Political Discussion

[Btsvinylfarm]

I have no skin in the game, you can elect who you want. I've always thought out of all the early front runners that Biden is worst choice to try and beat trump. My prediction is that Trump increases his margin of victory at the next election

What HRC-won states do you think he picks up? Do you assume he holds all his 2016 states? How are you coming up with your electoral math?

This seems like sour grapes

 

[wokeupnew]

I think we are all underestimating how many people want to see Trump gone, and their #1 choice for that right now is Biden. They could be voting against a candidate that they agree with on issues (Bernie) but that doesn't matter to them. Biden doesn't have as much baggage as HRC had so I'm hopeful that people vote for Joe in November because they see him as likeable.

 

[MikeH]

I think we are all underestimating how many people want to see Trump gone, and their #1 choice for that right now is Biden. They could be voting against a candidate that they agree with on issues (Bernie) but that doesn't matter to them. Biden doesn't have as much baggage as HRC had so I'm hopeful that people vote for Joe in November because they see him as likeable.

Trump is going to destroy Biden with all of the Hunter Biden stuff, whether it's true or not. The thing I don't understand at all is the people going from supporting Warren to moving over to Biden. Their policies are very very different and does go to show that likability is a factor.

 

[MikeH]

then hand over the reins to the next generation.

The issue I see with this is...what next generation? Biden is the youngest remaining male candidate for the Dems. Somehow no young, inspiring candidates are running. Maybe AOC gets there but I'm not really sure who fills the void of young leadership that gets the next generation inspired like Obama did.

 

[Jorduck]

Seeing Biden win every county in my state (MO) was kind of surprising after it was so close in 2016. I obviously knew Biden was going to win the state this time around though. I had basically given up hope in the Sanders campaign before yesterday but still went out to vote. There was a single other person in my polling place when I got there (8:30 AM). I also think it's funny how many people are calling for Sanders to drop out and are saying the debates should be cancelled so the party can unite around Biden, after they shamed Sanders supporters for doing the same regarding Warren.

I still think Biden is a horrendous choice, but I guess I'll vote for him in November if only to not give the right a massive SC majority for the next 40 years without needing to pack the courts. I have next to no faith in him picking progressive judges but at least they probably won't try to reverse previous 'progressive' policy.

 

[MikeH]

I think the concerns about our healthcare infrastructure's ability to deal with pandemics is more likely to make our country rethink this than Bernie Sanders is.

Aren't they a bit hand in hand though? The pandemic is making people realize that Bernie's plan is a potential important solution to the issues that COVID is creating. I mean...the US has only run 5,000 COVID tests so far and to put that into perspective, South Korea runs 10k per day. And this is mostly because the US Government refused to accept the testing kits from WHO so they could profit off of a US pharma company making and selling them instead...

 

[Dtknuckles]

I certainly wouldn't risk getting impeached to dig up dirt on an opponent I think I can easily beat without it.

At this point I think Trump is more motivated by humiliating people than actual logic.

 

[MikeH]

For now I see that getting pinned on Pete, Kamala Harris (a spring chicken at 55), and Cory Booker. AOC, Swalwell, Stacey Abrams ... they're out there, with varying levels of potential. The good thing* about a Biden presidency is that it gives us another 4 years to give some of those people some Cabinet positions or Senate seats or whatever to further establish their bona fides.

*Again, from a certain perspective.

None of those outside of AOC are really progressive candidates though and the younger generation seems to be more inspired by progressive ideals. The reason why there is a lot of apathy from young voters is A) it's very hard to vote in this country for a lot of people, B) they saw that their voice wasn't heard in the last election when the popular vote didn't really matter and C) the Dems and media keep pushing centrist, establishment candidates to keep the status quo.

 

[dhodo]

People freaked out when the ACA scrapped some junk healthcare plans. 1.1M are estimated to have been impacted. It caused one of the largest red waves in modern political history. The Dems lost the House, their super majority in the Senate, and eventually the Senate itself. It caused a stall of economic recovery legislation, and it likely cost the Dems a seat on SCOTUS by giving the gavel to McConnell. What do you think would happen if suddenly the Dems yanked 159M off their actually good coverage? The magnitude versus ACA is just insane. What do you think the outcome would be?

