US Politics - Turtles crawl, the constipation sensation that's gripping the nation.

[Fez]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

Exactly!  I just don't get this thinking that we can't do the smart thing, the right thing, even the thing that people are asking for, because down the like the people who don't like this thing(s) will be mad and not vote for us.  They're not going to vote you anyway, any time.  You can't stop something, you can't change something, but doing the same gdd thing(s) they are already doing, or even just shutting up about the same evil stupid destructive gdd thing(s) they are already doing and have always done.

And there's your mistake right there. There's less persuadable voters than there used to be, but they still exist. And ignoring them is an incredibly stupid mistake. It's not all about GOTY, the Democratic base isn't enough to win a national election by itself (neither is the Republican base). It's also about persuasion.

And it's not just about flipping voters; it's also about people liable to not vote, or vote third party, if they don't like either candidate.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

I think I've made the point several times. People like Clinton and Bloomberg pretend to act all woke during a campaign, but their history as public servants has been in service of their political doners, often at the expense and direct exploitation of their own constituents and the most vulnerable people in the country.

Sorry; how has Clinton pretended to be woke during a campaign? And how does this differ substantively from Sanders voting for the crime bill, or telling people that class is more important than race? I can go into all the ways in which Clinton demonstrably did things to help people, but ultimately you'd dismiss all of them as never enough no matter what they were. Which is why I went 'lol k' - because things like facts and data are obviously not going to work with you. 

Just now, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

I've made this argument several times, and your responses to this have been:

1. No it doesn't, people vote against their interests all the time, it's why there's still a Republican party.
2. The word "overwhelming" is doing a lot of leg-work here.
3. I'm sure "these voters" are very happy to have you speaking for them 

The most paternalistic thing you can do is say that people are voting against their own interests, and only you know best. 

I'm not speaking for the voters; I'm stating what they chose to vote for. You can ignore that, like you do most facts that don't fit your worldview, or you can accept that perhaps whatever message you're espousing doesn't work as well. There might be a lot of reasons for it, but at the end of the day it is not working.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

Dude, you're making a lot of sweeping statements about me here based on like, a dozen exchanged posts. And I kind of get the impression you're trying to project this image onto me of the "Bernie bro who only cares about class." Like, one of my criticisms of Clinton and Bloomberg has kind of been that they've always been really shitty towards issues that effect black and poor Americans uniquely.

And you'd be wrong (at least about Clinton), and that's my point. I don't know if you're a Sanders fan or not; I simply know that you're eloquent enough to have been schooled on these things, and you're obviously wrong enough in basic facts and certain enough about those things to make it clear that this is a conscious choice, not one based on ignorance. 

I would be willing to show you the ways you were wrong if I thought that you'd change your mind because you simply didn't know better, but you do know better - and refuse to pay attention to it. You'll deflect things with various no true scotsman fallacies or say it wasn't enough or go to some other whataboutism. You aren't special in this regard or probably any other.

Just now, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

I could get into the fact that criticisms of class in America are also, inherently, criticisms of institutional racism and patriarchy, even if the person making the criticism doesn't know it (though Sanders does).

Again, you could do that, and you (and Sanders) would be inherently wrong.

Just now, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

Or that politics and advertising basically form the science of getting people to act against their own interests and that whoever has the support of the doner class is always going to have an advantage in primaries especially

Ah, you're not from the US, are you? You're another Sanders supporter from, like, Germany or something. Nothing wrong with that, just interesting to see the same common misspellings.

Just now, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

, and there's nothing paternalistic about that no matter how you choose to miss-interpenetrate it. But honestly, this back and forth with you is tiring, and I don't feel this is really productive.

There's something deeply paternalistic and white savior about telling minorities that they are voting for people that they shouldn't be. I do appreciate miss-interpenetrate though, that's an especially good misspelling. The misspellings I'm generating are more than enough to keep my interest, so please, tell me how to interpenetrate things!

[Fragile Bird]

Jeff Bezos has pledged $10 B for a climate change fund.

Must be getting ready to run for President, eh?

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

If you're down to attacking my spelling I'm going to assume you don't actually have an argument. I mean, I could also get into the fact that I'm about to have a son whose going be half-black, which in this country pretty much means he's going to be black, and all the ways "paternalism" does indeed play into the way I see race and politicians like Clinton and Bloomberg and their violent rhetoric against young black men that dried up as soon as the political currency of it went away. But like I said, arguing with you is not useful.

Nah, not attacking, just amused. Interpenetrate is a really good malapropism. 

Congrats on your having a child! 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Jeff Bezos has pledged $10 B for a climate change fund.

Must be getting ready to run for President, eh?

Why would he ever do that?  

[Fez]

32 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Jeff Bezos has pledged $10 B for a climate change fund.

Must be getting ready to run for President, eh?

