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US Politics: Money, Money, Money Makes the World Go Round


Fragile Bird

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1 minute ago, lancerman said:

There’s no current data that suggests that it made any sense for Bernie to bow out for Warren. You certainly have yet to provide any. The few points you made to try to support it, I’ve addressed and you shifted to calling them irrelevant.

No, there's no current data.  Because my argument you were responding to had nothing to do with current data.  Maybe, one day, a long long time from now, you'll get that.  But it doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon.  Maybe realize what you're responding to instead of making your own argument then calling it "deflecting" when people have no interest in you changing the goalposts.

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20 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Well I also said I though Warren was a better candidate than Sanders but if she couldn't even be a credible threat for him then obviously I was wrong.

He had a ton of advantages on her in terms of starting momentum on a campaign (as Biden does too-  it does suck up a lot of air that they’re in this).  But I think she had begun to be a threat to Sanders this past fall.

When she started catching a bit of fire, a lot of the very pro-Sanders progressive sites really hammered home how Sanders is the one true path, and Warren is an unacceptable proxy.  I’m thinking of places like Jacobin and Chapo Trap, which I ended up deleting from my podcasts because of this.   The idea was typically that nothing short of razing the system of capitalism would do, and we need revolution which only Sanders provides.  Note though- I did stop listening and don’t read Jacobin and other explicitly leftist sites as regularly as other sources, so maybe my impression of how she was ultimately treated in comparison is skewed.  At any rate, it is especially galling to me to hear his surrogates now explain how his M4A plan is to be tempered into what these sites and his surrogates excoriated Warren for, and to hear his supporters even on here assure a bunch of us that Sanders is really an incrementalist and not really going to have a revolution and the like.  I think that pealed a number of progressives from Warren to Sanders this past fall.

I Also think M4A was a huge liability for her in ways that haven’t harmed Sanders yet, but I’m pretty sure they will.  She was seen as the more serious candidate rising when the M4A kerfuffle happened, so she received more scrutiny for it, from both sides.   And she also got more scrutiny because it’s been totally acceptable for Sanders to just have “moral positions” he doesn’t have to show the work for in general - acceptable from his supporters, as well as more mainstream sites that hadn’t taken him as seriously as Warren, and as such hadn’t imposed scrutiny.

I said much earlier that Sanders has been treated with kid gloves outside of some major whining from NeverTrumpists and moderates.   The other candidates haven’t been treated this way, except Biden a bit, who seems to be graded on a generous curve, which meant that for a long while kept being celebrated as “winning” debates and such for not having too many gaffes and embarrassing derailments.  Which leads to a point I wanted to address:

@Lollygag - I don’t think the issue is going to be real skeletons in the closet or surprising “gotcha” moments for Sanders.  I think the problem is that he is going to be that subject to real scrutiny very soon, which he’s mostly escaped.  I also think it doesn’t matter if he’s actually like Trump in the ways you’ve been pointing out or not— it’s how it’s going to look, and there’s a lot about Sanders that just won’t be a good look to the geographically advantaged (i.e. swing state suburban voters).   A lot of the people who turned the election for for dems in 2018 very well might look at him as a leftist Trump, decide they’re both the same, and think at least Trump won’t raise my taxes for welfare programs, etc.   I don’t know if the reality matters that much to these (possibly lower information) voters.   I mean, Benghazi and Butter Emails weren’t real either, but they managed to utterly destroy whatever enthusiasm existed for corrupt Hillary.   Who, I again point out, had even higher favorability ratings than Sanders does now during the fall of the primaries.

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15 hours ago, Lord of Rhinos said:

So how do you see this happening?  Doug Jones is almost certainly going to be losing his seat in Alabama, so Democrats will need to win four seats to get the senate to 50-50.  The three senators that Democrats have a fair chance of knocking out are Susan Collins, Martha McSally, and Cory Gardner, but Dems are going to need one more to reach 50 and like I mentioned earlier if Bernie becomes president they are likely to lose his seat temporarily as well.

