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US Politics - Term of surrender? Or is it wise to follow the Dumpty?


Lykos

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On 1/29/2020 at 11:53 PM, DMC said:

Uh, no, that's not at all what I'm saying.  Mobilizing turnout is largely based on activists.  Many activists are employed, one way or another, by the Democratic establishment.  If enthusiasm among "the establishment" is murky for a certain nominee, then that is a weakness for that nominee's electoral prospects.

Says more about the "activists" and the party than it does the candidate, to me.

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9 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Isolated episodes from 200+ years ago is what the Constitution is, amIrite? Why bother interpreting it then?

The Constitution itself provides limited direction.  Case law will at least provide justification, explanation, and the idea that the majority of the Court agreed with the holding offered.  Here there is no text explicitly giving the Chief Justice the power to break ties in an impeachment trial.  There is no opinion of the court explaining its rationale.  Finally, it was the action of Chief Justice Salmon B. Chase alone without the support of other justices.  It doesn’t rise to the level of precedence the way old SCOTUS holdings do.  Stare Decisis doesn’t apply in this context.

To bring this back to ground it doesn’t surprise me in the least that this is Robert’s position.

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7 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

 I'll be enthusiastic about Biden about the time he promises not to kick student loan debtors in the balls, again.

QFT.

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Sheesh, Hillary really can't let it go. She's almost as narcissistic as Trump.

And the fact that Bloomberg is gonna be at the next debate surely shows what a farce the whole process is.

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7 hours ago, Ran said:

Rogan is not running for anything. Sanders is not "backing" him or endorsing him. You are choosing to over-read these things because you say you don't trust him, which is your prerogative, but it's worth noting that Sanders is believed by a substantial margin to be the most honest candidate:

You are definitely an outlier if in fact you believe he is not generally trustworthy.

I very much hear you about being concerned that Sanders will be a sub-optimal choice for the general election, and that he may be a sub-optimal choice as president. But the objection you're making here is hard to credit.

One can endorse another person without their running. You can endorse their program, their character, their views. 

And the poll that says that Sanders is trustworthy isn't saying that either. Its saying that 26% of people find him the MOST trustworthy of the candidates. 26% also happens to be roughly what his value for his base is in the entire poll, if you bothered to look. The poll doesnt ask who is considered the least honest.

That's largely irrelevant however, as my opinion isn't necessarily wrong because other people disagree. Furthermore I didnt mean I dont trust him in general - I dont trust him when he says he won't renege on what little he has promised or went after for minorities and women and the like. And that is based on his actions. He has a very clear history of backing people uncritically and being relatively thoughtless about these issues, and as @Rippounet pointed out his policy work and actions throughout the years is not good here either. I think he is very honest and consistent about his core ideological goals of isolationism, wealth redistribution and social welfare, and the record demonstrates that too. But I dont trust him at all to follow through on defending trans rights.

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10 hours ago, Triskele said:

Of course you warned, Big Z.  So did we.   And look how fucked we are.  

So then what's your problem with me personally here that you sneer and snark that I did so warn when so did others?

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2 hours ago, Darryk said:

And the fact that Bloomberg is gonna be at the next debate surely shows what a farce the whole process is.

I hadn't seen that yet -- been kinda ignoring the whole process lately -- impeachment instead, hope vs. knowing better, I suppose.

Bolded -- ay-up Bloomberg bought the DNC just like he bought the news business.  Money talks! Loudest!

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Eh, the DNC did this after the Warren campaign pushed them to allow Bloomberg in because he was skating through to high poll results in later states without actually facing any scrutiny by being in a debate. 

 

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As an outside observer, I don't understand why more is not made of the most obvious reason not to choose Sanders.

Sanders identifies himself as a socialist. It's irrelevent that he uses 'democratic socialist'. You already know it will be a dirty campaign, and Trump will totally misrepresent the meaning of the word socialist. Even the fact that Trump will attack him for that is less important than the fact that the typical American (as far as I can tell from what I see on tv and the internet) is clueless about what a democratic socialist is and fears and resents the idea of socialism. Fucking communism is what it is! They'll take away my money to give it to bums!

Those irrational fears could easily tip the election in Trump's favor. Forget the fact that the attacks will be idiotic. Idiotic is increasingly the norm in the US.

As for who is more trustworthy, really, who gives a shit? You live in a country that elected Trump! Trustworthy is also irrelevent.

