US 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary Race

[Cicero]

On 25/04/2019 at 21:54, Kowabunga said:

Liz Warren looks very good at bringing specific and detailed progressive policies to the table but the native ancestry cringe-fest was ridiculous and it would be bound to haunt her in a potential run against Trump.

In any case, if not for the age of Sanders, a Sanders-Warren/Warren-Sanders ticket would be a thing to see.

Kamala Harris looks like a "middleground democrat" with decent charisma (thus a compromise choice).

Say "no" to Biden.

Why not?

Felons still incarcerated....

[Dr. Gonzo]

4 hours ago, Inverted said:

Gabbards biggest supporters seem to be completely focused on foreign policy which is bizarre imo. 

Domestic reform should be number one concern, and in any case there's far too much internal blockage and vested power in the US foreign policy scene to make it realistic to effect any lasting change without serious reordering at home first.

I agree with you theoretically that the President should be more focused on domestic policy, but in practice foreign policy is where the President has the most power and where their actions make the most impact. The U.S. President actually has way less blockage internally for dealing with foreign policy, whereas with domestic policy it has to answer to Congress. That's actually why Trump's domestic agenda has stalled pretty significantly, but he's actually been able to make a bigger impact in foreign policy. Things like increasing Saudi arms sales and opening the pathway for Saudi Arabia to have it's own nuclear weapons - concerning issues where he has little oversight.

And while Congress can chose to not fund a President's military excursions that aren't wars declared by Congress (so all U.S. military action since the Korean War), I'm not sure that's ever once happened in U.S. history. Certainly not with Vietnam, the Gulf War, Somalia, the "wAr On TeRrOr," etc.

So I can understand Gabbard supporters focused on her foreign policy. Because regardless of how the legislature is shaped, that really is where a U.S. president's decisions can make the most lasting impact.

Domestic reform in America is going to take a seriously coordinated effort by a political party to get enough candidates for the legislature and a candidate for the presidency where a party can truly state they have a mandate for implementing domestic policy and have the right number of votes to pass through laws effecting meaningful change without having bills gutted in revisions that have their effectiveness cut out of them. It's possible, but also America's very diverse politically for a country where really only 2 political parties matter.

And the democratic party is pretty split amongst it's centrists and progressives. So the chance of having a big wave of candidates that has a unified set of goals and policies to enact is likely to be split amongst those two camps.

[Inverted]

 

[The Artful Dodger]

Donald Trump is just a more Vulgar version of Bush. He's not an outsider of American history, he's exactly in line with it. United States of America has always been one of the worst influences on the world and it continues to be so.

[Harry]

8 hours ago, Inverted said:

 

The Biden types will be needed for the electoral college. Think Bernie's really harmed his case in swing states with his felon voting views. Which really never would have won him many votes in the first place.

[Inverted]

4 hours ago, Harry said:

The Biden types will be needed for the electoral college. Think Bernie's really harmed his case in swing states with his felon voting views. Which really never would have won him many votes in the first place.

Sanders' views are mainstream in countries with far more successful justice systems. He wants to bring America up to the standards of more developed countries, and ending America's authoritarian prison culture is part of it. 

Biden won't mobilise young voters or minorities, and even if he does somehow miraculously beat Trump, it will be practically for naught. All the problems that led to Trump will continue to grow in severity, until something worse than Trump comes along in 5 years. 

[Harry]

3 hours ago, Inverted said:

Sanders' views are mainstream in countries with far more successful justice systems. He wants to bring America up to the standards of more developed countries, and ending America's authoritarian prison culture is part of it. 

Biden won't mobilise young voters or minorities, and even if he does somehow miraculously beat Trump, it will be practically for naught. All the problems that led to Trump will continue to grow in severity, until something worse than Trump comes along in 5 years. 

If Clinton won the election the US supreme Court would have 6 liberal judges by now. That would almost certainly result in roll backs of gerrymandering, citizens united campaign finance law, voter registration restrictions that are racially targeted. All things that tipped the scales to the Republican party that were ultimately enabling it to maintain power without appropriately broadening it's appeal and policy platform sufficiently to win majority support. That's a pretty major step in the right direction. 

[Inverted]

2 hours ago, Harry said:

If Clinton won the election the US supreme Court would have 6 liberal judges by now. That would almost certainly result in roll backs of gerrymandering, citizens united campaign finance law, voter registration restrictions that are racially targeted. All things that tipped the scales to the Republican party that were ultimately enabling it to maintain power without appropriately broadening it's appeal and policy platform sufficiently to win majority support. That's a pretty major step in the right direction. 

