The 2020 Presidential Election - Convention & General Election

[commando]

1 minute ago, Frott Scost said:

Because hes in first place. When Warren was in first place, did you not notice the Pocohantas crap came back from Trump?

trump has rudy flying to ukrain to make up dirt on biden.....not warren.    he just calls her names and that's good enough for him and his base.    biden seems to worry him.

 

but...if warren is the nominee i am voting for her.  if bernie wins the nomination i am voting for him.  etc...etc... i am just thinking that biden probably stands the best chance of defeating trump and that is why the efforts are against him.

[Ratt Mhule]

49 minutes ago, Danny Bateman said:

 

Well yes, obviously the author is no fan of Bernie. He's a British conservative. But he appears to have stopped supporting the American conservative movement in 2003 due to it's rightward social drift under Bush, so it's not like he's arguing in bad faith as some allegiance to conservatives over here.

 

I agree it's relevant Sanders is WAY more popular than Corbyn.

 

Overall takeaways from their election are a mixed bag.  Read this piece about what Democrats can learn from their election.

 

It agrees that Sanders =/= Corbyn. But it also points out that a very robsutly leftist agenda did not win back white, working-class (traditionally Labour) voters.  Nor did leftist orgs like the Justice Dems or Our Revolution fare particularly well in the 2018 elections outside a couple high-profile wins like AOC.

 

Like I said, it's a mixed bag. Certainly not a one-to-one comparison. But I think there's some good and bad to take away here.

Well I mean centrists, msm, the dem establishment and elites will probably be happy soon. Sanders will most likely lose, he will retire and the progressive voters except for the minority of hardcore activists, including myself will go back to not giving a crap about politics. He was our generations only chance to go back to FDR style social democracy and I thought that was enough to get involved, but it looks like we are going to blow it, so whatever. Presidential elections will always be center-right moderates vs. DT style far right populists and everyone will be happy again because they think of progressives as an inconvenience anyways. DT opened a pandoras box and others will follow his lead. 

[commando]

1 minute ago, Frott Scost said:

Well I mean centrists, msm, the dem establishment and elites will probably be happy soon. Sanders will most likely lose, he will retire and the progressive voters except for the minority of hardcore activists, including myself will go back to not giving a crap about politics. Presidential elections will always be center-right moderates vs. DT style far right populists and everyone is happy again because they think of progressives as an inconvenience anyways. 

 

i am more centrist....but i view progressive as better than the alt right BS we have now.   

[Danny Bateman]

45 minutes ago, ActualCornHusker said:

If Dems actually want to win in 2020, their best shot to beat Trump is Tulsi.

 

Her economic policies should be plenty appealing to Dem voters, her stance on drugs would pull in plenty of independent and libertarian voters despite her economic policies, and her views on free speech and being a veteran will pull in some Republican/ conservative voters as well who'd rather see Trump get voted out but would never check the box for someone like Bernie or Warren. 

 

I'm probably as close to a base Dem voter you'll find on here. But I neither feel any particular affinity for the Democratic Party in general nor do I consider myself any sort of activist or anti-establishmentarian wanting to burn everything down. I'm just repulsed at how utterly malicious, ignorant, spineless & dishonest the GOP has become. I can't vote for them.

 

Of everyone in the field besides Bloomberg, Gabbard is the one that would turn me off the most. I'd imagine there are a lot of Dem base voters who feel the same way. Tulsi's anti-establishment bonafides don't impress me. Her being a stooge for Assad bothers me a lot.

 

Seems to me all she's interested in doing is lobbing criticisms at other candidates & going on Fox News. IMO she should just got register as a Republican and primary Trump because her key appeal is to voters who hate the Democratic party and Republicans. Can't win with someone who won't turn out the actual base.

 

[Danny Bateman]

35 minutes ago, Frott Scost said:

Well I mean centrists, msm, the dem establishment and elites will probably be happy soon. Sanders will most likely lose, he will retire and the progressive voters except for the minority of hardcore activists, including myself will go back to not giving a crap about politics. He was our generations only chance to go back to FDR style social democracy and I thought that was enough to get involved, but it looks like we are going to blow it, so whatever. Presidential elections will always be center-right moderates vs. DT style far right populists and everyone will be happy again because they think of progressives as an inconvenience anyways. DT opened a pandoras box and others will follow his lead. 