Blaming the outcome of the 2010 election purely on the actual real impacts of ACA is a reeeeeeeeach.

 

[Jorduck]

Somehow no young, inspiring candidates are running.

There aren't many in congress either and I don't think it's because of a lack of them running. The democratic establishment does not like it when young progressives try to primary the older conservative members of the party. There's been a pretty clear battle between Pelosi and the young congresswomen who were elected in 2018 too.

 

[Enaz Fox]

To the bold: what youth? This myth that they vote in large enough numbers to matter is unfounded. That sucks, but it's true. Until they bother to engage, they can't be counted on as a core demographic. The calculus makes courting them a fools errand.

To the rest, you can't just "move forward" now. We have to repair the damage. We need to restore the ACA. We need to reinstitute some of the scrapped regulation. We need to build on the House majority and win back the Senate before we can pass any meaningful legislation.

And on healthcare, while I agree with the end goal of a universal coverage system, Bernie's plan to get there is simply unworkable and dangerous to progressive success in government. There's a lesson the Bernie crowd and m4A hardliners need to learn from ACA/Obamacare.

People freaked out when the ACA scrapped some junk healthcare plans. 1.1M are estimated to have been impacted. It caused one of the largest red waves in modern political history. The Dems lost the House, their super majority in the Senate, and eventually the Senate itself. It caused a stall of economic recovery legislation, and it likely cost the Dems a seat on SCOTUS by giving the gavel to McConnell. What do you think would happen if suddenly the Dems yanked 159M off their actually good coverage? The magnitude versus ACA is just insane. What do you think the outcome would be?

Progressive ideals are admirable, but you guys have no sound path to get there right now. You gotta think about this shit. It's why I preferred Pete's plan of "Medicare for all who want it", which is essentially a public option - I'd hope Biden adopts this. Let the public option compete with private care, and if it is as great as the left hopes, it will win the battle and through market competition eliminate private plans. But suddenly stripping 150M people's coverage would be a disaster.

The same youth that hasn't gone out and voted in the last multiple elections. I said his nomination is going to further fill this void.

I'm aware you can't just "move forward" with what has happened in the last 4 years but I don't think we have to come to a complete stop to get back to that point either. Why not try and get back to something better was more my point, sorry if I didn't get that out properly.

On the healthcare front I'm not sure of the best way to get there and I by no means have a crystal ball. I know what I think the end goal should be and this candidate hasn't said anything I believe helps us get to that point.

Not to diminish your feelings about this, just want to offer a different perspective. I don't see this as his pitch. I think his pitch is "I'm going to make sure America doesn't re-elect Trump and then hand over the reins to the next generation." I think that's what all this "I'm the bridge" stuff is about -- his goal is singular, to pull us out of a crisis and that's it.

I totally recognize that there are valid arguments that someone else could walk and chew gum at the same time, but the other candidates were also all less known quantities, so there was (in Biden's view) more of a risk that they would lose to Trump, and then not only do we not get a progressive agenda, we're even worse off.

Ideally Obama would have been the bridge. The first president never to have done any military service, the first black president, the first president born after 1960...all the ingredients were there. But since that didn't work out, rebooting and trying to pass the torch (exactly what Swalwell told Biden to do in one of the very first debates) a second time isn't a bad idea. If Biden decides to skip the Team of Rivals and instead creates a Team of Next Leaders? I'd be mostly okay with that.

I appreciate both of these responses and takes. Thanks for giving me some food for thought. I'm going to go back to reading.

 

[MikeH]

Very true, and one of the things that isn't getting enough play in the discussion of this election cycle is how the census is going to impact redistricting maps. The gerrymandering of our country to keep a minority in power is one of the most critical issues facing our country and we only get a comprehensive shot at fixing it once per decade.

It's also incredibly frustrating when the judiciary rules against certain things like gerrymandering and one party just seems to ignore the outcomes of those cases and there are no repercussions...that's been one of the craziest things in the past 4 years for me. The complete deterioration of checks and balances.

