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

[Fragile Bird]

I suspect the socialism label would tip voters sitting on the fence over to the Republican side. That includes independents, Republicans and conservative Democrats. Remember, Trump was elected by the skin of his teeth.

[OldGimletEye]

1 minute ago, Darryk said:

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 think it can generally be said that people are more afraid of loss than they are from a potential gain. If you wack someone's employer sponsored insurance they are going to fear whether they are truly going to get something better.

I have a lot of disdain for the employer based healthcare system as it's inefficient, unjust, and gives employers too much power. It would make me happy to see it go away. That said, obliterating everyone's employer sponsored healthcare in a very short period of time, is likely to have a lot of political blow back. It needs to be killed gradually.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

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

Bernie's campaign manager before the DNC changed the rules:

Quote

“And that’s what [Bloomberg's] trying to do with this election, is say: ‘I’m going to swoop in late. I’m not going to do grassroots campaigning. I’m not going to come to these debates. I’m not going to do town halls. I’m not going to answer questions. What I am going to do is try to buy this damn thing,’” Shakir added.

Bernie's senior advisor after the DNC changed the rules:

Quote

“To now change the rules in the middle of the game to accommodate Mike Bloomberg, who is trying to buy his way into the Democratic nomination, is wrong,” Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser on the Bernie Sanders campaign, said in a statement to HuffPost. “That’s the definition of a rigged system where the rich can buy their way in.”

It's almost as if Bernie's campaign and supporters just want to whine about process no matter what the rules are.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

37 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I suspect the socialism label would tip voters sitting on the fence over to the Republican side. That includes independents, Republicans and conservative Democrats. Remember, Trump was elected by the skin of his teeth.

I understand your concerns, but recent data seems to show the opposite of this. Specifically, it seems independents are not scared off by the socialist term, but funnily enough, they are more scared off by the term "democrat." Make of it what you will, but I think there is strong evidence that independents are not afraid of the term.

 

44 minutes ago, Darryk said:

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".

Predatory is absolutely valid, and "good" vs "bad" insurance policies are constantly used to discourage employees from using their insurance. If you have good insurance (and good insurance means you pay a decent chunk of cash out of your check each month, plus co-pays that vary from 10 dollars to 100 dollars per visit, on top of co-pays for prescriptions) and the employees use it too much, then it gets replaced with something with horribly high deductibles. Our insurance system is built on deterring most people from using it. Which truly sucks. I have "good" insurance. I remember when I first got hired and I was on medicaid with my son, and people were like, "It'll be so nice when you get good insurance, right?" Once I got it, I paid a huge chunk of money every month, and my previously free prescription costs now are unmanageable without the "help" of prescription companies providing discounts. It's truly infuriating.

40 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

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.

It's a weird cycle of "just kidding, but not really" that I find difficult to parse as well. Trump, specifically, is truly postmodern in that nothing is true or can be viewed as true in regards to him anymore.

[Fragile Bird]

Good grief, at least Bloomberg has a track record of public service and from what I’ve seen from his commercials, some pretty good policies. Whereas the Republicans are just funded by the Koch brothers who pull all the strings behind the scenes.

[drawkcabi]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

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.

That's what has me  all the time.

Sure, equate socialism with the USSR, it's not really what socialism in the abstract entails, but as a worst case scenario...ok be wary of going down that road.

However, people who do that also need to equate capitalism with the Great Depression. My mother told me how deeply it effected my grandfather who lived through that. He was incredibly fearful it would happen again. After the depression he lived through WWII and after that the "red scare" with McCarthyism, none of that frightened him like the idea of another Great Depression.

Going to extremes is almost always bad. IMHO taking lessons from history a healthy government that's all around best for everyone should be continually balancing and checking itself between capitalism and socialism. People should be afraid of going too far capitalist as they are of going too far socialist, but they are not...and we end up with such an income disparity that collectively the wealthiest 60 people has an equal amount of wealth as the poorest 3 billion.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, drawkcabi said:

That's what has me  all the time.