 

IDK, Bernie is enjoying a significant bounce in the polls now. If he could pull out wins in Iowa and/or NH, things will get very interesting.

 

Voters preferences bounce around like a ping-pong ball. I'd say just keep making a case for your guy and see what happens. He can still pull it out.

[ActualCornHusker]

7 minutes ago, Danny Bateman said:

 

I'm probably as close to a base Dem voter you'll find on here. But I neither feel any particular affinity for the Democratic Party in general nor do I consider myself any sort of activist or anti-establishmentarian wanting to burn everything down. I'm just repulsed at how utterly malicious, ignorant, spineless & dishonest the GOP has become. I can't vote for them.

 

Of everyone in the field besides Bloomberg, Gabbard is the one that would turn me off the most. I'd imagine there are a lot of Dem base voters who feel the same way. Tulsi's anti-establishment bonafides don't impress me. Her being a stooge for Assad bothers me a lot.

 

Seems to me all she's interested in doing is lobbing criticisms at other candidates & going on Fox News. IMO she should just got register as a Republican and primary Trump because her key appeal is to voters who hate the Democratic party and Republicans. Can't win with someone who won't turn out the actual base.

 

 

I respect your opinion. Unfortunately it seems you've bought the propaganda that has been lobbed at her of being a "stooge for Assad" and that's unfortunate. I actually feel she has handled that well with her responses. 

 

Probably the most attractive part of her platform to me is her anti-war stance. So speaking of earth shattering reports that haven't received the attention they deserve, did you see the report just released that detailed how the public has been deliberately lied to for 18 years to sway public opinion on the wars in the middle east? Dems used to (pretend to) be anti war. Where has that gone? 

 

I am pretty confident when I say that she would have the best chance of beating trump in the general. The next best probability in my view for actually winning the election is (unfortunately) Bernie, simply because of his appeal to young voters who are almost as economically illiterate as he is.

[Ratt Mhule]

20 minutes ago, ActualCornHusker said:

 

I respect your opinion. Unfortunately it seems you've bought the propaganda that has been lobbed at her of being a "stooge for Assad" and that's unfortunate. I actually feel she has handled that well with her responses. 

 

Probably the most attractive part of her platform to me is her anti-war stance. So speaking of earth shattering reports that haven't received the attention they deserve, did you see the report just released that detailed how the public has been deliberately lied to for 18 years to sway public opinion on the wars in the middle east? Dems used to (pretend to) be anti war. Where has that gone? 

 

I am pretty confident when I say that she would have the best chance of beating trump in the general. The next best probability in my view for actually winning the election is (unfortunately) Bernie, simply because of his appeal to young voters who are almost as economically illiterate as he is.

Hard to be “economically literate” when your generation is getting bread crumbs compared to the rest. 

 

Not only is my generation making less when we graduate, but our cost for education is radically higher than any other generation and our healthcare costs are radically higher than any other generation.

[Guy Chamberlin]

2 hours ago, ActualCornHusker said:

If Dems actually want to win in 2020, their best shot to beat Trump is Tulsi.

 

Her economic policies should be plenty appealing to Dem voters, her stance on drugs would pull in plenty of independent and libertarian voters despite her economic policies, and her views on free speech and being a veteran will pull in some Republican/ conservative voters as well who'd rather see Trump get voted out but would never check the box for someone like Bernie or Warren. 

 

Everybody who says Tulsi Gabbard is the Democrats best shot to beat Trump is a Republican.

 

Ergo, Tulsi Gabbard is not the best shot at all. 

 

She got a bit of a bump a couple months ago for taking shots at Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris — who both deserved it — but forensics suggest the Tulsi surge came from rightwing social media who view her as a more robust Jill Stein. 

 

 

[ActualCornHusker]

2 hours ago, Frott Scost said:

Hard to be “economically literate” when your generation is getting bread crumbs compared to the rest. 

