US Elections: When Murder isn't Murder

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

Huh. Looks like Sanders is getting that media attention that he wanted after all. 

Quote

 

For some political observers, the senator's difficulty in providing direct answers to some questions reinforced their belief that he lacks a concrete plan to implement his domestic agenda and is ill-prepared to handle the global challenges he would face as president.

"If Hillary [Clinton] gave answers like this to [an editorial] board, she would be crucified," tweeted Mark Halperin, the Bloomberg television host and co-author of "Game Change."

Sanders' remarks drew an onslaught of criticism from the press: "Bernie Sanders Admits He Isn't Sure How to Break Up Big Banks," Vanity Fair's headline read. "How Much Does Bernie Sanders Know About Policy?" asked The Atlantic. "This New York Daily News interview was pretty close to a disaster for Bernie Sanders," The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza wrote.

 

 

[All-for-Joffrey]

58 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

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.

I'm not going to deign to debate with you because I don't like your rude, negative tone.

Just kidding -- but stop being a dick.

There's already been plenty of criticism from Sanders's tax plan -- from Clinton herself -- off the top of my head regarding the 2.2% payroll tax he wants to institute for his healthcare plan. I'm sorry the response wasn't perfectly catered to your post -- as I said up front, it was taken out of context in response to someone else on Facebook. Nonetheless, I feel it addresses several of the key issues (but certainly not all) with a shitty, misleading, disinegnious tax calculator.

You also remain (I suspect intentionally) ambiguous as to whether or not you actually believe your taxes are going up $10,000+ under a Sanders plan. My taxes go up several thousand dollars too under that calculator. I don't believe it for one second. And I've laid out why in the course of that post. I mean fuck, just read the Vox Q&A on its methodology and decide for yourself. It's not that I disagree with trickle down economics (even though I do), it's that the tax calculator ONLY uses trickle down economics without incorporating the effects of spending, fully funding government programs, healthcare reductions, etc (IE: Kensyian economics). To be clear, I don't think the tax calculator should be doing either of these things at they're not explicitly related to your tax rates (IE: payroll, income, and general sales taxes) -- but if they are going to use an abstract tax calculator that they're going to misrepresent as a practical assessment of how much your taxes are actually going to go up or down -- then they sure as hell better use both trickle-down and Keynesian factors in their algorithms. And they sure as hell better be including general sales tax (IE: Cruz's proposed 19% sales tax) if they're going to quibble on excise taxes on things like cigarettes and airplane tickets -- which not everyone buys.

My post wasn't supposed to be a rebuttal of arguments critical of Sanders's tax plan -- it was simply a rebuttal of a shitty tax calculator. Since the tax calculator is so egregiously misleading, as other arguments are likely to be, attacks on Sanders's proposed tax policies are actually quite easy to rebut. Namely that while most people have to pay a 2.2% payroll tax, it will actually save you money by getting rid of your other healthcare costs (and possibly reducing or eliminating our even higher medicare payroll tax). Additionally, Sanders isn't proposing income tax increases on anyone earning less than $250,000. Sanders and his campaign have already made this exact argument several times in response to attacks from Clinton and the Wall Street Journal alike.

 

[Shryke]

 

7 hours 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. 

It's more then that though. If Sanders really wants to shift the democratic party or the US left, he's gonna need more people in congress and the like who are more to the left and those people are gonna need money to run and support from prominent politicians.

This is why people like Obama and Clinton and Other Clinton and the like are out there raising money for the democratic party and campaigning for down ticket candidates.

If Sanders is serious about changing shit, which he clearly is imo, then he's doing a huge disservice to his cause by (as far as I've read) doing little at all to help anyone else who's positions align more with his get elected.

 

I mean, shit, if nothing else shouldn't Sanders be stumping for the person trying to primary DWS's ass? Please god, someone help that guy.

[Altherion]

CNN has the Wisconsin exit polls. Sanders and Cruz each appear to be winning by something on the order of 10 points. Let's see if this holds up...

[lokisnow]

Regardless of who is elected, we should do the paid family leave payroll tax immediately. 

Americans are not policy savvy enough to distinguish between income taxes and payroll taxes. 

This is because payroll taxes are taxed on all income (so far as the 95% of people making less than the social security cap are concerned, since they don't have any investment income either), so most people, who only have one stream of income--their pay--make the "common sense" assumption that payroll taxes are the same as income taxes. Why shouldn't they, most people never experience in their lives income that is not subject to payroll taxes, so far as they are concerned there's no difference.

But you are incorrect, Sanders has all income tax brackets increasing by 2.2% that means he is raising income taxes on those making under $250,000. Sanders also has a .2% employee and employer payroll taxes to fund paid family leave and 6.2% employer side payroll taxes to fund health insurance. For the self employed that's a tax increase of 8.6% on all income. for employees it's a tax increase of 2.4% on functionally all their income. 

This means the self employed would pay 12.4% in payroll taxes to social security, 6.2 percent in payroll taxes to single payer, .4% in payroll taxes to paid family leave. 2.9% in payroll taxes to medicare/caid for a total of 21.9% in payroll taxes before you've paid a dime in income taxes (which are also going up by 2.2%). Sanders plan adds up a very big tax bill very quickly.