Sure, equate socialism with the USSR, it's not really what socialism in the abstract entails, but as a worst case scenario...ok be wary of going down that road.

However, people who do that also need to equate capitalism with the Great Depression. My mother told me how deeply it effected my grandfather who lived through that. He was incredibly fearful it would happen again. After the depression he lived through WWII and after that the "red scare" with McCarthyism, none of that frightened him like the idea of another Great Depression.

Going to extremes is almost always bad. IMHO taking lessons from history a healthy government that's all around best for everyone should be continually balancing and checking itself between capitalism and socialism. People should be afraid of going too far capitalist as they are of going too far socialist, but they are not...and we end up with such an income disparity that collectively the wealthiest 60 people has an equal amount of wealth as the poorest 3 billion.

 

Absolutely no argument.  I’m not describing what should be, but what I see as what is.  

[drawkcabi]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Absolutely no argument.  I’m not describing what should be, but what I see as what is.  

Yep, I knew that, just expanding on your comment with my opinion.

[Fragile Bird]

Fox is running an interview with Trump before the Super Bowl. Trump is running two election ads during the Super Bowl, at a cost of $11 M.

Bloomberg is running an ad as well...on gun control.

eta the Super Bowl interview idea was started by Obama - gee, Trump has rejected everything associated with Obama, why does he do an interview?

Trump’s first interview was the notorious one where he talked about Putin and Bill O’Reilly said he was a killer and Trump said ‘do you think we’re so innocent’. 

[Starkess]

8 hours ago, Darryk said:

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".

I don't think it's that weird. You've heard horror stories, and those are real. But as with anything, it's not the whole story. There absolutely are people out there with good insurance that works for them. I have that right now, although I've also had bad insurance in the past, as well as government-provided health care. 

I'm not defending the system as a whole--it sucks and needs major major overhaul. But to say it is bad for 100% of the people who have it is just silly. 

[Ormond]

17 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I understand your concerns, but recent data seems to show the opposite of this. Specifically, it seems independents are not scared off by the socialist term, but funnily enough, they are more scared off by the term "democrat." Make of it what you will, but I think there is strong evidence that independents are not afraid of the term.

 

 

I think that's a very bad polling question and the results do NOT show what the author of the article and you seem to think, because the question does NOT remind people that Sanders himself embraces the label "socialist", it  has the words "...Republican Donald Trump, who says Sanders is a socialist...". That phrasing actually would lead many Independents to believe Sanders really is NOT a socialist but it's just a false accusation of Trump's. If Sanders gets the nomination, the Republicans are going to have ads where they pull out some footage of Sanders calling himself a Socialist, and are going to graphically give pictures of what "Socialism" looks like by equating it with tanks in the streets and riots in Venezuela. I don't think that question shows Independents won't be scared off by "socialism" in the general election at all. 

[Darryk]

10 hours ago, Starkess said:

I don't think it's that weird. You've heard horror stories, and those are real. But as with anything, it's not the whole story. There absolutely are people out there with good insurance that works for them. I have that right now, although I've also had bad insurance in the past, as well as government-provided health care. 

I'm not defending the system as a whole--it sucks and needs major major overhaul. But to say it is bad for 100% of the people who have it is just silly. 

What makes a particular insurance package "good" or "bad", and would a "good"  insurance package be necessary anymore if you had a system that simply covers everyone, no questions asked, like what they have in Canada, UK and others?

[Liffguard]

15 minutes ago, Darryk said:

What makes a particular insurance package "good" or "bad", and would a "good"  insurance package be necessary anymore if you had a system that simply covers everyone, no questions asked, like what they have in Canada, UK and others?

I've been thinking about this from a UK perspective too. What makes health insurance "good"? Apparently it's that it doesn't deny you healthcare. So insurance simply acts as a gatekeeper between healthcare providers and patients, and even at it's very best it's merely a more permissive gatekeeper. But it doesn't actually provide any value, doesn't bring anything to the table. The "best" insurance is merely the least bad. I guess I just really don't understand the attachment to it.

