 

And the bigger picture question is why does this type of system even exist? It's far too easy to corrupt*.

 

 

*Not saying Clinton is corrupt, just that the current campaign contributions system makes it far more likely that corruption can exist.

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

I think that it's certainly a consideration for who is best for the Democratic party. Especially now given how apparently cash-strapped the Dems are in local and state races, by comparison to the opponents. It doesn't need to be the only deciding factor, but it should certainly be a factor. 

And that said - Clinton has raised more money than Sanders. She's won more delegates than Sanders. She's had more votes than Sanders. She's been a loyal member of the party longer than Sanders. She has more endorsements than Sanders. She has more executive experience than Sanders. At some point the reason that the superdelegates support her has to be not particularly unclear. Yeah, she's raised money for the party and has done so for quite a while, but she's also done everything else she was supposed to do. If you're going to see this as a sign that this is corruption, you're probably not going to be swayed by any actual logic or facts to begin with. 

[Myshkin]

Let's not forget that a lot of this money is going to be used to support the eventual nominee. Whoever that is. Right now Sanders says he doesn't want this money, but will he turn it down when he's running a GE campaign? Not if he actually wants to win. 

[lokisnow]

3 hours ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

Oh jesus christ. Not that shitty tax calculator again. I've already addressed this at length on Facebook...

<additional raging>

ok. I read that. twice. I said that with the calculator my taxes are going up $10,000+ under Bernie Sanders and the tone your response implied was, "butbutbut economic theory,trickledown,unfair,waaaah" which misses the larger thrust of my post was pointing out that Sanders is incredibly vulnerable. In a battle for the whitehouse, being painted as attacking the middle class with massive total dollar tax increases is going to destroy his entire margin against the republicans and leave him struggling to cross the 40% of the popular vote threshhold.

His polling is great now, but americans haven't heard one bad thing about him or his tax plan. That will change if he wins the nomination and once republicans begin to attack his plans as heavily taxing the poor and middle class his polling numbers will collapse.

Because if the pushback against attacks on Sanders plans are similar to yours, of the vein: "that's not a fair representation of our economic theories," or "it's not fair to try to calculate real world numbers that don't agree with our economic theories," then Sanders will fail, on a massive and spectacular level that will make Mondale look like an electoral college success.