 

Not only is my generation making less when we graduate, but our cost for education is radically higher than any other generation and our healthcare costs are radically higher than any other generation.

 

Yeah... that's a silly left wing talking point...

 

 

[ActualCornHusker]

6 hours ago, BlitzFirst said:

 

 

Pretty sure that what he said was true regardless of this video you posted.  I'll provide you with the facts below.

 

College has gone up exponentially just in the past 30 years.  The college I attended was 14k in the 1990's and now it's 45k.

 

Wages haven't done much growth at all for most Americans. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

 

That means that the average college graduate today graduates with the following things staring at him/her:

 

1. Higher debt...they'll have massive loans they have to take out to attend college that cost me 30k less in the 1990's.
2. Starting Salary that matches (real wage adjusted for inflation) the wages that we had 40 years ago (see link above)

Do the math.  Real wage growth isn't there...and more debt.  That means they have more debt but the same money.

 

So, it's not a myth...it's a cold hard fact brother.

 

My reply was more in response to the claim that the rich are getting richer and are leaving crumbs for the rest of us. The reality is that everybody in America is better off today than they were 30 years ago. 

 

College tuition and health care are issues exacerbated (or created entirely) by government. But aside from those things, people have tremendous buying power for amenities that our grandparents could never dream of. Even people near the poverty line in this country have a smart phone and a car. 

[Danny Bateman]

3 hours ago, ActualCornHusker said:

 

My reply was more in response to the claim that the rich are getting richer and are leaving crumbs for the rest of us. The reality is that everybody in America is better off today than they were 30 years ago. 

 

College tuition and health care are issues exacerbated (or created entirely) by government. But aside from those things, people have tremendous buying power for amenities that our grandparents could never dream of. Even people near the poverty line in this country have a smart phone and a car. 

 

They can definitely both be true. What you said is largely correct. I'd argue that the government exacerbates things like the cost of college and healthcare more by inaction and a laissez-faire mindset than anything. These issues require more intervention, not less.

 

Anyway, we definitely have things good here, especially compared to a lot of other countries. But we can still talk about problems specific to our own economy. Wealth inequality is one of those. These figures speak for themselves. In reading some Krugman, he talks a lot about the uncoupling of productivity and income growth for the middle class. One of these shows that quite well.

 

The last one is particularly depressing. You can see the nosedive it really started to take under Reagan. I think that has a lot to do with our problems.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

The math also suggests that every John Stoessel story will take one legitimate gripe about liberal overreach, and then string together a bunch of irrelevant or disingenuous "supporting" arguments to craft a supposedly Libertarian angle on a story that actually carries the water for hypocritical conservatives. 

 

[ActualCornHusker]

@Danny Bateman thanks for the response. I'm actually about to dive into a book on income inequality so I'll be interested in what it says.

 

First of all, the suggestion that college and healthcare got how they are today due to laissez-faire policy is frankly absurd. They are 2 of the most regulated, lobbied, subsidized, and propagandized things in our country. They're not remotely laissez-faire...

 

In regards to the graphs you shared, here are my responses to each: 

 

*net worth- you'd have to take a deeper dive into that stat than taking it at face value. What are the actual causes? There are a couple huge factors that I see having a huge effect on people's lack of net worth. 1st, today's generation is less concerned with saving and investing, so it's largely cultural choice. 2nd, net worth is a measure of assets minus liabilities. With the cost of college out of control (mainly because of the government) and the fallacy that if you don't go to college you're a loser (marketing campaign largely backed by government), young people start out their lives with outrageous amounts of debt. Then add that consumer debt (credit cards & auto loans) are at an all time high, and you've got a large segment of the population who are over leveraged due to personal choice. So I'd conclude that comparing net worth to previous generations is not a good way to measure economics of the country

 

*the next few charts on the share of national income also cannot be taken at face value. There are a ton of factors that play a role in that as well - and the last video I posted pretty much refutes that talking point. As long as there's upward mobility, inequality really isn't an issue unless people are greedy and envious when others have more than they do. I was born and raised lower middle class, but I definitely am not there anymore. 