[mormont]

As far as I can see, US voters' attachment to their existing health insurance has various elements:

- familiarity. They understand it. They know what they can get and what they can't, how much things will cost, and how to access care. Psychologically this is very appealing to people. People like certainty. They don't like learning new systems.

- choice. OK, in many cases choice of providers is limited or nonexistent because the insurer will only pay for certain treatments or providers, but at least in theory, the insurance model allows US voters a degree of control they would lose under a nationalised healthcare model. (Whether patients should be choosing instead of doctors is a whole different debate, but most patients do like the idea, and that's what we're discussing here.)

- familiarity, again. Plenty of research in psychology and economics shows that we attribute irrational value to the things that we currently have, simply because we currently have them. Even if we haven't had them for very long, even if there's no actual practical advantage to having them (so different from the previous point, where familiarity is a rational reason to prefer your current insurance over M4A). We just like things better because we already have them.

So a person may acknowledge that in theory M4A is better for them and even vote for it, but they will still feel a pang when they give up their current insurance. And because voting is as much (if not more) of an emotional decision as a rational one, that is a real problem.

ETA - the irony is that the first and third points are major reasons why Conservatives in the UK have real political difficulty in trying to dismantle the NHS, by the way. And it should be remembered that the foundation of the NHS in the UK was very much an emotional decision as well as a rational one. If you want to make the case for M4A in the US, it needs to have that dimension to it as well.

[A True Kaniggit]

The neighbor to the left finally moved away, so I don’t have to look at his Confederate flag anymore. But now the neighbor on the right has put up a “Trump 2020” flag. 

 

[Kalbear]

Trump polling average is up to his highest ever post 2016 election - 43.6%. Not insanely higher, but still quite good and moving higher yet.

At least right now impeachment is paying off for him. 

[Zorral]

Words from the wise.  Though John Le Carré is a Brit -- and a European -- he knows the US equally well.  He has a lot to say about us too.

© David Cornwell, January 2020. This speech was given at the Olof Palme prize ceremony in Stockholm on 30 January.....

Quote

 

We Brits are all nationalists now. Or so Johnson would have us believe. But to be a nationalist you need
enemies and the shabbiest trick in the Brexiteers’ box was to make an enemy of Europe. “Take back control!” they cried, with the unspoken subtext: and hand it to Donald Trump, along with our foreign policy, our economic policy, our health service and, if they can get away with it, our BBC. . . .

. . . . So Boris Johnson with our blessing has taken his place beside two other accomplished liars of our time: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. If Palme were trying to get the truth out of them, which of the three would he turn to? Or none of the above?

One day somebody will explain to me why it is that, at a time when science has never been wiser, or the truth more stark, or human knowledge more available, populists and liars are in such pressing demand.

But don’t blame the Tories for their great victory. It was Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, with its un-policy on Brexit, its antisemitism and student-level Marxism-Leninism that alienated traditional Labour voters and left them nowhere to go. They looked to the left and didn’t recognise their leader. They looked to the centre and there was nobody there. They were sick of Brexit and sick of politics, and probably as sick of Johnson’s voice as I was. So they pinched their noses and voted for the least worst option. And actually, who can blame them? . . . .

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/01/john-le-carre-breaking-heart-brexit

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Ormond said:

the question does NOT remind people that Sanders himself embraces the label "socialist", it  has the words "...Republican Donald Trump, who says Sanders is a socialist...". That phrasing actually would lead many Independents to believe Sanders really is NOT a socialist but it's just a false accusation of Trump's.