But she lost. She (and by extension American liberal centrism) missed one of the biggest open goals in American political history. 

Now we have a red supreme court, and a senate which is dominated by red states which are only going to entrench their disproportionate importance as population growth concentrates already-blue states. 

Sprialling substance abuse, crime, wage depression, enormous pressures on living costs, economic monopolisation,  and other huge social and ecological problems are only going to get worse - be it under the radical right like Trump, or the centre-right like Biden. This will lead to increasing social fragmentation, which engenders more of a sensation of helplessness, apathy, and confusion among regular people. 

History, and very recent experience, has the shown us that this feeling of powerlessness leads to people seeking out a radical solution. That's either going to be a radically reactionary solution, or a radically progressive solution. The chance for subtle remedies has been missed. 

[IgnisExcubitor]

4 hours ago, Inverted said:

But she lost. She (and by extension American liberal centrism) missed one of the biggest open goals in American political history. 

Now we have a red supreme court, and a senate which is dominated by red states which are only going to entrench their disproportionate importance as population growth concentrates already-blue states. 

Sprialling substance abuse, crime, wage depression, enormous pressures on living costs, economic monopolisation,  and other huge social and ecological problems are only going to get worse - be it under the radical right like Trump, or the centre-right like Biden. This will lead to increasing social fragmentation, which engenders more of a sensation of helplessness, apathy, and confusion among regular people. ,

History and very recent experience, has the shown us that this feeling of powerlessness leads to people seeking out a radical solution. That's either going to be a radically reactionary solution, or a radically progressive solution. The chance for subtle remedies has been missed. 

Good post, and agree on most except that.

The so called progressive haven't really shown great acumen apart from rhetoric to win virtue signalling points. AOC's thwarting of the Amazon deal was shocking and callous and the green deal (though with good intentions) was overall immature and clearly made to push large groups of people away. 

Battle between extremities leads to a major conflict. I doubt whether you, or everyone else, wants that. One extreme side winning will only rile the extreme group on the opposite side and lead them to violent ways or thoughts. The end will always be a nasty confrontation amongst masses. 

America's best option is that a centrist, who appeals to both sides, wins and erases the growing divide. 

[6666]

Tulsi Gabbard is very impressive. Her v. Bernie Sanders v. Elizabeth Warren would be a great race to become president. Instead one of them (hopefully) will be going up against an insane buffoon.

[Cicero]

All three are mental with their "free college" approach. Especially Warren's with her insane 'student debt elimination'. What about those that already paid off their student debt? Will they be reimbursed? 

Not one of them made the case for improving the overall worth of a college degree. Which is the real issue instead of making college free for everyone, decreasing the value of a college degree even more. 

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, Cicero said:

All three are mental with their "free college" approach. Especially Warren's with her insane 'student debt elimination'. What about those that already paid off their student debt? Will they be reimbursed? 

Not one of them made the case for improving the overall worth of a college degree. Which is the real issue instead of making college free for everyone, decreasing the value of a college degree even more. 

 

Warren’s plan has a cap based on income. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/elizabeth-warren-student-loans-bernie-sanders-debt?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bffbbuzzfeed&ref=bffbbuzzfeed

How do you make a degree worth more at this point though? Decades after the US deliberately dismantled much of its manufacturing and heavily buying into the concept of a global economy, things won’t really ever be able to go back to how they were. The increases in cost of living in the US means if the country brought manufacturing back they’d be making products far more expensive than their foreign equivalents, due to the increased cost of labour.

That leads to either two things: protectionism of domestic product, or lowering the minimum wage. One would make all consumers have to spend much more on shite they purchase per year, because of tariffs. When everything is more expensive, people spend their money primarily on necessities and are less likely to spend their money on “the extras” I’ll call them - going to restaurants/concerts/cinemas/shite like that, playing video games, buying clothes when they don’t have to, extra groceries they don’t really need but they want snacks, etc... the stuff that’s not necessities. That’s an issue because you want people spending money around as much as possible, to support the local and national economy. Money changing hands less frequently means businesses close and jobs are lost more frequently.

The other means lower wages for the lowest income workers who are already struggling with the cost of living. That’s a solution for the wealthy, I suppose, but it doesn’t help those that are already struggling. If anything it exacerbates everything.

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s any easy fix to these issues that have festered for decades, it’s going to take bipartisan action as well to really address a lot of economic issues. Because there are a lot of economic problems that are complex and have complex solutions.

