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US Politics: What goes up, must come down!


Fragile Bird

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12 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I dont know what I have to defend here. It's not my position personally. It's just an observation that the US in general is willing to tolerate a lot more horror and injustice and illiberalism than most other modern democracies, is far more controlled by oligarchs, and is likely going to be an autocracy in the next 10 years. How is that on me? If I tell you it's raining are you blaming me for producing the clouds now? 

Yeah, except what shocked me was Ty's assertion that no American liberal will be willing to defend Sanders's positions on some of the darkest aspects of US foreign policy, with Nicaragua as the specific example.

Are you sure you want to ridicule me on this one? Or did you just skim through the text without understanding what I was talking about?
Last chance dude. I tend to play nice, but I have my limits.

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2 hours ago, Fez said:

Was going to link this, but you beat me to it by a good margin. Yeah, this is very unsettling. I see Nate Silver was also sharing Sanders' latest set of state polls and he noted a particular weakness in the South.

I don't know what to think about all these contradictory assessments, but I do know that Sanders is absolutely depending on young people coming out to vote... and the evidence of turnout in the primaries and caucuses so far are not encouraging in this regard. Twitter is not reality. A vast number of young people in the US are as politically engaged as these folks:

 

 

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2 hours ago, Fez said:

Relevant, and I don't think it's already been linked. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21152538/bernie-sanders-electability-president-moderates-data

Pollsters at UC-Berkely and Yale teamed up to run a 40,000-person survey on Sanders' electability.

There's a lot of other data as well; but this is why the establishment is freaking out about Sanders.

ETA: Important to note that Sanders does worse than any other candidate against Trump among all groups, including whites-without-a-college. The only place Sanders does better is among youth, and he needs an unprecedented and massive spike in their turnout to overcome his losses elsewhere.

That is concerning; with two caveats that externalities can cause these dynamic numbers to change, and the study talks about the popular vote compared to the EC (although for the latter I imagine a smaller vote count makes things worse for Democrats)

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39 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The Dow is now down 600. I wonder how long this will last.  

Down 800 now. It's kinda amazing how little investors had priced in the possibility of this becoming an issue. Although, I guess considering how easily the market jumps based on Trump lies about trade deals with China, it shouldn't be that amazing. Investors are dumb.

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13 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Yeah, except what shocked me was Ty's assertion that no American liberal will be willing to defend Sanders's positions on some of the darkest aspects of US foreign policy, with Nicaragua as the specific example.

Are you sure you want to ridicule me on this one? Or did you just skim through the text without understanding what I was talking about?
Last chance dude. I tend to play nice, but I have my limits.

I didn’t say no liberal American, I was implying that he won’t have a ton of allies on a lot of his views with regards to left wing socialist and authoritarian governments. Keep in mind, ti fully understand the issue you must see it through the average American’s eyes. The propaganda in this country is still quite strong, and as Mormont mentioned, Sanders is going to get bogged down explaining a lot of his stances and views, many which fall outside of the traditional mainstream.

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9 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Yeah, except what shocked me was Ty's assertion that no American liberal will be willing to defend Sanders's positions on some of the darkest aspects of US foreign policy, with Nicaragua as the specific example.

Are you sure you want to ridicule me on this one? Or did you just skim through the text without understanding what I was talking about?
Last chance dude. I tend to play nice, but I have my limits.

Yeah, I want to ridicule you on that, because that's not remotely what you said or what I quoted. I was responding very specifically to your statement that it's depressing that the US isn't more willing to accept a real liberal viewpoint, and how depressing that was. Well, it's not like that information hasn't been in the public for a while now. I quoted what I quoted for a very specific reason - and point of fact, that wasn't even a response to Tywin's post!