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Just now, Simon Steele said:

Any Democrat will be labeled as a socialist. Obama was, and certainly this round of Dems will be too. Would Biden or Warren protesting this label as opposed to Sanders explaining it yield any different results? 

This is absolutely true, but they still understand the difference between socialist as a slur and a self-identified socialist who truly holds to those policies.

The closest to Bernie is Warren and she's an unapologetic capitalist, but her difference is distinguishing between wall street capitalism and main street capitalism. It's a huge difference that they're aware of despite the slurs they use.

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27 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

As an outside observer, I don't understand why more is not made of the most obvious reason not to choose Sanders.

Sanders identifies himself as a socialist. It's irrelevent that he uses 'democratic socialist'. You already know it will be a dirty campaign, and Trump will totally misrepresent the meaning of the word socialist. Even the fact that Trump will attack him for that is less important than the fact that the typical American (as far as I can tell from what I see on tv and the internet) is clueless about what a democratic socialist is and fears and resents the idea of socialism. Fucking communism is what it is! They'll take away my money to give it to bums!

Those irrational fears could easily tip the election in Trump's favor. Forget the fact that the attacks will be idiotic. Idiotic is increasingly the norm in the US.

As for who is more trustworthy, really, who gives a shit? You live in a country that elected Trump! Trustworthy is also irrelevent.

Surely the places where socialism is an issue are going to be hard red states anyway, like Texas? I guess Florida is probably quite anti-socialism but you can win the Electoral College without winning Florida.

The swing states:

a) largely have bigger issues on their mind, like healthcare and trade

b) won Obama the election twice despite the Republicans and Fox News labeling him a communist

For deep blue states like New York and California, being a socialist is probably a plus. 

And the younger generations are an increasingly significant voting bloc that isn't particularly bothered by socialism.

 

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4 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

This is absolutely true, but they still understand the difference between socialist as a slur and a self-identified socialist who truly holds to those policies.

The closest to Bernie is Warren and she's an unapologetic capitalist, but her difference is distinguishing between wall street capitalism and main street capitalism. It's a huge difference that they're aware of despite the slurs they use.

The question is, if socialism is so unpopular in the states, then why are social security, medicare and medicaid (all socialist policies) so popular? Even Republicans are scared to cut them.

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1 minute ago, Darryk said:

The question is, if socialism is so unpopular in the states, then why are social security, medicare and medicaid (all socialist policies) so popular? Even Republicans are scared to cut them.

Because here in the United States we absolutely refuse to define socialism and then stick with that definition.

Depending on what argument one wants to make, the definition changes.

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2 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Surely the places where socialism is an issue are going to be hard red states anyway, like Texas? I guess Florida is probably quite anti-socialism but you can win the Electoral College without winning Florida.

The swing states:

a) largely have bigger issues on their mind, like healthcare and trade

b) won Obama the election twice despite the Republicans and Fox News labeling him a communist

For deep blue states like New York and California, being a socialist is probably a plus. 

And the younger generations are an increasingly significant voting bloc that isn't particularly bothered by socialism.

 

I think FB’s point is that there is a difference between being “labeled” a socialist and proudly claiming to be a socialist.

I don’t have a problem with folks claiming to be socialist but in the US people hear “socialist” and immediately think Soviet Union.

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6 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

This is absolutely true, but they still understand the difference between socialist as a slur and a self-identified socialist who truly holds to those policies.

The closest to Bernie is Warren and she's an unapologetic capitalist, but her difference is distinguishing between wall street capitalism and main street capitalism. It's a huge difference that they're aware of despite the slurs they use.

I don't know if people know the difference (at least those who would be willing to accepts it as an issue). If they know it's just a slur, then I'd say we're talking about ardent Trumpers we aren't getting anyway.

Warren, Biden, etc. would respond to this accusation by denying it. Bernie would divert the accusation saying, "That means I want to make the billionaires pay their fair share so the rest of you aren't scraping by..." etc, etc. Which message resonates more with hypothetical socialist-phobes? I don't know.

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2 minutes ago, Triskele said:

With the huge caveat that I don't know how any of this will turn out, I do believe that this might be the wrong way to look at it.

It's absolutely true that any Dem will be labeled thus.  But Trumpers are going to Trump.  It's independents and really moderate Dems that the candidate will absolutely need where this will matter, and there, I do think there's a possibility that policy stances will make a difference.  