My guess: assuming you can knock off the trifecta of Collins, Gardner, and McSally (which would already say that Democrats are having themselves a good year, because while they're anywhere from favorites to having a fighting chance in those races, winning all three is already somewhat unlikely) other targets should be Joni Ernst in Iowa, (very unpopular Senator who is having an especially bad slide in popularity, even among Republicans) North Carolina, (Thom Tillis retiring will shake up some things, as will the presidential election and all the political shenanigans going on in the state) Kansas (mostly if Kobach becomes the nominee, as he just managed to fuck up an election in the state and get a Democrat elected governor due to his unpopularity outside of Republican circles) and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia. (Not especially popular appointed candidate and there were divisions in the Republican party about her appointment.)

It'll take a lot of luck for it to work out. Plus, you never know when Republicans are going to come up with candidates like Roy Moore, Christine O'Donnell, and Kris Kobach who manage to loss elections they should win.

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4 hours ago, DMC said:

No, there's no current data.  Because my argument you were responding to had nothing to do with current data.  Maybe, one day, a long long time from now, you'll get that.  But it doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon.  Maybe realize what you're responding to instead of making your own argument then calling it "deflecting" when people have no interest in you changing the goalposts.

That’s because your argument is just a non factual made up stance with no basis in reality. This discussion is a waste of time 

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Having now read through about ten pages of this thread that I couldn't read this weekend due to having a life involving other things ---

Going back to the concern about Sanders' (possible) finger-jabbing --- I've taught a class in cross-cultural psychology for years and I know that a great deal of Sanders' "openly expressing anger" style does come from his Jewish (or at least northeastern USA Jewish) culture rather than being personally "childish." I also know that you aren't going to get most of us WASPS to ever feel emotionally comfortable with this, and I wish the media and/or some Sanders surrogates would actually do some explaining of this to the general public. Though I fear some of that would be wrongly perceived to be anti-Semitic.

Personally I can deal with that aspect of Sanders' style. What still bothers me is what other people on this thread call his hubris. 

What would make me feel less frightened of Sanders is for him to simply say he was wrong and that he has changed his mind about some of that seeming support for leftist authoritarian regimes which has been pointed out in this thread. Heck, it wouldn't even have to be everything -- just pick a couple of the most problematic statements and say that he was wrong to have phrased things in the way he did and regrets the image it now gives people. That would both reassure me as a 68 year old gay man (which means I remember quite well how nasty the leftist authoritarian regimes in Cuba and China were to GLBT people and am scared by any seeming support of them) and, more importantly, show that he is NOT a super-narcissist like Trump. I really don't want to replace a fascist narcissist with a socialist one. Like almost everyone else who posts on this thread and is not a big Sanders fan, I will vote for Sanders if he is the nominee -- "Trump light" is better than "Trump heavy" -- but I would sure like to have the feeling that there is some bit of humility in Sanders' personality.

I also know that perhaps Sanders has made statements about being wrong or changing his mind that have not been reported enough and that I have missed. I would love it if Sanders supporters could point out public statements like that to me. But to me a dash of humility is the most important personal characteristic I'd like to see in a President following the disaster of Trump.

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42 minutes ago, lancerman said:

That’s because your argument is just a non factual made up stance with no basis in reality. This discussion is a waste of time 

Makes one wonder why you bothered continually responding then, huh?  And yes, my argument was inherently a counterfactual.  An 8 year old picks that up from my first response.  Took you, like, 24 hours and about 6 responses.

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2 hours ago, Stego said:

I'll take a MAGA hat wearing Trump supporter over an anti-Bernie 'liberal' any day. At least one has the courage of their convictions.

Big fan of Richard Spencer too? 

The ability to type does not make you intelligent.

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35 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Going back to the concern about Sanders' (possible) finger-jabbing --- I've taught a class in cross-cultural psychology for years and I know that a great deal of Sanders' "openly expressing anger" style does come from his Jewish (or at least northeastern USA Jewish) culture rather than being personally "childish." I also know that you aren't going to get most of us WASPS to ever feel emotionally comfortable with this, and I wish the media and/or some Sanders surrogates would actually do some explaining of this to the general public. Though I fear some of that would be wrongly perceived to be anti-Semitic.