I think there are broader economic issues that uni grads are facing, rather than the actual worth of a degree being the core economic issue they are facing. The fact so many people are several tens of thousands in debt for something that isn’t worth as much as it once was is fucked, and it’s holding back a generation in the US that is already struggling with the cost of living going up tremendously while their degrees aren’t worth what they would have been decades before. Particularly with housing.

Addressing all of the complex economic issues facing young people doesn’t really fit into the debate format they presented. 60 second responses, 30 second responses... basically they’re limited to TV soundbites for the media to use.

Warren’s soundbite at least presents one way to help graduates saddled with debt and struggling. Debt relief. Substantial debt relief, but with caps based on how much you earn. Granted, it takes researching into that soundbite to get the full picture. But it certainly seems more feasible than Sanders’ plan to simply cancel all student debt.

Also I dislike Tulsi Gabbard because she’s ideologically inconsistent and pretty disingenuous imo, but what a strange debate performance from her. Beto also came off as a bit of a plank. But really in last night’s debate, the skill that was most tested of candidates was their media management

[Cicero]

58 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Warren’s plan has a cap based on income. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/elizabeth-warren-student-loans-bernie-sanders-debt?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bffbbuzzfeed&ref=bffbbuzzfeed

So no reimbursement program for the millions of people that worked their arse off to pay off their student debt? Whilst at the same time being taxed to eliminate other people's student debt?

Let's see how well that goes. 

[Azeem]

Trump will win again for sure !

[SirBalon]

9 minutes ago, Stick With Azeem said:

Trump will win again for sure !

Without a doubt Trump has proved Putin right in choosing him and he’ll win again. 

[Cicero]

4 minutes ago, SirBalon said:

Without a doubt Trump has proved Putin right in choosing him and he’ll win again. 

Trump's a cunt but it doesn't help the democratic party have no one capable of beating him. 

[Azeem]

4 minutes ago, SirBalon said:

Without a doubt Trump has proved Putin right in choosing him and he’ll win again. 

I just have this feeling he will pull something big like Make America Great Again type of big right before elections which will rejoice or even increase his base

[Dr. Gonzo]

54 minutes ago, Cicero said:

So no reimbursement program for the millions of people that worked their arse off to pay off their student debt? Whilst at the same time being taxed to eliminate other people's student debt?

Let's see how well that goes. 

It at very least is an actual policy proposal, that looks more feasible than Bernie’s plan. That’s more than most candidates can say.

Personally, it doesn’t affect me in the slightest, but it is a policy that will probably help millions and not cause too much hurt to taxpayers. It might leave some people a bit bitter they weren’t given the same treatment, but it’s $25k-$50k off a lot of people’s plates.

[Cicero]

29 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

It at very least is an actual policy proposal, that looks more feasible than Bernie’s plan. That’s more than most candidates can say.

Personally, it doesn’t affect me in the slightest, but it is a policy that will probably help millions and not cause too much hurt to taxpayers. It might leave some people a bit bitter they weren’t given the same treatment, but it’s $25k-$50k off a lot of people’s plates.

It should affect you when you are being taxed for someone to go to college at a university that has a 50% drop out rate, and will only attract more students who are ill suited for college. 

The whole thing doesn't make economical sense to me. 

[6666]

54 minutes ago, Stick With Azeem said:

I just have this feeling he will pull something big like Make America Great Again type of big right before elections which will rejoice or even increase his base

He'll just shout "our flag" to every question about policy and if anyone asks follow up questions he'll just say "why do you hate our flag?" and the ignorant masses will then chant "our flag" and then he'll win.

So easy to be a right wing, nationalist politician. That's why they mostly win in all countries around the world without needing to sound smart or decent.

[Dr. Gonzo]

2 minutes ago, Cicero said:

It should affect you when you are being taxed for someone to go to college at a university that has a 50% drop out rate, and will only attract more students who are ill suited for college. 

The whole thing doesn't make economical sense to me. 

There are too many schools in America and many of them are shite, that's just the nature of America having so many universities - they can't all be good schools, unfortunately. And the lower quality the school, the more likely they have less rigorous admission standards - which means they're accepting people who'll drop out more.

But if you close them, you're going to end up with a lot less graduates in a world where a uni degree is becoming more and more the "standard." So that means you'd have a lot more people that are vying for jobs that don't pay that well or have much chance for upward mobility. And a lot more people competing for those jobs.