I agree with Sanders in principle but I disagree with him in implementation. I think he puts the cart before the horse. Basically I think we need to make our existing payroll tax health insurance programs into great programs before putting everyone onto similar programs. if we can't make sure that medicare is great insurance--and medicare is really shitty insurance that is not as good as the worst exchange plan--then we have no business trying to enact single payer. 

Ultimately I think payroll taxes need to go up to better finance social security and medicare/caid to make them great programs. If the safety net is a great experience, then people will be more inclined to want a single payer experience--but that's not a given, the VA is incredibly popular, with the best metrics of any insurance program in the country and republicans are still successfully dismantling it. If we cannot even defend the best and extremely popular single payer program in the country and are willing to see it dismantled with no effort expended to defend or preserve it, how easy will it be for them to do the same thing to sanders program?

[Shryke]

4 hours 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.

There's two aspects to this story. Maybe three.

Firstly, there's the issue of fundraising for the Democratic party. It's 100% true that this involves essentially laundering money through state and national parties to get around campaign donation limits. But that's not the whole story at all because alot of that money still goes to supporting downticket races. It's not all for Clinton (or Obama or etc). It goes into the party and gets dolled out as they see fit to help their many candidates. (though obviously if we got rid of DWS, this would be done better cause fuck DWS) So basically the fact that money can be funneled back to Clinton this way does not at all negate the fact that said money is also used by the party for other candidates too.

The other issue is the one you raise here of, what, quid pro quo? I raise money for you, you support me? I mean, this sounds all corrupt I guess if you don't think about it at all. I mean, think about the allegation here. People are supporting Clinton because she supports them back. Um ... yeah. That's not corruption, that's people siding with the people who help them push their agenda forward. This isn't the party coronating Clinton or something, this is Clinton being popular because she helps other members of the party. The democratic party, even though it often seems otherwise, is actually a political party and the whole point of that is to find a common agenda or at least a slightly overlapping set of preferences and then help each other get elected and then pass that agenda. Clinton is doing alot for that, Sanders is not doing alot for that. 

And, of course, none of this precludes the people from having a say since as Obama showed back in 2008, if you win the pledged delegates that are decided on by the people, the rest of the delegates fall in line and confirm that choice.

 

Overall it's a good point to raise about how campaign financing and donations work in real life but it doesn't actual refute the point being made about Sanders and Clinton and raising money and downticket races and all that.

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

Sanders currently projected to win by +12. That's good and better than the polls or demographics, but not good enough to stay on track and catch up in time.

[TrackerNeil]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

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. 

I know, right? Yet for some reason her success seems to be due to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the machinations of the DNC. No one can point to exactly how this diabolic duo has so influenced the race, but surely such influence has occurred.

Clinton has the best resume of any presidential candidate in the last 30 years, and I suspect if she had a different name or sex, this race would be viewed very differently.

[All-for-Joffrey]

5 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I know, right? Yet for some reason her success seems to be due to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the machinations of the DNC. No one can point to exactly how this diabolic duo has so influenced the race, but surely such influence has occurred.

Clinton has the best resume of any presidential candidate in the last 30 years, and I suspect if she had a different name or sex, this race would be viewed very differently.

I know right? Because sexism is the only reason so many liberals aren't keen on Clinton.

[Shryke]

12 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

I know right? Because sexism is the only reason so many liberals aren't keen on Clinton.

Nah, there's also a few decades of negative press.

[Altherion]

13 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Sanders currently projected to win by +12. That's good and better than the polls or demographics, but not good enough to stay on track and catch up in time.

It's not enough in and of itself, but it is important because it helps combat a certain perception. When it comes to Sanders' campaign, a substantial part of the media that has paid any attention to it at all has been doing a fair impression of Daniel Abraham's spider priests: Sanders cannot win. The demographics are against him. Clinton has more money and more endorsements. Sanders can't win primaries and they comprise most of the votes. Obama has told Sanders to drop out. Sanders has already lost. They do not have the spider priests' power of persuasion, but it's still enough to convince some number of people. Sanders has now won 7 of the last 8 states (and the one he lost certainly had widespread electoral problems and quite likely electoral fraud) which makes claims of Clinton's inevitability less plausible. As you can see, the media has now switched to a different line of attack.

I think that after the disappointment on March 15, things have gone about as well as could have been expected for Sanders. It's reasonably likely that he also wins big in Wyoming on Saturday. The key is now New York: if he can win that, even narrowly, it's quite likely he can also win the other mid-Atlantic states a week later and then all bets are off.

In related news, what is almost certainly the last of the primary debates will be on April 14th, in Brooklyn (the borough of New York City where Sanders was born and where Clinton has her campaign headquarters). Sanders needs either an extraordinary performance on his part or for Clinton to screw up.