   Additionally, I'd add that our society benefits greatly by there being MORE wealthy people - not less. Individuals and corporations with access to a vast amount of capital are the only ones who are able to foot the bill for massive startups that provide better products, services, and opportunities to others. 

 

*The only graph that is worth taking at face value would be the stagnation of median income. The actual causes of this stagnation would be an interesting conversation to have, but again, I'd have to dive deeper into the data to see how they're actually measuring these things. 

[Danny Bateman]

32 minutes ago, ActualCornHusker said:

@Danny Bateman thanks for the response. I'm actually about to dive into a book on income inequality so I'll be interested in what it says.

 

First of all, the suggestion that college and healthcare got how they are today due to laissez-faire policy is frankly absurd. They are 2 of the most regulated, lobbied, subsidized, and propagandized things in our country. They're not remotely laissez-faire...

 

In regards to the graphs you shared, here are my responses to each: 

 

*net worth- you'd have to take a deeper dive into that stat than taking it at face value. What are the actual causes? There are a couple huge factors that I see having a huge effect on people's lack of net worth. 1st, today's generation is less concerned with saving and investing, so it's largely cultural choice. 2nd, net worth is a measure of assets minus liabilities. With the cost of college out of control (mainly because of the government) and the fallacy that if you don't go to college you're a loser (marketing campaign largely backed by government), young people start out their lives with outrageous amounts of debt. Then add that consumer debt (credit cards & auto loans) are at an all time high, and you've got a large segment of the population who are over leveraged due to personal choice. So I'd conclude that comparing net worth to previous generations is not a good way to measure economics of the country

 

*the next few charts on the share of national income also cannot be taken at face value. There are a ton of factors that play a role in that as well - and the last video I posted pretty much refutes that talking point. As long as there's upward mobility, inequality really isn't an issue unless people are greedy and envious when others have more than they do. I was born and raised lower middle class, but I definitely am not there anymore. 

   Additionally, I'd add that our society benefits greatly by there being MORE wealthy people - not less. Individuals and corporations with access to a vast amount of capital are the only ones who are able to foot the bill for massive startups that provide better products, services, and opportunities to others. 

 

*The only graph that is worth taking at face value would be the stagnation of median income. The actual causes of this stagnation would be an interesting conversation to have, but again, I'd have to dive deeper into the data to see how they're actually measuring these things. 

 

No problem. I'll go point by point in my response.

 

Let me rephrase this. The government has largely clung to the status quo or passed middling changes to both of these during my lifetime. The one notable exception to this would be the passage of the ACA. Clinton tried healthcare reform during his administration and failed. Trump's administration passed right-wing reforms to healthcare and DeVos is operating the DoE like a right-wingers wet dream and these haven't improved. If anything they've gotten worse. We've done nothing substantial to actually address increasing healthcare & college costs. The Republican plan (?) of breaking stuff and doing nothing doesn't work.

 

I AM today's generation. It's not that I am less concerned with saving and investing. It's that I literally CAN'T lol. I started my first real job recently and proceeds have gone towards a small emergency fund, food & bills and paying down CC debt from when things got tight. There's nothing left over to invest/add to my emergency fund. And I make good money. I can only imagine the struggle of low wage earners.

 

All of your second paragraph is fine, but those people are still part of our society and not going anywhere. All the net worth chart tells us is that poorer people were disproportionately hammered by the economic environment here the past several decades, while the incredibly wealthy prospered comparatively.

 

Talking about greed is hilariously absurd when the right-wing economic doctrine relies on cutting taxes as low as possible for those who have the most & waiting for the benefit to trickle down to the rest of us (and claiming those who propose increasing tax rates for public benefit will destroy the economy).

 

I don't disagree with this one, but we could also do this collectively via more government action. FDR's solution to utility monopolies was not to give thanks for the monopolists' benevolence, but to create the TVA, which is a good example of the government using their power well to benefit everyone.

[Guy Chamberlin]

Last year, a third of our family income went to health insurance..

 

Not healthcare. Health insurance.