The reality is American students are generally paying far too much for their education. And the schools are to blame for taking advantage of the fact that American students are going to be eligible for government subsidised loans, raising prices yearly far beyond inflation rates (although they'll always say that prices go up because of inflation). This is a problem that's been festering for decades and time has only exacerbated the situation, but unfortunately there's no easy fix - there's no way to undo the western world's decade-long investment into a global economy without causing extreme economic hardship for a lot of people that'll likely last for a long time.

So it makes sense to provide programs that provide relief to some who are struggling, while the government figures out what the fuck to do about this issue without causing peoples' lives to change for the worse dramatically. Because the problems you're presenting are complex and have taken decades to unfold, so they don't have easy and immediate fixes.

[SirBalon]

1 hour ago, Cicero said:

Trump's a cunt but it doesn't help the democratic party have no one capable of beating him. 

We've got the same issue with Tory v Labour in this country. Any other Labour leader (anyone) would be miles agead in the polls right now.

[Dr. Gonzo]

6 minutes ago, 6666 said:

He'll just shout "our flag" to every question about policy and if anyone asks follow up questions he'll just say "why do you hate our flag?" and the ignorant masses will then chant "our flag" and then he'll win.

So easy to be a right wing, nationalist politician. That's why they mostly win in all countries around the world without needing to sound smart or decent.

It's easy to be a nationalist populist because people naturally rally around tribalism and cultivate an "us v. them" mentality, and it's so easy to come up with a "them" to pin up as "against them" that nationalist populists often have many people to demonise and rally their base to support them. Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants generally, and other political parties. We see it with Trump, we see it with Brexiteers, we see it in France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Brazil, India, etc...

It's effective because it doesn't require too much policy to throw to the supporters. They cultivate a mentality where you "support your side" and then they treat politics like sport, and if you give enough people enough bullshit promises and essentially just tell them what they want to hear while you've got this team mentality, that's enough to buy their loyalty once they've bought into that team supporter mentality. It's a very reckless way of viewing politics.

I think the US's midterm election demonstrated that the democratic voter base was more concerned in electing politicians on policy, that's what motivated more people to turn up to vote - which is what the democrats need. Obama and the midterms show that democrats do well in elections when their base is actually motivated and when they've got their policy pieces in nice little soundbites for the "undecided swing voters" in those battleground states that don't really understand or really care about policy, have no real ideological ties, and just vote with whatever sounds like is best for them/their communities.

I do think all of these candidates yesterday were pretty poor with their messaging, partially because of the shite format of the crowded debate style. Partially because a lot of these candidates aren't any good and are just running for political capital because right now it's pretty popular to take a public stand in saying "Trump is a bad president and a moron, and I would be a better president!" - no shit, random candidate that's seeking political capital, a whole lot of people would be a better president. Doesn't mean they'd be a good president.

I think the candidate that can most compete with Trump in terms of messaging, it's probably Bernie Sanders. But he's pretty left wing for a country that is really really right wing as far as western developed nations go - so there's a chance he won't get moderates and swing voters onboard. I think Biden, the more he speaks, the more he sets himself to the right of every other candidate the democrats might put up. His biggest pull with a lot of people is that he was Obama's VP,  but I don't think he's the sort of candidate that will inspire a big turnout as the more he talks the more unpopular with the democratic base he appears to get. And if the DNC has learned anything from the last presidential election, they may want to respect the left leaning base and not push a candidate that doesn't inspire many people to turn out. Because if Hillary had inspired as many people to turn out as Obama did, she'd have won some of those swing states.

[Harry]

5 hours ago, Cicero said:

Trump's a cunt but it doesn't help the democratic party have no one capable of beating him. 

You think there is noone that could beat him? Biden, Buttigieg, Beto, Harris could all have a great chance. Even Warren would stand a chance of breaking through to some of those lower income voters of they realised how much her policies would benefit them although I think she and many others would be very vulnerable to scaremongering.

Will be interesting to see how Bernie fares tonight. He's really sliding now and could be passed by Warren off the back of yesterday's debate.

5 hours ago, Stick With Azeem said:

Trump will win again for sure !

Statistically as a sitting president that is more likely, but few sitting presidents have ever been more vulnerable than Trump.

[Harry]

Huge decision by the supreme Court yesterday on gerrymandering. Basically decided district boundaries are not an issue for federal courts.

Flipping from a previous 4-5 position to a 5-4 one with Kavanaugh coming in for Kennedy.

Will be interesting to see if Buttigieg leverages off this tonight to build some momentum given his many previous arguments for fixing the supreme court with term limits and addition of further justices.