So a thing I saw pointed out about Bloomberg is that a conservative estimate of his finances is that he'll earn $4.8 billion in investment income in 2020; meaning he could spend that much on his election campaign and not be a penny poorer than when he started.

As rich as Bloomberg is, Bezos is more than twice as rich as him. Which means a similar conservative estimate of his finances is that he'd earn about $10 billion in 2020. As such, this pledge is literally not costing him anything; so, I'm not really that impressed. This is basically the bare minimum that Bezos should be doing.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, Fez said:

So a thing I saw pointed out about Bloomberg is that a conservative estimate of his finances is that he'll earn $4.8 billion in investment income in 2020; meaning he could spend that much on his election campaign and not be a penny poorer than when he started.

As rich as Bloomberg is, Bezos is more than twice as rich as him. Which means a similar conservative estimate of his finances is that he'd earn about $10 billion in 2020. As such, this pledge is literally not costing him anything; so, I'm not really that impressed. This is basically the bare minimum that Bezos should be doing.

Is that still true after his divorce?   

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Funny, this is the mantra of the moderate/centrists/pragmatists.

.

Moderates and centrists don't want single payer.  Sure, a pragmatist who does would be fine with taking what you can get, point is to keep pushing for what you want and not come to the table already asking for less than what you want.  It's not the mantra of centrists or moderates - they don't even have the same end goal. 

So it's really not.  I guess what I'm asking you is - why would you not even bother tonight for what you want but instead, immediately resort to scrambling for whatever scraps you can get?  

Obviously all this general shit depends on the issue in question.  

[Fragile Bird]

About stop and frisk - doesn’t every US city basically do this? 
 

Awwwww, Donnie is sympathizing with Sanders again, ‘’he’s being treated so unfairly, just like I saw 4 years ago!’

I’m puzzled, though, isn’t that Trump’s preliminary statement before pardoning someone? What crime was Sanders convicted of?

 

And who wants to place a bet that some Trump acolyte is, at this very moment, preparing tax fraud accusations against Bloomberg. Not that Trump asked them to, nudge nudge, wink, wink.

[Larry of the Lawn]

7 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

About stop and frisk - doesn’t every US city basically do this? 
 

Awwwww, Donnie is sympathizing with Sanders again, ‘’he’s being treated so unfairly, just like I saw 4 years ago!’

I’m puzzled, though, isn’t that Trump’s preliminary statement before pardoning someone? What crime was Sanders convicted of?

 

And who wants to place a bet that some Trump acolyte is, at this very moment, preparing tax fraud accusations against Bloomberg. Not that Trump asked them to, nudge nudge, wink, wink.

No*

*It's not constitutional

[Kalbear]

8 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Moderates and centrists don't want single payer.  Sure, a pragmatist who does would be fine with taking what you can get, point is to keep pushing for what you want and not come to the table already asking for less than what you want.  It's not the mantra of centrists or moderates - they don't even have the same end goal. 

So it's really not.  I guess what I'm asking you is - why would you not even bother tonight for what you want but instead, immediately resort to scrambling for whatever scraps you can get?  

Obviously all this general shit depends on the issue in question.  

Again, it's about setting expectations, not settling ahead of time. If you are telling everyone you can get M4A - and your very specific version of it, which kicks hundreds of millions of people off their insurance right away and raises taxes - you're doing a bad job because you're being too specific. If you start with the notion that we will give everyone coverage - you can go for M4A, but you can also go with what AOC ends up with saying and get something deeply compromised. 

And that's even worse when you and your supporters yell at others for saying that they would compromise on this, and you NEVER will, only to compromise later.

One of them leads a lot of people to be able to at least say 'yes, we got something of what we wanted and were promised' and the other says 'we got fucked over', even if you get the same thing in the end.

[Larry of the Lawn]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Again, it's about setting expectations, not settling ahead of time. If you are telling everyone you can get M4A - and your very specific version of it, which kicks hundreds of millions of people off their insurance right away and raises taxes - you're doing a bad job because you're being too specific. If you start with the notion that we will give everyone coverage - you can go for M4A, but you can also go with what AOC ends up with saying and get something deeply compromised. 

And that's even worse when you and your supporters yell at others for saying that they would compromise on this, and you NEVER will, only to compromise later.

One of them leads a lot of people to be able to at least say 'yes, we got something of what we wanted and were promised' and the other says 'we got fucked over', even if you get the same thing in the end.

Oh, I agree that the messaging and managing expectations are important.  And those are all valid criticisms in messaging.  That's a fine line to walk - you leave out specifics and you're accused of having no plan, just big ideas.  You deflect on how to pay for it like Warren and you're sunk.