 

[Captainfog]

Trump is going to destroy Biden with all of the Hunter Biden stuff, whether it's true or not.

Yep. Dems are heading towards disaster IMO.

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

If you don't think that Obama saying small town people clinging to guns and religion wasn't a giant fuck-up I don't know what to tell you. I get it. Biden sucks and your boy Bernie shit the bed but Obama nearly cost himself the nomination with that comment and I think it continues to haunt the democratic party and Joe Biden. The person that confronted Biden about guns likely got their narrative from the NRA in 2008 when they pounced on Obama's comments. It was significant and influenced if not directly caused a run on ammunition that lasted throughout Obama's first term. Maybe you were not a voter then so it didn't matter to you but it sure as hell mattered to blue collar workers and further polarized the country.

Someone who is more into weapons can help clarify that ammunition run timeline. Obama lost Pennsylvania in the '08 primary because of it.

From wikipedia entry on Obama '08 primary:

After Obama's win in Mississippi on March 11, 2008, the campaign turned its attention to Pennsylvania. Mid March polls by Rasmussen Reports,[155] Franklin & Marshall College Poll,[156] Quinnipiac University Polling Institute[157] and Public Policy Polling[158] had Obama trailing Clinton in Pennsylvania by 12 to 16 points. Dozens of campaign offices were opened around the state, including 8 in Philadelphia.[159] By the beginning of April, polls of Pennsylvanians showed Obama trailing Clinton by average of 5 points.[160]

Speaking about small-town Pennsylvania at a private April 6 fundraising event in Kentfield, CA, a small suburb of San Francisco located in neighboring Marin County, his remarks would be widely criticized after they were reported:




Hillary Clinton described the remarks as "elitist, out of touch, and frankly patronizing."[162] Noting he had not chosen his words well, Obama subsequently explained his remarks, "Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare-up, because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter."[163] Obama had addressed similar themes in a 2004 interview with Charlie Rose,[164] and his strategists countered that Bill Clinton had made similar comments in 1991.[165]

Just hours prior Obama's remarks in San Francisco, he spoke in Silicon Valley at another private event, and expressed a much more nuanced understanding of the second amendment and rural America. He stated,




That Obama's comments in San Francisco made wide media play but not the ones he spoke in Silicon Valley became a source of speculation about the media and its political coverage.[167]

On Friday, April 18, 2008, Obama spoke in Independence Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a crowd of 35,000, the largest audience yet drawn during the campaign. The crowd was nearly twice what had been projected[168] and spilled over into nearby streets.[169] The next day, Obama conducted a whistle stop train tour from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, drawing a crowd of 6,000 at a stop in Wynnewood and 3,000 at a stop in Paoli.[170]

The last big event in the final week of the campaign was the April 16 debate on ABC-TV. Many pundits gave the edge to Hillary Clinton, though many were critical of moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.[171] A two-month-old controversy gained more exposure when Stephanopoulos questioned Obama during the debate about Obama's contacts with Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers.[172]

Polls during the debate week showed the momentum that had cut Clinton's lead by half had stalled. Despite being outspent by three to one,[173] Clinton would win the April 22 primary election with 54.6 percent of the vote, a solid nine-point margin over Obama's 45.4 percent.[174] Although Clinton remained behind in delegates, the press soon ran cover stories about Obama's apparent trouble connecting with less educated whites and Catholics.

All of this is spot on. I’d call Obama the best president of my lifetime but that isn’t saying much. And the reality is that those comments, much like the basket of deplorables comment, are directly responsible for polarizing the country. So were many of his decisions that alienated progressives or disillusioned young voters or white working class that had made up portions of his base. In particular his refusal to put the white collar jackasses that caused the recession in prison and the decision to spend his final two years in office pushing the TPP.

The media’s refusal to critique his presidency also laid the groundwork for “fake news” and / or began to pull back the corporatist curtain that would later be fully open during Bernie 2016 / 2020

 

[Btsvinylfarm]

I'm aware you can't just "move forward" with what has happened in the last 4 years but I don't think we have to come to a complete stop to get back to that point either. Why not try and get back to something better was more my point, sorry if I didn't get that out properly.