Ultimately whether or not I agree with Sanders on Nicaragua is incidental, because it is a politically stupid thing to say. It's stupid for Sanders to have a flag of the Soviet Union in his office - for any reason at all - as a politician in the US. It's stupid for him to commend Castro on basically anything unless he's specifically getting something from Castro for the US on it (like Obama was trying to do, and even that wasn't great politically). It's stupid to wish for a worker's revolution in the US if you want to legitimately run for a major office. That is the state of the US, that's been the state of the US since 1917, and wishing it wasn't so isn't going to change it. 

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2 hours ago, Fez said:

Relevant, and I don't think it's already been linked. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21152538/bernie-sanders-electability-president-moderates-data

Pollsters at UC-Berkely and Yale teamed up to run a 40,000-person survey on Sanders' electability.

There's a lot of other data as well; but this is why the establishment is freaking out about Sanders.

ETA: Important to note that Sanders does worse than any other candidate against Trump among all groups, including whites-without-a-college. The only place Sanders does better is among youth, and he needs an unprecedented and massive spike in their turnout to overcome his losses elsewhere.

Sounds about right. Pretty much my biggest concern. The only real hope I have is that enough people will vote against Trump, especially in suburban areas, to offset his insane proposals that everything will be free but really, I think what's going to happen is turnout on the Dem side will be down as suburban crossovers either stay home or go back to GOP given SCOTUS is on the ballot and Trump will get enough to win again because outside of the youth vote which is notoriously unreliable, Bernie doesn't really inspire anyone.

Bernie, to me, is just the wrong candidate to unite all the different groups that voted Dem in 2018.

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23 minutes ago, Ran said:

Was going to link this, but you beat me to it by a good margin. Yeah, this is very unsettling. I see Nate Silver was also sharing Sanders' latest set of state polls and he noted a particular weakness in the South.

I don't know what to think about all these contradictory assessments, but I do know that Sanders is absolutely depending on young people coming out to vote... and the evidence of turnout in the primaries and caucuses so far are not encouraging in this regard. Twitter is not reality. A vast number of young people in the US are as politically engaged as these folks:

 

 

That was so much better than Jay Walking! Good link.

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5 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Bernie, to me, is just the wrong candidate to unite all the different groups that voted Dem in 2018.

Bernie is pretty inarguably the wrong candidate to unite the Democratic party of 2018.  His pitch is to remake the Democratic party in more of a European Democratic Socialist vein, and that such a message will be more successful than the corporate friendly, center-left Democrats of old. 

It should come as no surprise that many people (such as myself) who support most of Sanders proposals but have been center-left Democrats their whole life are uncomfortable with such a dramatic change.

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50 minutes ago, Fez said:

Down 800 now. It's kinda amazing how little investors had priced in the possibility of this becoming an issue. Although, I guess considering how easily the market jumps based on Trump lies about trade deals with China, it shouldn't be that amazing. Investors are dumb.

Just over 900 a minute ago before recovering to only being down 800 again.

I hope if anyone actually has money in the market, (I think I read that only about 20% of Americans do) that they’re keeping a sharp eye on managing it and aren’t losing too much, as there’s at least a chance that the Dow will have back to back days of being down 1000 points. Now the Dow is antiquated and not terribly representative of the actual economy, but the S&P index, which is representative, is getting hit almost as hard. Most of last week was a losing streak too.

Trump was continuing to shrug this all off and ignore it as of this morning during his India trip, some good attack ads could be born from that if things no longer look rosy in November.

By the way, there’s always a tweet. Back during the Obama administration, Trump said that any president who allowed the Dow to drop 1000 points in a week should resign because of their incompetence. Now Donny has let it happen in a day multiple times.

We’re waiting, Donny.

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

An enormous amount is terrible for a very very very large number of people in very very very many places of the USA.  Of course for the top it's just great.  But there are far more people who aren't at the top.  Do you even have an idea of how many people are homeless in the USA? Go to bed hungry in the USA? Who have no health care in the USA? Who are paying off student loans for a degree that even with loans they can't afford to complete in the USA?  And still are working three jobs

Thank you, bloomb, bezos, and every Dem and rethug who supported weakening and removing rules and regs for corporations, banks and Wall Street, etc. And not bothering to prosecute even those caught red-handed like Trump.