Yeah one of the main articles on Slate right now echoes these points.  Just to add, first it's important to note that there is not significant difference between all three models Yglesias presents - each is within the margin of error of the other, so those minimal differences could indeed just be noise.  More importantly, the firm that commissioned the poll - Data for Progress - only shared those top-line results with Yglesias.  We have no idea how independents specifically are reacting to Sanders, so it's particularly absurd to present the results as evidence independents aren't scared off by the socialism label when we don't even have any cross-tabs.  Finally, it's hard to reconcile Yglesias' argument with the tonnage of (recent) polling that does indeed show the majority of Americans still have an alarmingly unfavorable opinion of socialism, like this one, or this one.  Hell, even this one, that's write-up is framed as an improvement for socialism, shows that the majority of Americans still prefer "free market" over "government" solutions across a host of economic and social policy areas - including healthcare - if you just scroll down a bit.

Now, the stability across the three models of the DFP poll does suggest that this should not hurt Bernie as much as "democratic socialists" that are less well-known - like AOC or especially Ilhan Omar who has the "scary" name and a hijab to boot.  It reflects the fact both Trump and Sanders have near universal name recognition, so the latter should be less subject to those type of manipulations thanks to his familiarity with the American public.  But to act like Sanders won't have to, among the Democratic field, uniquely confront the unpopularity of socialism across the general electorate due to his lifelong self-identification with the ideology is a particularly rich form of willful ignorance.

1 hour ago, A True Kaniggit said:

The neighbor to the left finally moved away, so I don’t have to look at his Confederate flag anymore. But now the neighbor on the right has put up a “Trump 2020” flag. 

Are you sure your neighbor to the left didn't just move to the house on your right to fuck with you?  Alternatively, perhaps you were very fucked up and happened to be upside down when you looked at your neighbor "to the left," and his house is actually to the right when you're standing upright?

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Trump polling average is up to his highest ever post 2016 election - 43.6%. Not insanely higher, but still quite good and moving higher yet.

Well, first, just to be pedantic, his approval was in the 44s up until about mid-March 2017, the first month and a half of his presidency.  More importantly, his 538 score was at 43.4% as recently as a week before Christmas.  In fact, the "u-shape" of the trendline since then suggests a lot of this is just noise and/or dependent on the given pollsters that are counted/weighted in the sample at a given time.  But yeah, impeachment definitely did not hurt his numbers in any discernible way.

[DMC]

So did anyone see the Des Moines Register (and CNN) scrapped their highly anticipated final poll before Monday because of a survey error?  Sounds like one surveyor accidentally cut off the randomized list of candidates to at least one respondent.  And it looks like Buttigieg's camp was the squeaky wheel:

Quote

Lis Smith, a senior adviser to Buttigieg's campaign, confirmed on Twitter that the former South Bend (Ind.) mayor's campaign had been in touch with the media outlets about the issues and hailed their decision to withhold the results.

"Our campaign received a report from a recipient of the Iowa Poll call, raising concerns that not every candidate was named by the interviewer when asked who they support," Smith tweeted. "We shared this with the organizations behind the poll, who conducted an internal investigation and determined not to release it. We applaud CNN and the Des Moines Register for their integrity."

I appreciate the abundance of caution, but gotta think there's a lot of disappointed reporters on the Iowa beat this morning that were counting on it for something to file today.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

4 hours ago, Ormond said:

I think that's a very bad polling question and the results do NOT show what the author of the article and you seem to think, because the question does NOT remind people that Sanders himself embraces the label "socialist", it  has the words "...Republican Donald Trump, who says Sanders is a socialist...". That phrasing actually would lead many Independents to believe Sanders really is NOT a socialist but it's just a false accusation of Trump's. If Sanders gets the nomination, the Republicans are going to have ads where they pull out some footage of Sanders calling himself a Socialist, and are going to graphically give pictures of what "Socialism" looks like by equating it with tanks in the streets and riots in Venezuela. I don't think that question shows Independents won't be scared off by "socialism" in the general election at all. 

Well, I'd have to say that people who write these questions have a reason for writing them the way they do, and that the results DO hold some form of validity. It's a poll. A poll CAN help us understand likely voter attitudes, and this poll DOES do that. 

Anyway, here's an article called Get a Grip, Bernie Bed-Wetters. Note: it's behind a paywall if you've used up all your Vanity Fair freebies for the month.