My more general point, in the post you quoted, was to Tywin's nonsensical framing of Sanders having to compromise be the position of "moderates and centrists" when they want very different end goals.  I don't think Sanders would veto a public option.  I don't think he or anyone on the mid to far left is going to suddenly stop advocating for single payer if that happens either.  The mantra of moderates isn't "inch toward single payer every chance you get" it's more "maintain the status quo for as long as possible while making some window dressing improvements".  

But that's just a stupid and mostly semantic argument I've had with him before.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

And there's your mistake right there. There's less persuadable voters than there used to be, but they still exist. And ignoring them is an incredibly stupid mistake. It's not all about GOTY, the Democratic base isn't enough to win a national election by itself (neither is the Republican base). It's also about persuasion.

Prove it.  Everything you all are sayin' about the so called centrist -- which does not exist -- the unification -- which doesn't exist -- the swing voters -- who don't exist -- has proven wrong wrong wrong.

It's fairly comfy and secure white people who think that if they got a Biden they'd be safe again. Forget about it.

[Fragile Bird]

Trump claimed today that he is the ‘Chief Law Enforcement Officer’ of the USA.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Prove it.  Everything you all are sayin' about the so called centrist -- which does not exist -- the unification -- which doesn't exist -- the swing voters -- who don't exist -- has proven wrong wrong wrong.

Good thing they're not saying that.

They're saying that there exist a whole lot of voters who will vote - or not - depending on whether they are activated. They aren't necessarily centrists, or swing voters. They're people who have certain issues they care about, and others that turn them off. 

And for a lot of them, "BIG GOVERNMENT SPENDS" are  a big turnoff. So is "GET RID OF ALL PRIVATE INSURANCE". They might like other things, but for them those are the big ones, and they care enough to vote. The weird secret in the US is that while the relative number of voters remains largely the same across elections, the actual who voted (or didn't) changes a lot between elections. 

And yes, ignoring that M4A polls badly across the general electorate is a problem, and should be considered a problem.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

29 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Moderates and centrists don't want single payer.  Sure, a pragmatist who does would be fine with taking what you can get, point is to keep pushing for what you want and not come to the table already asking for less than what you want.  It's not the mantra of centrists or moderates - they don't even have the same end goal. 

Some moderates do. They just have slower, and frankly more reasonable, paths to achieving the goal. And often times it's unwise to show your real hand. If you want single payer, it might be smarter to achieve in several steps rather than ask for it all at once. The latter is a much harder sell.

Quote

So it's really not.  I guess what I'm asking you is - why would you not even bother tonight for what you want but instead, immediately resort to scrambling for whatever scraps you can get?  

Obviously all this general shit depends on the issue in question.  

If you're going to start your opening pitch with "give me everything I want," you better be damn good at messaging when it becomes "we got what we think was the most we could." I just think it's more reasonable to start at a rational end point rather than advocating for something you know is DOA. The legislative process is daunting as is, it sucks doubly when you know what you're fighting for has no chance of passing.

Signed, a former legislative staffer. 

7 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

My more general point, in the post you quoted, was to Tywin's nonsensical framing of Sanders having to compromise be the position of "moderates and centrists" when they want very different end goals.  I don't think Sanders would veto a public option.  I don't think he or anyone on the mid to far left is going to suddenly stop advocating for single payer if that happens either.  The mantra of moderates isn't "inch toward single payer every chance you get" it's more "maintain the status quo for as long as possible while making some window dressing improvements".  

But that's just a stupid and mostly semantic argument I've had with him before.

Let me ask you a similar question then. What happens when you promise the world and deliver a bag of beans, especially when the bag beans was always going to be the most likely end?

[Kalbear]

As @DMC said, the problem is not just going after pie in the sky things that won't work. It's going for them when they aren't popular, either. That can be worth it if it ends up providing a lot of good things (like the ACA did), but one way or another it'll cost you and downballot later if it gets passed or not. 

[Zorral]

I'd say what bag of beans you offer -- the opportunity to commit every crime one can think of with impunity, particularly crimes against people who aren't rich and white -- man you will do very well, because man, that's easy -- as it has been shown.  Hideously easy.

The good stuff, not so easy, especially if the very rich and powerful prefer rape,racism sexism, plunder, corruption, lying, etc. with immunity.

[Fez]

13 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Prove it.  Everything you all are sayin' about the so called centrist -- which does not exist -- the unification -- which doesn't exist -- the swing voters -- who don't exist -- has proven wrong wrong wrong.

It's fairly comfy and secure white people who think that if they got a Biden they'd be safe again. Forget about it.

Just. Fucking. Looking at. The. Fucking. 2018. Election Returns. And. Fucking. Compare. Them. To The. Fucking. 2016 Election Returns. And. Fucking Hell. Compare. Them. To the. Fucking. Previous. Fucking. Elections. As Well. While Your. Fucking. At It. Voters. Are Not. Fucking. Static. Fucking. Blocks.

Fuck.