What do you think it was like here economically when Obama came into office thanks to the above?

Even living in Canada you should be better informed than this.

 

Yeah, don’t lay that bullshit at my door. Or the door of any other foreigner. You are where you are because of choices Americans made. Elections matter.

And if your streets are full of homeless people, that’s squarely on the shoulders of Americans.

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2 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Just over 900 a minute ago before recovering to only being down 800 again.

I hope if anyone actually has money in the market, (I think I read that only about 20% of Americans do) that they’re keeping a sharp eye on managing it and aren’t losing too much, as there’s at least a chance that the Dow will have back to back days of being down 1000 points. Now the Dow is antiquated and not terribly representative of the actual economy, but the S&P index, which is representative, is getting hit almost as hard. Most of last week was a losing streak too.

Only 20%? I thought since most pension plans were gutted that savings from your job were now mainly tied into 401(k)s that invariably have a stock component to them. Still, I dont know what fraction of the American public this is true for, since savings plans may be out of the reach of many.

The stock market isn't the economy but Trump thinks it is. And maybe by osmosis many of his supporters do as well.

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8 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Only 20%? I thought since most pension plans were gutted that savings from your job were now mainly tied into 401(k)s that invariably have a stock component to them. Still, I dont know what fraction of the American public this is true for, since savings plans may be out of the reach of many.

The stock market isn't the economy but Trump thinks it is. And maybe by osmosis many of his supporters do as well.

Yeah, I mixed up two sets of numbers. 20% is for owning individual stocks aside from a retirement plan. Total with anything at all, including via retirement plans, is in the mid 50s, last I heard.

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Anybody ever get the feeling that the youth vote is so unreliable because Dems consistently nominate candidates with minimal youth appeal?  

I mean, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton didn't exactly inspire the youth.

Turnout in Nevada and NH was better than 2008, and NH had also passed a law since 2016 making voting in NH more difficult for college students.  

20 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Yeah, don’t lay that bullshit at my door. Or the door of any other foreigner. You are where you are because of choices Americans made. Elections matter.

And if your streets are full of homeless people, that’s squarely on the shoulders of Americans.

What does it matter if a third to a half of Americans have regularly screwed over the rest of us in their voting?  It's on the rest of us?  Why is someone suffering more meaningful on one side of a border than another?  Those kids in in cages?  Fuck em, an American made that decision.  No one's blaming Canadians so I don't know what you're on about.  Zorral specifically mentioned a bunch of uber-rich shit heads.  No one's laying bullshit on your door.

Yeah our country has an extremely fucked up history of genocide, nihilistic imperialism, corporate greed, and slavery; the vestiges of which are still very visible today.  And you know what?  A lot of us don't like it and oppose it!  In the meantime we've had people in this very thread whining about Sanders recognizing the US's terrible foreign policy in Latin America, but this is the hill you're dying on?

But please, tell people who aren't doing well here, with rising economic inequality and immobility and and a social safety net that is beyond pathetic considering the wealth collectively at our disposal, that it's the fault of the have nots.  I never voted for Reagan.  Or Bush.  Must be nice to just lecture everyone from abroad.  

 

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19 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

I hope if anyone actually has money in the market, (I think I read that only about 20% of Americans do) that they’re keeping a sharp eye on managing it and aren’t losing too much, as there’s at least a chance that the Dow will have back to back days of being down 1000 points.

Anyone short of professionals should just hold tight rather than worrying about the irrationality of the market.

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5 minutes ago, Ran said:

Anyone short of professionals should just hold tight rather than worrying about the irrationality of the market.

Not entirely true. For someone only a year or two away from retirement (or already in their retirement), its definitely worth a talk with their financial planner about the odds of a bounceback vs a risk of future loss and whether they should cut and run to protect remaining assets.