Is that really a northeastern US Jewish cultural component? Because speaking as a member of that cohort, as is my entire family, I'd say that long-simmering quiet disappointment, passive-aggressive guilt tripping, and refusing to talk to someone for years (or even decades) over a perceived slight is far more common. 

But then again, maybe my family assimilated a bit too well into the WASP culture around us.

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Just now, Simon Steele said:

That's true, but that's also shocking to me--that so many people of faith are following Trump. That's a whole different can of worms.

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways” - somebody 2000 years ago waiting in chains to be crucified upside down somewhere.

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8 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

And socially conservative, and not(as much Democrats keep trying pretending it to be so), do not unanimously agree with a liberal immigration policy. 

The sooner more Democrats and Liberals understand no demographic is required to vote for them, and may have different needs/grievances than they've conceptualized the better off they’ll be

Just because they look like many of the illegal immigrants coming over, doesn't mean they have to have much sympathy for them. Or really poor immigrants in general. Anymore than Irish-Americans, or Italian-Americans. They got theirs already. 

For me, it's not even that they may or may not disagree with a liberal immigration policy. I mean, if Latinos voted for Romney or McCain or Bush, it didn't seem as odd. With Trump, he is so overtly racist and hateful, and more than happy to tokenize, it just doesn't make sense.

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3 minutes ago, Fez said:

long-simmering quiet disappointment, passive-aggressive guilt tripping, and refusing to talk to someone for years (or even decades) over a perceived slight is far more common.

This has generally been my experience from a lifetime interacting with northeastern Jews.  Particularly ex-girlfriends.

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4 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

He had a ton of advantages on her in terms of starting momentum on a campaign (as Biden does too-  it does suck up a lot of air that they’re in this).  But I think she had begun to be a threat to Sanders this past fall.

When she started catching a bit of fire, a lot of the very pro-Sanders progressive sites really hammered home how Sanders is the one true path, and Warren is an unacceptable proxy.  I’m thinking of places like Jacobin and Chapo Trap, which I ended up deleting from my podcasts because of this.   The idea was typically that nothing short of razing the system of capitalism would do, and we need revolution which only Sanders provides.  Note though- I did stop listening and don’t read Jacobin and other explicitly leftist sites as regularly as other sources, so maybe my impression of how she was ultimately treated in comparison is skewed.  At any rate, it is especially galling to me to hear his surrogates now explain how his M4A plan is to be tempered into what these sites and his surrogates excoriated Warren for, and to hear his supporters even on here assure a bunch of us that Sanders is really an incrementalist and not really going to have a revolution and the like.  I think that pealed a number of progressives from Warren to Sanders this past fall.

I Also think M4A was a huge liability for her in ways that haven’t harmed Sanders yet, but I’m pretty sure they will.  She was seen as the more serious candidate rising when the M4A kerfuffle happened, so she received more scrutiny for it, from both sides.   And she also got more scrutiny because it’s been totally acceptable for Sanders to just have “moral positions” he doesn’t have to show the work for in general - acceptable from his supporters, as well as more mainstream sites that hadn’t taken him as seriously as Warren, and as such hadn’t imposed scrutiny.

 

 

I agree--Chapo, in particular, has become pretty insufferable. Their distinctions between Warren and Sanders are pretty flimsy.

I wonder though, a lot of people say she shouldn't have been on the M4A train, that's what got her. But that is part of who she is as a candidate. It seems to me that her drop coincided with her waffling on it. A lot of analysts consistently told us that she and Bernie didn't share the same group of voters, but Bernie started becoming a big contender when she began falling. 

7 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways” - somebody 2000 years ago waiting in chains to be crucified upside down somewhere.

Ugh. So true. When my son got really sick when he was little, people used that line as a form of consolation. 

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