I think that's what Biden is proposing - get back to the Obama years. And for as much as people are revisionist and suddenly under the impression Obama was a phony progressive, let's recall that he risked his political career and Presidency on making the largest change to health insurance in a generation, lost his congress over it; all to ensure A) people with preexisting conditions - the sickest and most vulnerable Americans - could get coverage B) allowing young Americans to stay on their parents' plans much longer and C) boosting overall coverage rates.

The Obama years brought us stability of moderate growth, the longest run of monthly job gains in history, controlled inflation, diplomacy used on the world stage to begin thawing tensions with a rising nuclear threat, and a general sense of maturity/compasion/leadership that we are badly lacking now.

Was it perfect? No. But I'd take it in a heartbeat if I could snap my fingers and make it so. I think Biden offers the chance to do something like that. We need to restore the pillars of the ACA that the GOP has chipped away for the past 6 years. We need to reach a final deal on Dreamers and Immigration - the Gang of 8 bill from 2013 was a perfect approach. We need to restore trade relations with Europe, and refocus Chinese negotiations on intellectual property rights and away from meaningless trade balances. We need to restore repealed regulations that keep Americans safe and out of financial harm. We need someone who trusts experts. We need a return to sanity. I think Biden can do all of that in 4 years.

 

[Joe Mac]

All of this is spot on. I’d call Obama the best president of my lifetime but that isn’t saying much. And the reality is that those comments, much like the basket of deplorables comment, are directly responsible for polarizing the country. So were many of his decisions that alienated progressives or disillusioned young voters or white working class that had made up portions of his base. In particular his refusal to put the white collar jackasses that caused the recession in prison and the decision to spend his final two years in office pushing the TPP.

The media’s refusal to critique his presidency also laid the groundwork for “fake news” and / or began to pull back the corporatist curtain that would later be fully open during Bernie 2016 / 2020

Are you less than 20?

Just because looking in from the outside the only even remotely competent president you've had since maybe Kennedy, or because he died before he could implement too much perhaps even Truman or FDR, was Clinton, warts and all. The run of Presidents from Lyndon Johnson onwards is not an inspiring one!

 

[Teeeee]

a general sense of maturity/compasion/leadership that we are badly lacking now.

I know I keep going back to this. But the hatred that has been unearthed in the country would not have had a chance in hell to pop up had we had this all along.

 

[Btsvinylfarm]

Are you less than 20?

Just because looking in from the outside the only even remotely competent president you've had since maybe Kennedy, or because he died before he could implement too much perhaps even Truman or FDR, was Clinton, warts and all. The run of Presidents from Lyndon Johnson onwards is not an inspiring one!

Gonna have an undoubtedly hot and unpopular take here...

Nixon and Ike were the most competent Presidents post WWII.

Nixon, in particular, was very good at the job. Obviously he was also a crook, and a cheat, and a list, and a criminal. And you shouldn't over look those things. But he did the duties of a President well.

 

[Joe Mac]

Gonna have an undoubtedly hot and unpopular take here...

Nixon and Ike were the most competent Presidents post WWII.

Nixon, in particular, was very good at the job. Obviously he was also a crook, and a cheat, and a list, and a criminal. And you shouldn't over look those things. But he did the duties of a President well.

I mean acting criminally and using your position as president to subvert the democratic process might just be carrying out your duties as president in a subpar manner?

And Eisenhower? Isn’t his legacy that of a presidency of inaction? I mean his lack of a public opposition to McCarthy? Or his inaction on civil rights?

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

Are you less than 20?

Just because looking in from the outside the only even remotely competent president you've had since maybe Kennedy, or because he died before he could implement too much perhaps even Truman or FDR, was Clinton, warts and all. The run of Presidents from Lyndon Johnson onwards is not an inspiring one!

That’s sort of my point. And I was born at the beginning of 87. So Reagan technically.

I detest Clinton though and view him as the guy who embraced neoliberalism while moving the entire party to the right.