Anyone else, yeah, just sit tight. Unless, like me, you're looking at buying in and need to gauge when the right time to jump in is. Other than my retirement, I've been sitting mostly in cash for a couple years for fear of getting caught up in a Trump bubble (and I didn't have the funds to get in at the start of the bubble). So I've been waiting for a recession to start so that I could buy low during its depths.

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23 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Bernie is pretty inarguably the wrong candidate to unite the Democratic party of 2018.  His pitch is to remake the Democratic party in more of a European Democratic Socialist vein, and that such a message will be more successful than the corporate friendly, center-left Democrats of old. 

It should come as no surprise that many people (such as myself) who support most of Sanders proposals but have been center-left Democrats their whole life are uncomfortable with such a dramatic change.

Who is the right candidate? Warren is running on a substantially identical social democratic platform to Sanders'. Nominating any of the rest of the field (but most especially Bloomberg) asks left-wing voters to take a back seat once again.

Let's just acknowledge the reality that there is no candidate that is going to unite the Democratic Party like Trump does, and in 2018 Democrats had the luxury of running against Trump without putting forth any one alternative. 

From there we can have a discussion about which potential nominee is the most electable, and I'm not here to say that all of the concerns about Sanders' are invalid. But what I will say is that I think the idea that any of the available moderates are obviously more electable is ridiculous. Moderate Democrats have been botching elections throughout recent history. Choosing a moderate the last time delivered us to Trump. The most plausible Sanders alternatives are Biden, who is a career-long gaff machine and is obviously declining mentally, and Bloomberg, who just turned in a shockingly poor debate performance and is reviled by the left (with good reason). These guys are far, far, far, from sure bets. We can gamble on the hope that a remade Democratic Party brings out new voters or we can gamble on the hope that some uninspirational moderate doesn't fuck it up this time. Not a difficult choice for me to take the risk on a candidate I actually believe in. 

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10 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Anybody ever get the feeling that the youth vote is so unreliable because Dems consistently nominate candidates with minimal youth appeal?  

I mean, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton didn't exactly inspire the youth.

Obama did, and even he only got 40% turnout. And that went back to normal rates in 2012 too. 

Young people tend to suck in that regard. Political participation is simply not something younger people tend to think about or do in the US. Activist culture is simply not something US people do either for the most part. 

 

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2 minutes ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

Choosing a moderate the last time delivered us to Trump. 

Yeah, that's entirely bullshit of the highest order. You can reasonably say that about Kerry. You can probably say that about Mondale. Maybe Gore, though it's not like anyone else was winning that race in 2000 and it wasn't like Bradley was particularly progressive. But this also ignores things like choosing the moderate Bill Clinton, or choosing the moderate Obama (he was never particularly progressive in his policies, ever). 

As I read recently, the problem is that white people don't vote for progressives, and they can be reasonably relied on to turn tail and go conservative. When 53% of white women vote for Trump over Clinton, you know what's going to happen. 

2 minutes ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

The most plausible Sanders alternatives are Biden, who is a career-long gaff machine and is obviously declining mentally, and Bloomberg, who just turned in a shockingly poor debate performance and is reviled by the left (with good reason). These guys are far, far, far, from sure bets. We can gamble on the hope that a remade Democratic Party brings out new voters or we can gamble on the hope that some uninspirational moderate doesn't fuck it up this time. Not a difficult choice for me to take the risk on a candidate I actually believe in. 

I don't think Biden or Bloomberg are good bets either! Buttigieg polls the best among suburban women (the ones who won the Democrats their house majority). Sanders polls best among youth, though they still haven't turned out in droves. Probably the best overall bet would be Buttigieg or Klobuchar, though neither are strong candidates. 

One issue, however, is that Biden isn't likely to depress House candidates. A big fear is that Sanders also depresses the House vote, and gives a full majority to Republicans again. 

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