[Shryke]

5 minutes ago, Altherion said:

It's not enough in and of itself, but it is important because it helps combat a certain perception. When it comes to Sanders' campaign, a substantial part of the media that has paid any attention to it at all has been doing a fair impression of Daniel Abraham's spider priests: Sanders cannot win. The demographics are against him. Clinton has more money and more endorsements. Sanders can't win primaries and they comprise most of the votes. Obama has told Sanders to drop out. Sanders has already lost. They do not have the spider priests' power of persuasion, but it's still enough to convince some number of people. Sanders has now won 7 of the last 8 states (and the one he lost certainly had widespread electoral problems and quite likely electoral fraud) which makes claims of Clinton's inevitability less plausible. As you can see, the media has now switched to a different line of attack.

I think that after the disappointment on March 15, things have gone about as well as could have been expected for Sanders. It's reasonably likely that he also wins big in Wyoming on Saturday. The key is now New York: if he can win that, even narrowly, it's quite likely he can also win the other mid-Atlantic states a week later and then all bets are off.

In related news, what is almost certainly the last of the primary debates will be on April 14th, in Brooklyn (the borough of New York City where Sanders was born and where Clinton has her campaign headquarters). Sanders needs either an extraordinary performance on his part or for Clinton to screw up.

No, it doesn't.

Talk about Clinton having this race pretty much wrapped up was always based on assuming this kind of thing would happen. The problem is you are making the silly mistake of assuming winning states matters. It doesn't. Winning delegates matters. And you do that based on, more or less, the amount of the popular vote you get in each state (it's way more complicated then this actually), with each state weighted based on various factors. That's how Clinton can go a night winning 1 out of 3 states but still coming out ahead.

Sanders is still way behind in delegates and needs a major upset in a big state coming up to have anything like a chance of winning. Because nothing has actually fundamentally changed so far from what was expected.

[Myshkin]

It's funny, I turn on the news, or open one of my news aggregator apps and there are stories about Sanders every single day on every single outlet, but according to Sanders supporters there's a near total media blackout about him. I'm having a hard time reconciling these two things.

[Shryke]

Also, in Wisconsin, low turnout, stupid caucuses and some democrats apparently not bothering to vote on Justices when they voted in the primary means Kloppenburg has lost and so Wisconsin is going to take an even harder, more brutal dicking from Scott Walker in the future.

Democrats man....

[Kalnak the Magnificent]

Quote

I think that after the disappointment on March 15, things have gone about as well as could have been expected for Sanders. It's reasonably likely that he also wins big in Wyoming on Saturday. The key is now New York: if he can win that, even narrowly, it's quite likely he can also win the other mid-Atlantic states a week later and then all bets are off.

Actually, no. Not really. If he won all the April primaries by the current margin he has in Wisconsin (which is itself a fairly ridiculous notion, but let's go with that) he'd still be behind by a pretty substantial margin and still not on track to win. That's how far back he is. 

Winning New York narrowly doesn't help at this point except in the idea of momentum. If you believe in that, awesome - but realistically that's not a good predictor of wins and losses. And winning New York narrowly puts him on the path to lose the election by about 100 delegates. 

Quote

I know right? Because sexism is the only reason so many liberals aren't keen on Clinton.

It's not, but similarly the DNC being behind Clinton is not remotely the only reason that Clinton is ahead, and the consistently myopic and idiotic idea that it is a Grand Conspiracy and if only Sanders was Given A Fair Shake that he'd win is just preposterous. 

[All-for-Joffrey]

6 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Also, in Wisconsin, low turnout, stupid caucuses and some democrats apparently not bothering to vote on Justices when they voted in the primary means Kloppenburg has lost and so Wisconsin is going to take an even harder, more brutal dicking from Scott Walker in the future.

Democrats man....

Where are you getting this from? I imagine the supreme court race was high profile enough a race that most Democrats would be aware enough to vote for her. Without looking at the turnout numbers yet, I would imagine that this simply means more Republicans turned out in their primary than did Democrats. 

ETA: I can't even find anywhere that's called the race yet. Frankly I'm just surprised we haven't seen any Waukesha county ballot magic yet. 

[Shryke]

Also apparently lots of long lines, both for IDs and for voting, because Wisconsin is run by a party trying to stop people from voting. Woo!

[Astromech]

4 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

Where are you getting this from? I imagine the supreme court race was high profile enough a race that most Democrats would be aware enough to vote for her. Without looking at the turnout numbers yet, I would imagine that this simply means more Republicans turned out in their primary than did Democrats. 

Hey, those judicial candidates are non-partisan Even the ballot said so.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Wisconsin was positive for Sanders, but in a "necessary, but not sufficient" sense. He still needs a solid win in New York - and that too is "necessary but not sufficient".

[lokisnow]

1 hour ago, Shryke said:

Also, in Wisconsin, low turnout, stupid caucuses and some democrats apparently not bothering to vote on Justices when they voted in the primary means Kloppenburg has lost and so Wisconsin is going to take an even harder, more brutal dicking from Scott Walker in the future.

Democrats man....

When it comes to their own self interests, democrats are the worst at showing up to vote for them. It is known.