If Bernie doesn't back down one iota on M4A it really does represent a possible change to 100+ million people's health insurance.  When the Dems were running on this in 2018 they were mostly talking about shoring up people's health coverage.  M4A will be easier to paint as taking away your insurance however unfair that may be, because it will be technically correct that it represents a massive change to the system.  

I agree, but I find it logically difficult to understand. I have a co-worker who says this all the time (that M4A will take away her private insurance, and she's irate about it). But two summers ago, she was irate how much physical therapy costed per session and how she couldn't afford to go as prescribed. I'm not saying this is a solvable issue, but it really boggles my mind.

I think the M4-all-who-want-it is more likely to gain traction, but the reason Sanders won't endorse it is he knows that you can't have private companies involved in healthcare anymore--if you want it to become affordable. A huge part of his plan is to remove profit incentive from the insurance companies and drug manufactuers, and driving the costs down. If you can't drive the costs down, then paying for it does seem a lot more difficult.

Still, I think it's a difficult argument worth broaching. Taxing billionaires more, significantly reducing defense spending, etc., if we can't drop the profit making nature of the health industry.

P.S. I also hear about all these people who will lose their jobs. This is a problem, but I think many of the lower level workers will still be needed, they'll just get government run positions. 

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6 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Because here in the United States we absolutely refuse to define socialism and then stick with that definition.

Depending on what argument one wants to make, the definition changes.

Remember when we tried to define it on this board and what a cluster that turned into? :D

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15 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I agree, but I find it logically difficult to understand. I have a co-worker who says this all the time (that M4A will take away her private insurance, and she's irate about it). But two summers ago, she was irate how much physical therapy costed per session and how she couldn't afford to go as prescribed. I'm not saying this is a solvable issue, but it really boggles my mind.

I think the M4-all-who-want-it is more likely to gain traction, but the reason Sanders won't endorse it is he knows that you can't have private companies involved in healthcare anymore--if you want it to become affordable. A huge part of his plan is to remove profit incentive from the insurance companies and drug manufactuers, and driving the costs down. If you can't drive the costs down, then paying for it does seem a lot more difficult.

Still, I think it's a difficult argument worth broaching. Taxing billionaires more, significantly reducing defense spending, etc., if we can't drop the profit making nature of the health industry.

P.S. I also hear about all these people who will lose their jobs. This is a problem, but I think many of the lower level workers will still be needed, they'll just get government run positions. 

It's weird that people are so attached to their private insurance and that the media is actually able to make an issue out of that. I understand people being attached to their doctors or therapists, are they possibly confusing that with private insurance? Do they realize that if their private insurance changes as a result of them changing jobs or whatever, they then have to change their doctors, therapists etc as well?

I've heard horror stories about the insurance industry in the US and how predatory they are. It must have taken some PR effort to convince Americans that there's such a thing as "a great insurance plan".

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Just now, Darryk said:

The question is, if socialism is so unpopular in the states, then why are social security, medicare and medicaid (all socialist policies) so popular? Even Republicans are scared to cut them.

I'm not saying it's unpopular. Actually, I think the perception of it is in flux and it's very hard to say exactly how it'll play out. The Trump set are suddenly starting to whine about elites which is highly unusual for them and Fox News has an affinity for Bernie though that's suspect. They tried to turn AOC into the new Hillary because any Clinton makes them so mad that they're easy to control, but turns out they kinda like her personally, so that didn't work.

But Republicans are very good at fear messaging brainwashing to get their preferred result and socialism is still a very easy target.

 

1 minute ago, Simon Steele said:

I don't know if people know the difference (at least those who would be willing to accepts it as an issue). If they know it's just a slur, then I'd say we're talking about ardent Trumpers we aren't getting anyway.

Warren, Biden, etc. would respond to this accusation by denying it. Bernie would divert the accusation saying, "That means I want to make the billionaires pay their fair share so the rest of you aren't scraping by..." etc, etc. Which message resonates more with hypothetical socialist-phobes? I don't know.

I won't speak for everyone, but in my area of the rural Rust Belt Midwest, it's very clear. Republicans have been name-calling since I can remember and one thing that drives them nuts and amuses them in equal parts is Democrats not understanding that Republicans/Trump say things to just be inflammatory. I think they're being conned in this regard. By his actions, he means exactly what he says, so that's another brainwashing mind game.

 

 

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